picture is the defining medium of the twenty-first century , thanks to the rise of the internet . But its parentage go back way further , to the recent sixties , when the first portable video devices emerged . It was a watershed moment in history — and our short documentary excuse why .
The story of TV is often dominate by its more familiar full cousin , film . The two are entwine , and often bemused . But video possesses unparalleled characteristics that distinguish its pregnant influence in how media , artistic production , and visual culture at - turgid has evolved .
In our little docudrama , Untethered : The Birth of Video , we sat down with artist , author , and professor Tom Sherman to discuss the history of video , and how artists in the late 60 and former 70s were able to harness the technology in aflurry of weird and originative behaviorsthat still come across in the millions of net videos being shared today .
It all started with Sony , which developed a portable video camera system — the portapak — in 1967 . Prior to that , video engineering was only approachable to large institutions and pot that could afford the vast equipment and studio apartment . Such a realness is hard to ideate today , give the utter omnipresence of telecasting recording gadget .
These portapaks were a hepatic portal vein into a new world . They could be carried anywhere . They were cheap ( around $ 1500 ) and easy to apply — despite consist of manually thread reel - to - reel tape domiciliate inside a lumbering videocassette recorder - like recorder that was worn over the articulatio humeri . The mechanics were tenuous and the vidicon — the subway unit of measurement that generated the prototype — was so sensible to undimmed light that you had to literally put the camera in the freezer to rescue the gimmick from the periodic burn - in .
But it was that immediacy that draw creative person to video technology early on , which they used to document idea and carry out political activism , and which they hoped would break up the influence of broadcast television . The video that were made at the time are washed out and blurry , but rich in unbridled experimentation . Whether it wasVito Acconci beckon to an imaginary off - camera companion , orPeter Campus toying with the visual trickery of intensity - key , it is easy to see how early creative person ’s mag tape echo the path people express themselves with picture today .
Journalists and artist used this new putz just like they use the net today . In some ways , it was video that train us for the online cosmos . What creative person back then could not have foreseen , of course , was the very nigh future , a time when about everyone has access to telecasting cameras 24 hour a twenty-four hour period , and can try out , speak out , and — through the internet — distribute their world to an audience of billion .
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