Introduction and Video Black

There were a few points of the introduction that I found really interesting. The first of which is that the storage medium of the tape has a very short life span compared to other art forms. Early video works as well as less known pieces have lost the magnetic data that was the video, and can only be experienced by reading a description of the piece. Its also interesting that the works that have survived, have been maintained by the gallery and in some sense, they have the authority of what early video work was kept into the future.

I feel like the temporary nature of the tapes and the immediacy of recording, allowed video art to evolve very quickly and for it to be able to rewrite itself many times.

I also found the idea of the video being hard to watch by the gallery goer interesting as well. When someone has to devote a set amount of time to a piece, they may feel alienated by it. I also expressed my concerns with a viewer observing a piece from the middle or at another random point. If I do any gallery work with video, I would like a viewer to be able to start the video from the beginning. I feel like allowing a person to start the video on their own would allow them to accept that they are going to be interacting with the piece. I also feel that concept is built up over time with video, and it may not be in the artists attention for someone to enter it at a midpoint.