Video Art

Early video artists tended to be those involved with conceptual and performance art, and experimental film. These include Americans Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Peter Campus, Doris Totten Chase, Joan Jonas, Bruce Nauman and others. Others, like Steina Vasulka (born Steinunn Briem Bjarnadottir) and Woody Vasulka, explored the video genre itself, utilizing synthesizers to produce abstract works. Later exponents included Americans Sadie Benning, Paul Chan, Gary Hill, Miranda July, Mary Lucier, Paul Pfeiffer and Eve Sussman; the Canadians Colin Campbell, Stan Douglas, Lisa Steele, Bill Viola and Rodney Werden. European video artists include the Germans Agricola de Cologne, Dieter Froese, and Wolf Kahlen; the Poles Wojciech Bruszewski and Miroslaw Rogala; the Britons Douglas Gordon, David Hall and Gillian, the Italian Stefano Cagol, the Austrian Martin Arnold, the Swiss Pipilotti Rist, and the Spaniard Domingo Sarrey.
Andy Warhol produced a number of video films now regarded as part of the genre. Representative sample of his works include: 'Sleep' (1963), depicting the 6-hour slumber of the poet John Giorno; 'Empire' (1964), an 8-hour film of the Empire State Building in New York City at dusk; and 'Eat', a 45-minute film showing a man eating mushrooms. In 1966, he produced 'Chelsea Girls' consisting of two films being projected at the same time, with a variable sound track to update viewers on the twin plots. This use of multi-imaging echoed Warhol's earlier multi-image silk-screen works like 'Twenty Marilyns' (1962).
 Peter Campus (b.1937), one of the most important video artists of the 1970s, was a key innovator in studio camera work and video technology. His work 'Three Transitions' employed numerous processors, mixers and editors to record his own film-making. Other works by Peter Campus include: Double Vision (1971), Interface (1972), Three Transitions (1973), R-G-B (1974), Video Ergo Sum: Divide (1999), Video Ergo Sum: Dream (1999), Edge of the Ocean (2003), Kathleen in Grey (2004), Baruch the Blessed (2004).