Styles & Periods

Video Art

Video Art combines technology with the visual arts, blending text, technology, music, and images together. In its most literal sense, Video Art is art that appears on video. However, the term can also mean any art that uses video and television equipment in its presentation, as well as art that is generated by means of video. Korean artist Nam June Paik is an artist strongly associated with Video Art. In 1965, after settling in New York, the artist bought a recorder, and, using the state-of-the-art technology, created and showed his first work on the same day. Later, Paik collaborated with cellist Charlotte Moorman in a performance where she wore only a bra made of two screens while playing. Paik is considered more of an experimental performer, while Bill Viola uses video to create works of ethereal images concerned with memory. Viola installs his often 12 hour-long videos, influencing Installation Art with his introduction of movement and time. As technology evolves, so do the ways in which video art can be realized.