While reading this article I can't help to think about the 5 senses. Sight, sent, touch, hearing and taste. Video installation art captures the senses of the viewer to become an all senses experience rather than a single-sense experience. The idea of presentational arts being considered, "hybrid and complex" allowing the artist to represent not only one tense but multiple tenses such as past, present and future layered within makes the space in which video installation art encompasses both real and imaginary-giving an almost infinite spectrum of subject matter to attend to.
Thinking about how the television engulfs us as a society into it's bright flashing lights of commercials and product placements to the extent where it is able to shape our culture into something we may not even want (dare I mention the Jersey Shore?) is quite incredible. To think of the power one has when they are able to capture the senses of another human being. The power to mold their thinking and change long time traditional cultures and values. Not too many generations before our own (what are we, generation x now?) values and traditions seemed to be much more important. Yet as television and mass media marketing began to engulf our society, we lost sight of those traditions and values and literally became a society whose very thoughts and movements are based on the electronics surrounding our senses. In layman's terms: the big business controlling today's media market realized the power of video, the power they held in their hands to change society-not for the greater good of the whole society, but for the greater good of big business and to fuel the corruption that is us now.
To have that very same "power" as an artist, and to be able to maybe bring our society to a level away from media and products and back down to values and what's real and important in our world-is an incredible sense, an incredible power and yet at the same time, a very delicate power.
Some video artists used multiple televisions and video channels to display or express their art/opinions etc. This overload of images can be both beneficiary and yet at the same time could be just too much to get any point across. Yes it is true, our culture absolutely can not sit still and is so easily distracted that we need fast, bright images and loud extravagant. But yes, it is also true that thinking about spilling our culture, our art, our media into other multiple dimensions (3D and perhaps...4D??) makes the plight of the loss of some traditional values and cultural beliefs bearable. Not only bearable actually-acceptable, and dare I say, exciting?
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