{"id":5583,"title":"Reflecting on the Future of Video","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/reflecting-future-video","version":"652d0f3cacd55e2f15f0ad251e3dcb4534930077cee8bf37b576faf66b040d3d","modified":"2026-09-13T21:52:04.4398796+00:00","credits":[{"role":"Author","name":"Thomas Sherman"}],"authorKeys":["Sherman, Tom"],"subjects":["Texts by Author"],"metadata":[{"label":"Publisher","value":"unpublished manuscript","url":null},{"label":"ETC archive","value":"ETC0814","url":null},{"label":"Type of work","value":"unpublished manuscript","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022Reflecting on the Future of Video.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/reflecting-future-video.","publication":"Thomas Sherman. Reflecting on the Future of Video. unpublished manuscript. 1991.","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/5583.ris"},"links":[{"label":"Scanned document","url":"https://archive.org/details/ETC0814","relationship":"linked document; contents not retrieved","contentType":"application/pdf"}],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":38819},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":722}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"Note: While going through a stack of texts I had written and published in magazines and journals since 1983, I discovered the attached previously unpublished text: \u0022Reflecting on the Future of Video\u0022 (1991). I was commissioned to write this text for an anthology on independent video by Rene Baert, a Montreal-based curator and editor. The anthology never materialized due to lack of funds. All writers were paid, but the texts were still-born. This text speculates on the future of video in the late nineties (today!). So in a way it is now a video history text. Since this is the video history list (vidhist channel) [a listserv established by the Experimental TV Center in 1997-1998 to assist with organization of Video History: Making Connections, a conference held at Syracuse University in October 1998 and the Video History Website], I thought it might interest some of you. The original context is a bit different (not NY state). It speculates on a video future in Canada, where \u0022video art\u0022 encompasses both art and socio-political tapes and of course funding is still relatively abundant--although this was written at the end of the second of two terrible recessions in a decade\u0027s span. It gets a bit desperate at the end. Partly this was meant to be humorous, but when you\u0027ve been freelancing for a number of years one\u0027s humor turns very black indeed. With this said I offer you its contents. I haven\u0027t changed a word... Tom Sherman, May 19, 1998 Department of Art Media Studies Syracuse University --------------- IT\u0027S COLD AT NIGHT It\u0027s after midnight on a cold winter\u0027s night in Ottawa, towards the end of 1991. The apartment is quiet except for traffic noise which drifts in from a distance through the open window in my studio. Both my loved ones cough periodically from their respective bedrooms. A lingering flu-bug takes away from their rest. I have a mirror in my studio and find some humour in watching myself grapple with the ideas in this developing text. I stare at a video-score pinned on the wall above my desk between these thoughts. I\u0027ve always blocked out the timing of tapes in drawings and diagrams before shooting and editing. The more video comes to resemble music in terms of composition and movement, it makes more and more sense to score it like music. I\u0027ve been at this video business for over twenty years now. Things have changed a lot since the early 70\u0027s--and yet nothing has really changed at all. Video as an art medium still has a tremendous, largely unrealized potential. Despite its continuing shortcomings, video is still the medium of choice of many artists. There are a lot more artists working with video today. There are hundreds, maybe over a thousand now. Tens of thousands of hours of video art have been recorded since we started using video to make art. We\u0027ve made a valiant, concerted effort to lay claim to a technological domain which has expanded beyond our wildest dreams. Video, the technology once rare, is common today. But the audience for video art hasn\u0027t grown dramatically. Video artists and their limited audience still make up a very small aspect of today\u0027s expanding video environment. Video art is a very small business sector when compared with the broader field of music video, instructional video, real estate video and all those things which are now called video--video movies and laser disks, home video, desk-top video, computer games, etc. If anything, video art makes up a smaller share of the total video environment today than it did in the days when the technology was truly a novelty. In fact, in the early seventies, when video art was a strange anomaly within and in parallel to the post-secondary educational system, artists seemed to be the only professionals who could make the medium live up to its then severely limited potential. I think of video as a technology, as an art form and as an environment in which I have worked and will continue to work. I am an optimist, believing as I do that video will continue to offer a more and more enlightened machine-enhanced perspective of the world we live in. I am frustrated by the current shortcomings of today\u0027s video reality while admitting that I am continually intoxicated by the medium\u0027s fantastic potential power. I have bonded with a particular machine for life and wish to continue to develop within this relationship. VIDEO IS A MACHINE Video as a technology is always changing, advancing. Professional technologists, the engineers, perceptual/behavioural psychologists, market analysts and designers determine the rate of change and the very nature (physical characteristics) of the machine itself. These professionals are paid to develop the technology of video by the shareholders of multi-national corporations. Profit motivates machine development. Machines can be developed only as quickly as the market will bear. The consumers have to adapt to the changing nature of the machines. Relationships have to be continuously upgraded. If the relationships between people and machines become meaningless and unsatisfying, there will be psychological and economic dysfunction. Artists are professional developers of the technologies they employ. As artists must gain access to video technology to make video, we become the quintessential \u0027prosumers\u0027. Artists team-up with engineers, perceptual/behavioural psychologists, market analysts and designers as professional technology developers. Artists find themselves in the ranks of those serving the interests of the stockholders of multinational corporations, continuing to develop the technologies for tomorrow\u0027s prosumers. As perceptual and social \u0027scientists\u0027 we employ ourselves not for the profit of the shareholders of the multi-nationals, but towards our own gains. While the contribution by artists is equal to, if not greater than that of other types of professionals on salary, we are not rewarded directly by the corporations financially. This is so because we insist on determining our own set of goals, methodologies of production and pace of development. In some cases we are way out ahead (artists are unrealistic in the demands they put on the technology) and sometimes we insist on applying the brakes (artists respond in a reactionary manner, insisting that the technology be used only as it has been in the past). Today video is a ubiquitous, arguably transparent technology. It is commonplace everywhere and offers the individual the virtual potential to be everywhere. While this virtual potential is alluring, offering a dream of electronic dissemination far exceeding reality-however unrealistic--video does encourage us to cross disciplinary boundaries, to work with others, to expand beyond ourselves. The video machines themselves are becoming more sophisticated. Today\u0027s machines are more demanding within our person/machine relationships. We all form relationships with the machines we use for \u0027reading and authoring\u0027 the world. It is possible to develop a social-psychology of person/machine relationships. Our relationships with our machines are changing. On the one hand they are easier to use. But as video and computers and laser technologies merge in the digital age we are forced to expand our perception of context. I here define context simply as the territory within which we must work. We once were able to think of our territory as a discrete system of video machines connecting us to an audience. This was the only real territory we had to work with. Video as a worksite is far more extensive today. The video domain now includes aspects of the media environment which video artists once considered peripheral to their video-biased scope of vision. In the strict definition of hardware, video is becoming peripheral to the digital computer. Video is now commonly defined as the input (camera) and output (monitor) peripherals of the digital processor. One day everyone\u0027s relationship with video will be a relationship with a video-computer. The idea of video as a peripheral is now part of a relationship artists share with the intelligent artifact itself, that external representation of our intelligence, the artificially intelligent computer. I sometimes think we live in a vast domain of integrated communications systems tied together in homage to the very concept of artificial intelligence. As the territory has become far more extensive and complex, we find that we have been marginalized as specialized artists who capture images with a video camera. IT\u0027S NEVER TOO LATE TO CHANGE Change is constant with all communications technologies. These technologies are never fully developed. There are no finished products. Technological development is a process driven by both those who design and use the gear. Video is an information machine, a communications device, an extension of our bodies, our societies and our reality. Video information is transformed by all those who use it. Video is worthless unless it is exchanged, or more importantly, used. Video is a manifestation of electric speed and power. Video is a vast source of memory. Video is seductive on both sides of the chip. The cameras and monitors and the processors in between are instruments for transforming the world within reach of our eyes and ears. ACCESS, ACCESS, ACCESS... Before I stroke the keys more towards a description of our common video domain, let me return to the predicament of artists working with video in the late 20th Century. Video artists face a set of problems universal to all contemporary artists, regardless of the media and technologies they choose to employ. These challenges can be summarized as the perpetual problems of access. These universal problems will dominate our future. Access means the availability of anything which will allow us to achieve our goals. Video artists need access to the time and financial resources necessary to make their art. Video artists need access to the technology itself. Video artists, like all other artists, need access to an audience. Access to these necessities must be earned and secured through a sustained intellectual, emotional and political struggle. The first challenge for any artist is to find a way to exist as an artist. How does one find a way to make a living without compromising one\u0027s ability to make art? This is of course a universal problem ad infinitum which remains fundamental to those having chosen the profession. Some way must be found to have the time to think clearly, to observe, to question the society at large. At issue is the quality of life itself. The rent or mortgage must be met, food must be put on the table, bills paid, means of transportation and communications secured, a community formed, friendships made and maintained, vices controlled, desires satisfied and love found. Psychoeconomic factors at the heart of the artist\u0027s day to day existence are even more important than cash economics. I use the notion of psychoeconomics to introduce concerns of quality of life from the perspective of the artist. Psychoeconomics is the study of how economic conditions affect the psychological state of the individual. This goes beyond whether or not the artist is worried about money or issues of class. Psychoeconomics are also based on the individual\u0027s ability to give and the capacity to be influenced by others. Artists have traditionally valued their independence beyond anything else. Independence is measured in degrees of freedom balanced against acceptable levels of responsibility and the absolute necessities of compromise. Artists are generous only when they have achieved a certain measure of security, which is attainable only if they have received recognition from those they respect. If we consider these general indicators of emotional and intellectual well-being within the context of a specific professional community, such as video artists, it is possible to predict a conformist behaviour in the video art field. Self esteem depends on maintaining a presence in that","offset":0,"nextOffset":12000,"totalCharacters":38819,"complete":false},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}