RECORDING REALITY

In the 19th century, people did not have access to the film-making technology that we do today. Everything was hand drawn, and the first instance of the moving image relied on our bodies and the persistence of vision. Our brain can retain images after it leaves our sight, thus creating some sort of motion-blur for the earliest pictures. As time passed, film started becoming a way to record the reality. The earliest films were shorts about mundane life. Going on a picnic. Being at a train station. Now, it is a hybrid form of film footage along with digital effects and 3D modelling, and these digital technologies offer an enhanced cinematic experience for a narrative film. Even now, going to the theatre to watch a regular showing is different from watching IMAX or 3D or D-Box. However, video art is more about installation and performance rather than narrative. The very beginnings of video art were in the 1950s-60s, and it started when fluxus artists were drawn to the new medium. They would experiments with forms of manipulation and disruption of visual messages using tools such as television sets. The real emmergence of video art, however, was in the late 1960s