Chernoff, Michael "VIDEOSPHERE: Video Surveillance of the Video Screen." , University at Buffalo, 2023
Keywords/Fields of Study : Video Surveillance, Video Art, Video Installation, Videosphere, Virtual Reality
Abstract: The daunting question of “what is video and what is its purpose?” can be resolved by considering the output of the video screen. Since the rise of television, video screens have infiltrated physical space through a variety of electronic and digital devices. In 1970, theorist Gene Youngblood famously described a new video environment called the “Videosphere,” in which future forms of televisual technology would alter architectural and mental space. Philosopher Villem Flusser designated the video screen as totalitarian measure for spying. Today’s Videosphere is comprised by computers, smart devices, and other consumer electronics. Despite the mass occupation with video screens the identity of video still operates invisibly and pluralistically.
This project joins “Videosphere” with research in early video art, optical media theory, self-surveillance, and a video art installation called VIDEOSPHERE: You Are Always On A Screen Somewhere… for understanding video as always being a live signal with devices whose occupation of physical space continually expands the scope of video surveillance. The presence of video was made overtly known through multiple sites of interactions with the live imagery VIDEOSPHERE displayed on numerous screens analog, digital, and virtual reality (VR) technologies. Nowhere in the Videosphere could an audience not appear on a video screen. At the same time the video screens appear also appeared in other screens. Open videos surveillance does not alienate viewers but instead invites them to document and activate screens by performing with their self-image.
Breaking away from the traditional notion of surveillance, information systems operate without because there is no hidden human viewer. It is not surveillance systems we find offensive but the people who watch in private. The necessity of the private video screen for conducting surveillance is null. We begin to see that the video screen is instead a site for catching activity and converting interactions to happen in video screens that are seen by virtual cameras from within, and collectively watched by physical cameras from the outside. The Videosphere concept is updated to describe how of all locations and time are collapsed into an environment for total surveillance that is LIVE.
Department: Media Study
, University at Buffalo
Advisor(s): Mark Shepard
