Video Silences

In the autumn of the media, we celebrate absence. The invention of 
photography revealed that painting is so enchanting because reality does 
not appear on the canvas; the introduction of film, that the photograph 
derives its beauty from the absence of movement; that of the sound film, 
that the silent movie astonished us so because it made no noise. Color 
filmmakers were the brains behind the aestheticism of film noir. After 
that, television made it clear that all these forms of film derived their 
appeal from the black between the images. Now HiVision teaches that the 
video image offered something that is currently being lost: the 
aesthetics of the scanning line. In cyberspace, it will sink in that the 
power of all these detached media was that we ourselves were missing from 
the picture. After that, simstim will show that cyberspace was so 
pleasant because it took place outside our own nervous system. And so on, 
and so on. 

Chemical media had all the time in the world. If, for the sake of 
convenience, we add up the five stages of lighting, development, 
reproduction, projection and reception, we see that these media allowed 
the image to fully mature. Even movies intended for immediate consumption 
at the time turn out to be still in the middle of their period of 
reception decades later. Decaying nitrate films are hastily preserved to 
prevent these wet media from spontaneous combustion. Back then, visual 
light was captured onto an unsteady substance that had to be dragged 
through a series of baths before it could be made visible by placing it 
inbetween a strong light source and a white screen in a darkened theater. 
Reproduction took place through immediate contact between the master 
negative and blank strips. As for the reception of these fluid media, a 
special favorite always consisted of the sloshing theories about the 
flowing unconscious called psychoanalysis. The whole movie business 
anticipated these wet dreams.

Now that the chemical film process is wearing off under the influence of 
the home video's user-friendly magnetism, we witness a growing awareness 
of the divisions between the individual images. More and more, this black 
edge is being pushed into the foreground and included as an equal element 
into the semiotics of images. A familiar example of this process is Jim 
Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise," where black is inserted as an 
interval between the individual shots. The more the image matures, the 
more obvious it becomes that it is precisely this dark side of cinema 
which has attracted movie buffs for a century. The space between the 
pictures turns out the great seducer for these aesthetes of the pure 
image. The general public has no use for this emancipation of the edit, 
however, and demands a seamless transition from one fascination to the 
next. 

What the cinephiles fail to see is that the magnetic media offer at least 
as much visual absence. Precisely in an age that produced such an amazing 
Technicolor palette and in which the ideal of lifelike representation was 
so closely approached, the snowy black-and-white tube appeared in the 
living room. The videotape rearranges molecules in a magnetic field so 
that they can be instantly read once you have obtained the correct 
equipment. No fluids or light are involved. Traditional development, 
montage, projection and reception disappear in the inordinate 
accessibility of this medium. This is where liquid theory fails, and to 
this day, videophilia has not succeeded in becoming an exclusive passion. 


After twenty years, the imperfections had been resolved and the 
large-screen color TV could consolidate itself as a home theater. The 
daily assembly and fading out of scanning lines had reached such 
perfection that it was no longer noticed. Besides, interior design had 
been adapted so as to practically exclude sidelong glances at the screen. 
The scanning line only returned in the late eighties with VCRs, which 
could fast-forward, rewind or pause the picture, and displayed moiré in 
case of bad copies. An artistic application of the scanning-line 
principle was shown in Bill Spinhoven's installation, "Time Stretcher," 
which constructed a video image of the viewer with a lag of three seconds 
between the bottom and top lines. But these horizontal video stockades 
were never mentioned for what they are. They were just one of many 
elements that would provide the videological with its own artificiality. 
The scanning line has become the logo of an entire era. On the front 
page, video stills from live broadcasts have a topical surplus value 
which professional photography can never achieve. Press photographers who 
refuse to send their digital photos by satellite dish are forced to take 
a step back and sell their reports as impressionistic documentaries about 
what took place behind the TV cameras.

Now, with the introduction of HDTV, it turns out that all the 
characteristics of video can be included in the next medium in a 
perfected form - except the scanning line. The digitally fostered and 
designed pixel is left completely alone. The permanent construction work 
required by the television frame is no longer necessary. A computing 
center provides the autonomous points with their data, and they couldn't 
care less what takes place on the rest of the screen. The individual 
pixel can undergo all kinds of treatments and move through various media 
via interfaces. Data form images only by accident. The spotless 
television, that can be enlarged or scaled down at will and produces 
lifelike images in true colors, produces a view in which 
twentieth-century material is turned into a historical genre. Only when 
High Definition is implemented worldwide will the cinephiles realize that 
even their ancient archenemy knew its moments of absence, and was beaten 
by the same opponent. Just as the movie screen will be replaced by an HD 
screen, so the old home tube will be erased by the new standard. Static 
will enter its golden age and become the material for the AVant-garde in 
search of raw and elementary images in the age of definition.

Thus, people who currently agitate against the disappearance of 8 and 16 
mm film can count on the support of Save the TV, media conservationists 
and the true video (still) artists who exploit the new visual reality to 
claim all redundant linear material as art. If at present, film allows 
itself to be subsidized as the seventh art, it will then have to share 
its synthetic museum with its dialectic partner, television, which will 
still flaunt its former ratings.
??