Technology Visions

Early video art was characterized by experimentation with the possibilities of the new technology.

Artists used video technology to extract, collage, and manipulate images to create a new visual language. The focus was never solely on the level of image processing, but always also on the question of what effects increasing technologization could have on future social developments.

Since the first Videonale in 1984, the constant technological development can be clearly seen in the artists' video works submitted to the competition. While virtual reality in the early video work of Bernd Kracke was still a distant analog dream of the future, and in Mateusz Sadowski's work the real and virtual worlds still flow into each other in a clearly defined way, in Stefan Panhans' work Freeroam À Rebours the boundaries between human-avatar-machine in the world of gaming have already been largely dissolved. What can it therefore mean in the future if the boundaries continue to shift in the direction of an increasingly lifelike form of virtuality?

Source: Videoarchive erzählen
Image: Stefan Panhans, Freeroam À Rebours, Mod#I.1, 2016 © Stefan Panhans

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