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Throughout Martha Rosler’s “Video: Shedding The Utopian Moment” are many specific and significant art world references that solidify and substantiate her discussion of the introduction of video and television and their respective evolving roles in American society and culture. The trouble that I had, however, was following these allusions. Granted, Rosler took the liberty in most all cases to explain the significance of each artist or critic, as an individual less familiar with the art world’s history, these references became steadily more and more distracting and obsolete. That aside, Rosler’s argument was extremely thorough by beginning with a detailed account of historical context of scientific and technical innovations from the soft technologies of the nineteenth century such as factory labor organization, to advanced mechanisms such as tapestry weaving looms and photography. Rosler emphasizes, not the technology itself, but rather the influence that a new science has on the society and culture in which it is submerged. People often rejected these new technologies as demonstrated by the cubism movement that sought to reject realism, allowing “painting to continue to compete with photography” and thus instigating new sub- and counter-cultures. Along the same lines, dada and surrealism “aimed to destroy art as an institution by merging it with everyday life,” but would fail because the art world would assimilate the avant-garde movement itself as a new genre. Rosler then discusses the emergence of television and how its integration into existing culture was extremely fluid because its introduction was facilitated by the technologies preceding it such as radio, mass press, and photography. Conversely in Part II, the audience is fed the idea that perhaps it is not always the technology that must conform to a pre-existing culture, but rather the culture that seeks to manipulate new mediums of art to coincide more adequately within itself. This theory is illustrated by the “self-imposed mission of the art world to tie video into its boundaries” and museumization. Rosler concludes with the critique that “museumization has heightened the importance of installation that make video into sculpture, painting, or still life, because installations can live only in museums—which display a modern high-tech expansiveness in their acceptance of mountains of obedient and glamorous hardware.” Thus perpetuating the notion that video may yet be unlike all other mediums of art in that video does not have a specific limit due to its young age. With this youth, video wields the possibility to expand even further as an art medium, despite its highly commercialized nature.

Martha Rosler’s “Video: Shedding the Utopian Movement” is an interesting work describing the history of art and technology, mainly video, and their effects upon one another. During the beginning of the century art was widely appreciated and popular. However, as the Industrial age, the forefront of Technology, came about, the appreciation of art fell. Technology such as the phonograph, telegraph and other such inventions resulted in the concept of mass production and mass media. This soon misplaced the artists. Not until the invention of photography did the artists’ role soon became endangered. The idea of something being able to fully, accurately and beautifully capture any scenery or object instantaneously goaded the artists. As a result, artists started to spawn new techniques and movements to keep up with technology such as photography. Cubism was one of the results of this. Cubism was creating an abstract painting that would stimulate the senses. It fed on the idea of creating “unrealistic” art to represent realistic emotions. Artists believed they had successfully bettered technology through such means. Unfortunately art soon found out that Technology is ever growing. Art is the expression of soul, expression of ones emotions and ideals through any medium to affect the senses. Only near the end of the century, through the efforts of such people as Paik and McLuha, was this concept realized. Art and technology were not created to compete against one another but to coexist together. The creation of technology allowed art to further express itself, to be able to broadcast itself further, while the concept of art stimulated the growth of technology. This idea was revolutionary and soon artists came to accept the idea of technology, and the fact that technology was theirs to use. Technology was just another new outlet for familiar means of expression. In no other technology was this revolutionary idea proved truer than in video. Video soon became the new avant-garde to the means of expression and video art soon became the new artistic movement. It is just as McLuhan states, and Rosler believes, the “medium is the message”. As technology advances, art will adapt and find new ways of expressing itself. Art will be as ever growing as technology will ever be.

To paint the utopian image of video as an art is in itself an art. Martha Rosler analyzes the raison d’être of video art, and the arguments of the existence of video art in her paper “Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment.” Rosler covers the cause for having such video art, as a vehicle for rebellion against the mainstream network television that it society, the tension created between the masses and the artists when video became a mainstream medium, and the modern- day uses of video, be it art or arsenal. Rosler likens the progression of video ‘art’ history to that of photography. Rosler cites science and “the machine,” the development of a new technology for ‘reproduction,’ reproduction or re- representation of an original, be it a scene, copy, etc. After the debut of photography, an art medium was suddenly available to the masses. This new “media of communication” and its usage transferred a new set of societal values to the middle- class bourgeois. No longer was it necessary for one to be of the high class to partake in the creation of art, as in the pre- photography world of painting, etc., where it was necessary to be able to draw or represent a figure or a set of figures with one’s own hands well to be considered an ‘artist,’ and to be conferred this “talent” took congenital gift or monetary. Photography, before it was simplified to point- and- shoot, gave the ability to create an artistic work to those who could not draw. Then, photography became so mass-ed that, on one front, social order began to unravel. The communication between classes and groups wanting social oomph made possible by this new medium demanded restructuring of authority. This new medium also led to a “broader democratic participation,” to include the, perhaps, less- educated masses in the big- boy decisions. On another front, the raison d’être of photography came into question. Was photography an art form or was it now just a pragmatic medium for conscious industry, documenting war images, poverty, etc? Also, the exclusivity of art had given artists and socialites a defined cultural chiasm between the masses. Now, thanks to “the machine,” they were no longer special. The artist elite were forced to find new ways of doing so – hence the advent of the concepts of photography versus “aesthetic photography.” Artists then realized that they were trying too hard to be “different,” and thus came up with ‘surrealism,’ which combined fine photography with every- day life, fusing the “Time Indefinite” Ross McElwee statements, “This is life!” with “This isn’t art!” Oh, but it is! This “oh, but it is” train of thought was carried out to the point that the “un-artist” surfaced, artists who worked to un-artify art. The medium of the masses part of our story mirrors the history of video; the convoluted rest pertains to the history, or theoretical history, of video art. The actual history of video art is still being debated over, whether it is at a cultural apparatus level or a consciousness industry level.

The question is, what is video art and how has it come to be? Martha Rosler explains and irons out the history of video art in her article, “Video: Shedding The Utopian Moment.” Video can be classified into two categories, as a form of expression or as a form of information. The form of expression was introduced and developed by surrealists who wished to insert “aesthetic pleasure” into the art to “provide the utopic glimpse afforded by ‘liberated’ sensibilities. The form of information was directed more toward social transformation and less focused in spiritual transcendence and here’s where the division occurs between the culture industry and the consciousness industry. Not only does the content differ, but so do its technology and how its perceived and here lies Rosler’s argument of what video art is and how it has come to be. Video art is quite new to society, and it can be seen what advancements it has had in education and the rationalization of industrial and agricultural production, but the effect on society is not very clear. A glimpse can be seen through how video art became popular. There are two reasons and Rosler argues them quite successfully. One is the desire of the aristocrats to broaden the democratic participation by including the middle class and this led to the erosion of traditional authority; another of the want of artists to further express themselves through art. But as time progresses we come to see that technology has been implemented in a way that expresses art, such as photography. Photography is around as a result of technology, and is constantly improving through our now digital cameras. It allows us to take more realistic pictures of life and with this; it led to the diminishing of art culture. Although it is still around, it is not as popular as photography. Now video art is more expensive to upkeep due to the pricey price to obtain legal rights to works in museums and with the battle between culture industry and the consciousness industry. As technology increases and more and more fees are placed in video art, it becomes harder and harder for the culture industry to keep up with the consciousness industry in equipment and legal possession. Sincerely, Eric Su

In “Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment” Martha Rosler attempts to compile a history of art and the different artistic and technological movements that led to the manifestation of video art. First, she introduces the two types of art that is produced. The first category of artists uses video as “theater of the self” (Rosler 32) or as a “narcissistic and self-referential medium, constantly presented themselves,” (32) while the second category is more interested in “information than in poetry, less interested in spiritual transcendence but equally or more interested in social transformation.” (32) Rosler defines the less spiritual category as “not-art” (42) and the more self-absorbed category as “Art-art” (42). With the artist's personal freedom to express what he wishes to express came the absorption of “video art” (33) into the American culture. To begin her history on video art, Rosler delves into the life of Ralph Emerson, an American transcendentalist poet from the 1860's who believed that “political democracy was incomplete unless it led to full human freedom in a state of illuminated consciousness and perception” (35) - a belief implanted into American culture to this day. Rosler describes how the early role of photography produced the first image of “not-art” which embodies the consumer and documentary role of art of the time. She counterpoints photographic modernist practice to cubism, which represents a more creative aesthetic approach to art used in the past. She then introduces the avant-garde movements, dada and surrealism, appearing in the 1920's and 30's. These movements led to the destruction of art as “a separate sphere ... in the marketplace” (39). By breaking the influence that politics and mass culture had on artists, they were able to produce aesthetic artwork which could be played on any medium.

In "Video: Shedding The Utopian Moment" by Martha Rosler the author argues that video as "art" has been placed on a pedestal apart from other forms of working with video, causing repercussions for anyone choosing to enter one of the video fields. To give her point the greatest effect, she traces the development of video from the days of the first photographs all the way to the rise of the avant-garde in the 1960s. In detailing the advent of the medium, she draws comparisons between video and other forms of radical media. In her comparison to photography, for example, she states that the medium “provides an insight into the choices…of aestheticidm with respect to technology” (7). Early aesthetic photographers, she states, prided themselves on being opposed to the “mass culture” of the time. As is evidenced, however, they depended on the reproduction methods essential to that which they so despise. Rosler delves into analysis of various influential personalities in the world of video. Of the artists mentioned, Nam Jun Paik is discussed heavily. Rosler claims that Paik "imported TV into art-world culture" (45) and hence changed the way artists considered the television medium. She warns, however, that Paik, in his criticism of the television institution, also replicated it in his installations. Her argument comes to fruition when she compares looking at a Paik installation to the same mindless fascination one experiences when viewing television, only replacing its messages with "aestheticized entertainment." It is the idea that Paik represented that Rosler speaks out against. By separating video into that which can be seen in the museum and that which cannot, the entire medium of video is thrown into disarray. The mere notion of some video art being more "artful" and therefore worthy of museum installation than others might eliminate some worthwhile works that tell important truths about Western culture. Just as photography before it, video finds itself depending on the institutions and technologies that the art is so-called fundamentally opposed to. Rosler maintains that artists interested in "an array of more socially invested...counterpractices" must be willing to keep their works outside of museums, as the modern institution of "Art" is not receptive to all of the different forms of video.

Martha Rosler’s article talks about video as a new form of media for the world yet still works with the same means as other forms of media, such as painting and photography. She breaks up her article into three parts: Pre-History, History and Myth. The section of history seems the most interesting, since it has to do with video and how it formed to what it is today. According to Rosler, video’s art is not so much one of libraries of accounts, “wars” fought in the name of video or so forth. It is an art history that is video’s art. It wants to be an art form, and a major one, not a minor sort. She also goes into how video deserves a history now, since eventually (and she seems to allude to it being soon) that video will fizzle out as the mainstream media, such as photography was bumped off by video. I would have to argue with that particular idea. Photography will probably never die as a mainstream of media. If video is ever outlawed, or just becomes less popular, photography will still go strong due to the overwhelming amount of photos used in nearly every aspect of life. In advertising, there are many many more billboards with photography utilized than a fully functioning TV billboard with a video being displayed. She finishes the section by saying that video, overall, becomes absorbed into the frenzy of advertising, as a lot of other medias are. Video’s problem is that it nearly destroys its credibility as an art form all together and putting it into a museum in the future will be hard, unless it returns to the “art history” roots in which it originated. As has been seen as of late, video, especially for the TV, has not even tried returning to an “artistic” state, but rather has devolved further into the advertising world and “Monday Night Primetime” scheduling. The avant-garde video makers are obscured by this blinding spotlight of media consumerism, all but destroying their attempts to excel in their art form. But, like painting and photography, also media forms devoured by advertising, will most likely have its moment of “art”, where it will have a sub-genre that is untouchable by the corporate machine.

Martha Rosler’s piece Video: Shedding The Utopian Moment touches upon how and why video art has risen as an art form and is slowly becoming popular among audiences. Rosler first describes how photography first appeared, and began to gain popularity in America as art. This transition came as a result of audiences bored of typical canvas paintings and sculptures, and the advancement of “the machine”, or technology. Of course this did not happen so easily, as artists still supporting painting developed new schemes that not only would attract more people, but also were specific enough in a sense that it could not be reached through photography. Thus cubism and futurism were born, forms of art that used abstract views to cause “a break in bourgeois rationality”, something photography could not due since photography capturing real life and rational views. Eventually though, cubism and futurism wore out, and photography became the most popular art form. Rosler not only uses the rise of photography to give a background of progression in art, but also compares it to how video art is rising today. As it is apparent today, “the machine” is changing at an even faster rate than ever before, and therefore audiences are looking at the most technologically advanced for of art, video. One difference between the rise of photography and video art is the fact that video art is competing with many more forms of art than photography did. This makes it harder for video art to become popular, but also means that if video art were to surpass those multiple art forms, it would be on a higher plateau than photography ever reached. Unfortunately, video art has a long way to go. One reason it faces a harder path is the fact that it is harder to make money from, and especially in today’s capitalist society, money made means everything. In my opinion, video art will succeed though, because it has a strong ally in technology, which advances at such a fast rate that it will never again be compatible with canvas art, or photography, and the only medium which will be able to keep up with it is video art.

Martha Rosler’s “Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment” discusses mainly the history of video art and the artistic movements that occurred that particularly helped develop video through their effects. Public versus private use of video was one of her arguments. Since video artists have the ability to create their own works publicly and privately, questions were raised on what kind of works are to be shown to the audience. Many artists disagreed with avant-gardes’ belief that “merging art with social life and making the audience and producer interchangeable” will revolutionize art. Through the attempts of the avant-gardes to break conventional methods of art, many things came about. As the avant-gardes’ objective failed, several effects rose that changed art. For example, the clash between painting and photography was alleviated as realism was ignored that made paintings capable of competing against photography. Anti-art became art after the avant-gardes’ movement failed. Abstract art was little by little becoming more popular due to rejection of realism and the use of cubism in many forms of art works. Rosler’s essay also talks about art consciousness wherein she emphasized “non-art is more art than art-art.” Television and advertisements created what is called pop art, wherein billboards, comic strips, and celebrity images for instance, were made to fulfill the audience’s needs. In the second part of Rosler’s essay, she stated that “video history is not a social history but art history, and it relates to other forms of art but is separate from them.” She proclaims that video history should be considered as major art, not minor art. The topic of history is in great debate because artists are arguing between having a history or not. However, the continuous growth of video use is believed to have a huge significance in the future for the quality of the work can determine who created the piece. Myth was also referenced in Rosler’s essay. The connection between myth and video bestows the artists the power to make simple works, for myth eliminates the intricacy of individuals’ actions and add more to the straightforwardness to the quality of the video. One mythic figure mentioned in the essay is Nam June Paik. He stands as an important character of video history because he was able to do things with television that many artists did not dare do. Rosler also mentioned in her essay cultural apparatus and consciousness industry, where she defined cultural apparatus as the source of pessimistic things while consciousness industry is the bearer of hope. The cultural and consciousness industry shows the relationship between art and media, where the use of technological advances are questioned.

Kevin Walsh- "Shedding the Utopian Moment" deals with the need for a history of art video that is created by the artist for the artist practitioner as opposed to history that is constructed to meet the needs of funders and curators. Martha Rosler discusses the necessary negotiation of the role of art video between the opposing powers of art conventions and the overwhelming power of the commercial mass media. She uses the histories of other mass medias, particularly photography to demonstrate the way technological art forms evolve as they become integrated into the art and commercial world, and how this integration itself can undermine the possibilities of the medium. She discusses the possibilities and limitations of art that is technology based in serving as a vehicle for myth, magic and poetry, and the paradox of an art that is critical of the use of the technology on which it depends. Rosler sees current practitioners of video art as an avant-garde movement, and examines historical art movements such as Dada,Symbolism and Futurism that attempted to respond to and affect society and culture in similar ways. As these movements were largely unsuccessful due to their assimilation and nutralization by the larger established art world, Rosler looks to McLuhan, Cage, and Kasprow to try to define or understand the significance of video’s history in culture in order to avoid the pitfalls that history provides as examples. The work of Nam June Paik is used as a basis for the discussion of “Myth” in video history. The mythic nature of Paik’s work is seen as providing opposition to the “use of culture by dominant elites” to create a culture of passive acceptance (Herbert Marcuse). By refering to McLuhan for a definition of art’s function, “to make tangible and to subject to scrutiny the nameless psychic dimensions of new experience”, Rosler sets out an idealistic goal for video artists, and ends with a plea for creating “socially invested, socially productive counter-practices, ones making a virtue of their person-centeredness…rather than from industries or institutions.”

Martha Rosler’s Video: Shedding the Utopian Movement goes into the question of what happens when what is avante-garde becomes mainstream, in this case, detailing the medium of video. Explaining the history and the development of video in three stages, Rosler views the beginning history of video as art history. She seems to argue that while avante-garde artists have created art to take down the establishment of “art” and redefine art, video had the most effective part in this movement. Video editing is the “analogue of the “brush-stroking” maneuver,” says Rosler to critics’ arguments of saying that video has no esthetics or distinguishing character. And indeed, this has become true; video, now made incredibly available to the masses, can be as characteristic as paintings (although this may be more true to films than video, it is not necessarily binding strictly to film). Rosler cites Nam June Paik as a liberator of sorts in the medium of video, and video’s part in making “non-art art more art than art-art.” Though I grew up fairly young in terms of use of video as art, even now, I find it difficult to relate to Rosler’s ideas. Although video has yet to become a serious art form found in museums (or a more difficult art form to find – there have been galleries with short films in museums), it has found itself into a niche in our society as a sort of semi-serious art form, and even amateur videos widely available for viewings online are sometimes taken in with a critical eye towards whether this is serious or not. Ultimately, through this essay, Rosler takes the reader into her point of view of the video as an art form – that video is a serious art form with a wide-ranging amount of capabilities, and the groundwork has already been set to set video as an art form in society. Despite my earlier statement of my having a hard time understanding Rosler’s ideas, I agree with the message of Rosler as a whole and in general, not just in terms of video as art, but that what ever exists can become art, even those that try to throw down art.

The concept of video-art is a term that may be hard to grasp, and for many reasons. Video, being a medium unlike many other media that constitute of art, such as canvas or sculpture, took the form of a technology that is otherwise used for broadcasting. Martha Rosler examines in her article Video: Shedding the Utopian Movement, the effects of video on the art world. In Part I, Rosler focuses on the history of “new forms of art.” She analyzes concepts of art from surrealism and cubism, to mediums of art such as the camera, which was used for photography (6). Mainly, she notes that art has throughout time has been a movement against the mundane, a rebellion against the everyday consumerist culture that the ruling classes have turned the “people” into. “Thus, an art apparently hostile and antithetical to mass culture…in fact depended on technologies,” she says about the photographic camera (7). And in turn, film is yet the same concept, an art form that must rely on commercial goods and funding that is often available from major media conglomerates. Hegemony was also a term that Rosler used very often while describing the elements of art history. In her analysis of art-history, each form of art was meant to overcome the cultural hegemony that was forced upon society. In Part II, Rosler guesses at what might be included if one had to write out the history of the fairly new technology/art of video at the present time. Which artists would be mentioned? Does video follow a pattern like other art-forms that have come before it? What if video loses its credibility? She suggests that perhaps museumization of video may be its best hopes to disconnect itself from the ties that society has made it to the television set (44). Part III Myth, discusses the legends of video art from artists such as Nam June Paik to Marshall McLuhan and their lasting effects on video as a art form and as a medium. Rosler ends on a solemn tone regarding the matter. She states that the “issue at hand as always is who controls the means of communications in the modern world” (50). You certainly can’t have a message without a medium.

In Martha Rosler’s “Video: Shedding The Utopian Moment” readers are subjected to an analytical look into the origins, transformations and affects of art, technology, and video art throughout history. Rosler begins by reflecting on the natural evolution of art from realism to the more modern Dadaism and post-expressionism. I believe that Rosler brings this history into conversation so that she can highlight the ways in which technology has transformed how the broader public perceives art. For example, she notes that when photograph technology was first presented many artists rebelled against it by transforming their art. Additionally, she provides this history to introduce the notion of “anti-art art” aesthetic and the drive of artists throughout the years to break free of mainstream “museumized” art. I feel that this provides an important segway into the discussion of video art as she dubs that the medium first evolved from “early users [who saw] themselves as carrying out an act of profound social criticism, criticism specifically directed at the domination of groups and individuals epitomized by broadcast television and perhaps all of Western industrial and technological culture” (pg.1). Just as artists rebelled against industrial technology during the craftsmanship era because of its destruction of the “art,” video artists too utilize the medium to destroy the institutionalization of art by technology. However, Rosler concedes that just as artists find new ways to utilize technology to critique ‘art’ mass media consumes the new form and thus, starts the cycle again. This point is significant because I feel that the dependency of society on technology has left many individuals in a position in which they are unable to express themselves. This leads to an important distinction that Rosler makes in this essay about the different uses of video. She argues that there is the use of video by corporation television and broadcasting agencies as a cultural apparatus, one which utilizes the power of images and sound to shape the culture of the viewers. Video artists, she counters, utilize video as a medium of consciousness, one that can critique the culture disseminated by the cultural apparatus and “open up a space in which the voices of the voiceless might be articulated” (pg.2) I agree that there is a definite distinction between these two uses of the medium and feel that the former is truly the purpose of video art. Additionally, her discussion of McLuhanism provided some interesting points I had not considered previously. For example, she notes that McLuhan argued that the point of art, “is to assist in our accommodation to the effects of a technology whose very appearance in world history creates it as a force about the humans who brought it into being” (pg.48). I interpreted this as follows; the ultimate goal of the artist is to tame and redefine a technological medium that has escaped the human intention of inventing it in the first place. I find thinking about video art in this manner mind-opening to say the least.

Jonathan Wai – In “Video: Shedding The Utopian Moment,” Martha Rosler explores the history and development of video. Rather than looking at video as only a technology, Rosler believes it was part of an artistic movement which moves with technology throughout time. When photography was first introduced, it showed an obvious advantage over painting portraits or landscapes so artists tried to hold true to their traditional style and delay the photography’s growth such as cubism, surrealism and expressionism. However, photography grew very fast and artists decided to incorporate it into their works. This in turn developed a new style all on its own. Even though people saw this new technology destroying their rural and traditional way of life, it soon was absorbed and became a part of their lives. After photography, a new technology soon took its place in the art world, Radio. The ability to use sound presented many possibilities and soon a new form of art we all know came about, television. Following this development, Rosler believes that video was not simply a social movement but an art movement as well. Another person very involved with this movement is Nam June Paik. He, however, thought that video could be beyond simply television and advertisements. He wanted to separate the common thoughts that were being produced from art institutions. He used video to be against television and did what art associations wanted to do to photography. Television still developed anyways and many people use video as a way to express themselves and their art. Video art went beyond just video as a single medium, it became multimedia combining many different tools in order to create a new art movement. All of this is in an effort to break up the connection between television and big companies. Since video is so able to adapt to new technology and can be used to express practically any view, it has become a big part of art. As technology advanced from one new invention to the next, so did art. Art has to keep up with technology and find ways to connect with it and use it in ways that will connect to the people who view it. As seen from photography, it is not easy to get rid of technology it is best to use it, this is how video art developed and how the next technological advance will produce a new form of art as well.

Because video technology is so new, how can we even begin to anticipate its proper place in a history that has yet to even be decided? In her essay, “Video: Shedding The Utopian Moment,” Martha Rosler discusses how video has allowed artists to not only create a very immediate production, but to also create a piece that can be very private. And indeed, the discourse on public versus private art is a very important one, as the argument alone determines what kind of media the public receives. Since its major use as an art form in the 1960’s, video has been compared to the “machine,” or a public that is very driven by everything technological and mainstream (Rosler, 33). In discussing video’s place in or against the mainstream, Rosler cites earlier attempts made by artists in the 20th century to use art as a means of tearing away all conventional ideas of what art should be. In doing so, these artists also hoped to break down social expectations altogether. Rosler describes these movements as “instruments of liberation” (Rosler, 39). When the world welcomed the drastically different styles such as expressionism, dada, and surrealism, a new, paradoxical concept of “liberating art” was introduced. This suggests that any attempt to do something artistically radical is not radical at all the moment that the mainstream art world places value on the new form. What significance does video history have? Rosler suggests that the study of the new art form is not just for the world of academia, but for the diverse population that is impacted by video in any way (Rosler, 44). Of course, the future historians of video must take great care to preserve facts in such a way that is most “honest.” This brings the topic back to the “public versus private” world of video: should historians work to preserve a kind of video that has been forced into some kind of mainstream not desired by the original artists, or should these artists’ video pieces be kept to themselves, and thus never have any impact on video, leading to a kind of dull history on video that does not give it as much credit as these artists know the medium has? Of course, anything different will always be brought to light, and anything controversial (or extremely different) will be loved. Video will inevitably be pushed up against the mainstream, and will thus become a part of it.

Martha Rosler, in “Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment,” writes of the history of the relation of art and video through the years and the various technological movements that have evolved from them. She moves through three sections: prehistory, history, and myth. It begins with photography as a main catalyst for video art. As art was at the peak of its popularity, society was evolving, as was the need and demand for new technologies. Many believed these new technologies were leading to the destruction or rural life and so then held on to the old ways of art. This influenced several new artistic movements: cubism allowed art to vie with photography due to its rejection of realism, which photography couldn’t assimilate and futurism also rejected photographic space, like cubism, but in the way it represented modernism in abstraction. Pop art, although not appearing until after television, sprang up from art as a combination of mass culture advertising and television. Although artists did what they could to delay the increase in popularity of the photograph, it was inevitable that photography would eventually become a new art form. Painting a picture and snapping its picture differ greatly in time and effort. Capturing the beauty of a scenic view is instantaneous in a photo as opposed to the hours it takes to paint that same scene. The photograph was accepted as a new technology and new movements developed. Radio was the next technology to grasp society, and eventually led to the merging of photos and radio in the offspring we call television. The history is of video is actually an art history, as opposed to a social history, meaning it can be written by anyone, but whoever writes the history will leave out facts and events. Rosler begins the last third of the writing by claiming that the name Nam June Paik is associated with all video history. While others feared the change of technology and shunned new inventions, Paik accepted the technology of television with open arms. Paik saw it as a method of improving art and a new option with limitless possibilities. He did many things to television that others wished they could do: fill television with dirt, grew plants in it, and put it in the same mind as Buddha! He took video towards the art direction and away from mass culture advertising, almost in the opposite direction of the pop art movement. Since the evolution from standard paintings to photograph, all the way to video art, there have been several art movements and impressions on new technologies. As more technologies are introduced, new art movements spring up and new methods of creativity are practiced. Video is still technically a new medium and leaves artists open for more creative ideas.

In “Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment,” Martha Rosler explains the history of art and television. Rosler explains the prehistory of video, commenting on the fact that commenter all saw technology as something that was stripping individuals of their cultural values and “destroying rural life and traditional values of social cohesiveness and hard work that had heretofore given live meaning” (Rosler, P 3). Public press, and mainly photography, sparked a tumult in western society. The photograph quickly became a large part of the society, but many artists rebelled against its invention; many even began emphasizing colors in their paintings to show what photography could not accomplish. However, photography was accepted, so further development was not halted by the anti-art activists. Photography became known as a rational domination of technology. Various movements began in effort to undermine the advancements of art and this new technology. Surrealism, and expressionism, for example, attempted to restrict art and its effects of people. Ironically, these attempts to suffocate new technology backfired on the activists, when the anti-art movement provided inspiration to art, giving artists and photographer’s new ideas and techniques on the matter. Anti-art became art” (Rosler, P. 39). Later, television broadcasts had no trouble adding to society because they were simply an addition to the already accepted radio, which had already built a foundation of this type of medium. However, video history, to Rosler, is an art history rather than a social history. In the history of video there are important figures. Nam June Paik is known as someone who tried to degrade the meaning of art while being an activist in certain movements. Marshall McCluhan is also widely known in the history of video; he was appealing o the masses because of his simplistic style of dissecting media and its history. He shed light on the idea of accepting the pure power of media and analyzing it instead of not tolerating it. Taking from McCluhan, it is truly important to understand the technological advances in society. Transformations are inevitable in art. As history has proven, these transformations have been fought, but those who were not willing to accept change could not suffocate the growth of art into television, and soon after, video.

Martha Rosler’s Shedding The Utopian Moment shines light upon the significance of video artist , Nam June Paik. The mythic figure Paik has done all the bad and disrespectful things to television that the art world’s collective imaginary might wish to do. ( Rosler 45) His denial of video as an informative tool for the masses like television and mass advertisment created the art video genre as we know it today. Paik’s interference with TV’s inviolability, its air of nonmateriality, overwhelmed its single-minded instrumentality with an antic “creativity.” (Rosler 45) Rosler’s interesting history of the effect of photography on the masses show how photography as a technology effected society. By the turn of the twentieth century, photography was well established as a rational and representational form, not only of private life and public spectacle of every type, but as implicated in official and unofficial technologies of social control:police photography, anthropometry, urban documentation, time and motion study for example. ( Rosler 37) This effect of mass publication created the rejection of a realistic portrayal of the world in cubist painting. The capitulation to modernity is associated with cubism, which identified rationalized sight with inhuman culture. (Rosler 36) The embrace of technology and its rigor on the public led to the futurists and the idealism of technological components. Sectors of late 19th Century art practice, then , pressed occultist, primitivist, sexist, and other irrationalist sources of knowledge and authority, spiritual insights often based not on sight per se but on interpretation and synthesis, and arejection of feminine Nature. ( Rosler 36) Futurism was a utopia for those who did not reject war machines and indutrialization. Art discourse made updated use of the dialectic of scientific experimentation on technique and magical transformation through aestheticism and primitivism, veering toward an avante-garde of technical expertise. (Rosler 40) In conlusion, Rosler provides a map of where art stops with mass media and technology and where art of the video begins.

In “Video: Shedding The Utopian Moment”, Martha Rosler speaks a great deal of history and different artistic movements as they each related to technology and particularly to the development of video and their effects on it. At the beginning, it seemed that art and technology where both at the forefront of cultural life. Art was imagination and so what was one day art, soon became a new technology. Of course there where those that doubted and questioned these new technologies, but scientific advancement is not something that can be stopped. As technology developed further, artistic movements began to revolt against them. Cubism was a rejection of realism, thus giving art another function, other than to represent reality. In this way it was a rejection of the purpose of photography. Futurism is another such movement that was conceptualizing the art world. Yet some artists began to look at photography as perhaps another tool in their art making, or an artistic form all its own. Photography seemed to turn the art world into frenzy. No longer where artists needed to paint portraits or exact landscapes, since photographs could be made within minutes and reproduced every detail that they took in more perfectly than any human artist. Therefore, artists had to find a new place for themselves in the world, and so several artistic movements came about. Beyond photography was radio and then television, which combined the sound of radio with the images of photography. The mass culture of television and advertising produced the Pop art movement, a reaction to all that was going on, to the quantification of societal needs. The history of video is clearly linked with the name Nam June Paik. While some try to use this medium to give facts and information, others see it as a medium for art-making. Paik was associated with a movement in art that was attempting to lessen the importance of art institutions. He also wanted to lessen the effects of television, advertising, and mass culture on the medium of video and take it in a more conceptual art direction. Video, it seems, is a multipurpose medium. It is very prominent in the everyday life of the mass public as well as an important tool for artists. Its uses continue to change and evolve even today.