The Taste of Rendering
There are movies and there is video art. I’ve waisted years figuring out when a piece qualifies as video art and when it’s deemed a movie. The distinction doesn’t come from the type of camera the artist uses or the size of her/his crew. Video art can be made in teams and movies can be shot with mobile phones.
I think the difference comes from the way artists approach technology.
Movies are prepared using advanced organizing technologies. With advanced organizing technologies a movie maker can mold an idea into a production, divide a production in to segments and assing social and technical self-sustaining entities to complete them. These entities try to complete tasks which have been assigned autonomously.
Movies are not about narratives, cameras, visuality or teamwork – They are about planning. Movie makers often talk about their desire to tell stories but I think they only emphasize narratives because narratives serve as a convenient tools for organizing productions. Every movie is an appeal for “organizational skills as the foundation of culture”.
Video artists are more concentrated on the tools we use and how specific properties of organizational technologies effect our understanding of the world. A camera is an organizational tool. It’s lens is used to organize environments into sites which are seen or unseen. Early video art was concerned with the power of the lens.
Digital technologies make the lens less important (objects can be created in 3D and indistinguishable effects applied on raw material), which is why artist have recently focused more on the computer then the camera.
The computer is often used like a paint brush. Artists are experimenting with their softwares presents, similarly as previous generations experimented on how the lens effect us. The filter is the new lens. Adobe is Life (From the Creative Cloud we can enlighten the world with our art).
Newest models of computers enable artists to work fluidly. Effects are pulled to the timeline intuitively and tested on the fly. The end results are crafted through a maticulous trial and error process. Thanks to capable computers we see more stunning video art then before.
The sovereignty of many artists is the result rendering power. Rendering causes a warm, tinny smell and makes the air hard to breath. It divides the desktop into hot, cold and moist spots and mixes well with the stench of sweat. The taste of rendering should be bottled and sold to workers who want to make bosses think that they’ve been working hard.