This is a Video Monitor

Description

"This is a Video Monitor is an attempt to construct a wholly 'videological' experience, and is built on an initial take of a woman describing the paradox of real and imagined functions of the monitor on which her image appears...
Sound synchronization wavers as she mimes to her pre-recorded voice - an analogy to part of her description. The camera cuts at the end of the first take and a no-signal 'snow-field' appears. The take is then optically regenerated off a monitor screen, a third off that and so on. Vision and sound gradually change, at each stage distorting the expected characteristics, displacing the imagined for the real - configurations of variable light intensity at the surface of the screen; each time indentifying and re-identifying the implications of her recurring statement." David Hall, 1973 (Source, website, Rewind)

"This is a video monitor: At the beginning, we see a woman explaining how the monitor in which she appears works. The sound synchronization fails as soon as she tries to imitate her pre-recorded voice. What was picked up is then recorded on the screen of a monitor a third time and so on. The sound and image gradually change their characteristics at each stage, identifying the resulting result." (Emergence translation) (Source, pdf, Rewind)

Additional Informations

"This is a Video Monitor is built around an initial take of a woman's face describing the perceived functions of the monitor on which she appears (this could equally well apply to any video monitor). Sound synchronization waves slightly throughout which relates to a section of her description. At the end of this initial take the camera cuts and a "no signal" noise appears (an intrinsic property of videotape). The take is repeated, shot off the first. At third is shot of that, and fourth of that and so on. Each time sound and vision gradually changes their characteristics. The "no signal" noise is doubled, trebled, etc. At each take a section of the image of her face appears to amplify, which ultimately becomes a series of light patches (referred to in her recurring description as true of any TV image anyway). The sound progressively blurs and multiplies its reverberation as it is re-corded on mic from the monitor speaker. Effectively, the "concrete/perceptual" aspects of the monitor are progressively identified and reidentified by the tape process and its description." (David Hall, 12/28/74) (Source, pdf, Rewind)

Catalog Cover for 5th International Experimental Film/Video Festival 1974-75. (Source, pdf, Rewind website)

This is a Video Monitor: manuscript (Source, pdf, Rewind website)

This video was the subject of a distribution contract by art/tapes/22, Florence, Italy signed by the artist on December 9, 1975. (Source, pdf, Rewind website)

View photographs of the installation on Rewind's website

Publications and Periodicals which reference the work

- Gideon Bachmann, "Knokke's Film Festival: almost an island", The Times, Wednesday January 8 1975. (Source, pdf, Rewind)

- Tamara Krikorian, "Video - Report by Tamara Krikorian", Studio International, May/June 1976. (Source, pdf, Rewind)

- Tamara Krikorian, "Artists' Television", Broadcast television and the visual arts : a supplement to the catalogue TSWA, the National Open Art Exhibition, TSWA, Plymouth[?], 1984, p. 49-55. (Source, pdf, Rewind)

- David Curtis (ed.), A Directory of British Film and Video Artists, John Libbey Media, Luton,1996.

- Julia Knight (ed.), Diverse practices: a critical reader on British video art, University of Luton Press, Luton, 1996.

- David Byrne, "Modernism and Meaning: eading the Intervention of British Video Art into the Gallery Space", Diverse practices: a critical reader on British video art, Julia Knight (eds.) University of Luton Press, Luton, 1996, p. 238-259. (Source, pdf, John Byrne)

- Clive Phillipot Clive & Andrea Tarsia (eds.), Live In Your Head - Concept and Experiment in Britain 1965 - 75', Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2000. (Source, website, Rewind)

- Stephen Partridge & Sean Cubitt (eds.), REWIND| British Artists' Video in the 1970s & 1980s, John Libbey Publishing, East barnet, Herts, 2012.