Videopainting / Video d'ameublement No. 2 (Kiss III), 1996
Technical data: Video beamer, video player, endless video tape.



On the Conception of the Videopaintings / Video d'ameublements
The Videopaintings deal with computer generated video films that treat television or the internet as media, which show images that are exemplary of human behavior. The starting point of my so-called Video-paintings are recordings of everyday happenings or isolated gestures which are usually arranged to function in an unbroken, endless movement. Whether I fall back upon found images from movies or even the raw material of film essentially depends upon the access speed. An important aspect seems to be that the selected sequences of images have something universal, general or simply typical. In the computer, these truly unspectacular actions are processed in such a way that the viewer could doubt if s/he isn't looking across at a freeze frame. There is no staccato-like jerking usually telling slow motion that would lend a clue to the continually flowing motion on the threshold of perception: once the brain finally realizes the image has changed, this process is already over.

I would like to describe the Video-paintings main idea in reference to Erik Satie's musique d'ameublement as video d'ameublement. The endless-videos are conceived to run on loops so that one must not continually pay attention to them. Their existence should be as natural as a picture on the wall or even a television at home, left switched on. On the other hand, I have set up certain video films as installations that take hold of the entire space. In this case I call them Videopaintings; as a monitor-version or as a plain projection I call them Video d' ameublement.


(image gallery)