The Problematic of Video Art in the Museum, 1968–1990 By Cyrus M ...

educational tool [which] … allowed personal feedback, which in turn extended the mode of communication and control”.⁴³ Its most attractive feature was its instantaneity. For instance, simple configurations could result in unique reflexive questions that would have significant theoretical implications. As Bijvoet states, “In video ‘feedback’ is used to describe the process of returning a signal to its source, making video, as it were instantaneous”.⁴⁴

As a technology-dependent medium, video would provide the conduit, or vehicle, for technical changes that would, in effect, be reflected, revealed in, and lead to, aesthetic changes. That is, artists employing video art reacted to a developing technology that would engender, control, and determine their style and concerns. The progressive aspects of this would exist in tandem with increases in technological quality and innovation that further shaped their commitment.⁴⁵

However, the positive attributes of video art's capacity to produce a form of “realism” through the image would be constricted by its limitations. Heavily dependent and necessarily contingent upon its machinery running smoothly, the unreliability of the equipment would frequently cause problems during exhibition. This had meant that its reproductive or reproducing quality would be, to a large and varying extent, corrupted by loss of picture quality. (Video tapes would be ephemeral, fragile and sensitive to temperature, “…moisture, trauma and vibration”.)⁴⁶

In contrast to film, video “…cannot be held up to the light…or painted and scratched to produce an image”.⁴⁷ Sensitive to magnetic forces, the camera in the very early years would often be set in a “fixed distant position”, often too far from the subject itself.⁴⁸ Hence, its early insubstantiability and unpredictability had frequently resulted in much of the detail and defining properties of a filmed action or event being lost. Notwithstanding crudity, bad reception, and poor depth of field, tape disintegration would take less than twenty years. These problems had not dispelled its popularity as a new, cost-effective alternative to film with artists who had attempted to explore and utilise this creative form.

Existing and working on the “fringes” of society in the early 1960s, video art makers attempted to expose mainstream entertainment as