Time-based Media | DMA Staging Content Management System

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

The term 'time-based media' refers generally to moving images, audio, or video works that have duration and unfold gradually over time. Time-based media might not employ the use of actors, may contain no dialogue, may have no discernible narrative or plot, or adhere to any of the other conventions that generally define motion pictures as entertainment. On the other hand, some video art is inextricably linked to news or TV footage, operating through appropriation and pastiche to examine the role and power of popular media.

The moving image reflects our zeitgeist. Whether in films, television, or across the computer screen, moving images affect not only how we have come to experience time and space but also how we see ourselves and others. In 1965, with the introduction of the Sony Portapak, a portable video camera, the medium of video became an expressive tool for artists (particularly in the hands of nontraditionalists such as Nam June Paik) as well as "the most relevant visual art form in contemporary life," according to Bill Viola, one of the progenitors of video art. The move toward video art during the sixties deconstructed the notion of art as a highbrow commodity, often indecipherable and accessible only to the wealthy. Rather, with video and other time-based media, art defies commoditization and can become an immersive experience. Video art is often in dialogue with the kinds of narratives that inform our everyday lives, as well as a potential tool for social critique and change. However, time-based media have also been important in furthering conceptual dialogues surrounding the nature of truth and reality, as the 2017 Dallas Museum of Art exhibition Truth: 24 frames per second explored.

The authenticity and truthfulness of lens-based media have long been open to contestation and debate. In 1878 Eadward Muybridge successfully captured the stride of a galloping horse. The results were widely publicized, and he spent the ensuing years improving his technique, photographing men and women performing everyday chores. Muybridge's intention was to faithfully capture human locomotion. However, critics were quick to point out that his images—though real—were somehow untrustworthy. The photographs documented something the human eye was unable to see. The question then arose, which is truer, the image depicting things as they are, or the way we believe them to happen? This is a recurring question of time-based media. Artists' manipulation of our innate distrust of recorded video and audio (despite its seeming veracity) awakens a certain questioning in us of what is real and what is unreal, what is true and what is false.

Although the Dallas Museum of Art did not begin collecting video in its incubation as an artistic form, it has in only a few years (beginning in 1998) created a time-based media collection that is both critically significant and popular with visitors. It is a rich, varied collection, including single-channel videos and films that can be played on a monitor or projected, as well as video-sound installations that demand one or more galleries. The ideas, strategies, and practices explored by the different artists are challenging and thought-provoking.

Chloë Courtney, Digital Collections Content Coordinator, 2018

Drawn from

Suzanne Weaver, "New Media at the Dallas Museum of Art," in Dallas Museum of Art, 100 Years , ed. Dorothy M. Kosinski (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 2003), Pamphlet number 79.
Gavin Delahunty, "Reality within a frame," in Truth: 24 frames per second, ed. Gavin Delahunty and Kelly Filreis (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 2017), 10-19.
Excerpt from "Contemporary Art Docent Guide." File on TAZ.
"Time-based Media," Conservation, The Guggenheim Museum, accessed June 7, 2018, https://www.guggenheim.org/conservation/time-based-media.
"About Contemporary Art," Who's Afraid of Contemporary Art?, The J. Paul Getty Museum, accessed June 7, 2018, http://www.getty.edu/education/teachers/classroom_resources/curricula/contemporary_art/background1.html.

NOTES

1998.190.A-P

Review UMO

Below: jeelan's notes which were left in this draft. I decided to take the note in a different direction due to time constraints. -CLC

-Moving image - technological shifts, technology and aesthetics (e.g. slow motion)

-Remediation

Televisual

in sculptural installations, in performance; also documentation of performance to documentation becoming work of art
1960s - Nam June Paik (video), Sony portable camera
Conceptual art - self referentiality (self and others, self and world); ideas and images: real time (instead of edited), closed circuit, multi monitor installations
Gerry Schum - Gallery on TV
1970s - USA and Europe, video as autonomous form; Bill Viola - advanced production techniques, move away from self referential practices of Conceptual art
1980s - developed context of production, exhibition, criticism

Cinematic

experimental film - analysis and extension of medium, including technology, subject matter, formal and aesthetic ideas
Futurism (lost), Dadaism (Leger Ballet mecanique; Duchamp Anemic Cinema), Surrealism (Dali Un chien Andalou) - relationship between kinetic sculpture and installation (Duchamp, Moholy-Nagy)
1930s - Fascism - decline of experimental film in Europe
Post WWII - US as center for experimental film (expats from Europe, Russia, etc.)
Late 1950s - early 60s - "underground film" tied to Beat movement, cultural and political radicalism (e.g. Bruce Conner); 1950s also underground movement in France
Fluxus movement - "anti-film" - Nam June Paik Zen for Film
Warhol- real time Sleep (1963), Empire (1964) - major influence in structural film (also formal film/materialist film) that emerged 1970s; structural film - questioned physical nature of film, arbitrary codes of representation (Michael Snow Wavelength) - influence on Phil Collins, Yinka Shonibare
1970s - feminist film theory (Yvonne Rainer)
1980s - eclecticism
animation remained strong throughout decades - from 1960s on, computer became arena for experimentation

ASSOCIATED CONTENT CHUNKS (list applicable note links)

Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art

Willie Doherty, _Ghost Story_

From Object to Image: Sculpture, Installation, Media

Concentrations: Exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Art

The Territories of Art

AUDIO ASSETS

Lecture: Rewind: Video Art's Kinetic Histories

13315173: UMO

Lecture: Early Video, Performance, and the Conceptual Body

13315125: UMO

VIDEO ASSETS

IMAGE ASSETS

This is should be removed since it's the object and there's a conflict with display. JGB will either find appropriate illustration or leave without image.

Removed

WEB RESOURCES

Oxford Bibliographies~Explore recent publications dealing with time-based media and new media art.
Tate~Learn more about time-based media in the sixties.

ARCHIVAL RESOURCES

FUN FACTS

TEACHING IDEAS

RULES

apply to objects where classification_name equals time based media

apply to content where content contains time based

General Description

The term 'time-based media' refers generally to moving images, audio, or video works that have duration and unfold gradually over time. Time-based media might not employ the use of actors, may contain no dialogue, may have no discernible narrative or plot, or adhere to any of the other conventions that generally define motion pictures as entertainment. On the other hand, some video art is inextricably linked to news or TV footage, operating through appropriation and pastiche to examine the role and power of popular media.

The moving image reflects our zeitgeist. Whether in films, television, or across the computer screen, moving images affect not only how we have come to experience time and space but also how we see ourselves and others. In 1965, with the introduction of the Sony Portapak, a portable video camera, the medium of video became an expressive tool for artists (particularly in the hands of nontraditionalists such as Nam June Paik) as well as "the most relevant visual art form in contemporary life," according to Bill Viola, one of the progenitors of video art. The move toward video art during the sixties deconstructed the notion of art as a highbrow commodity, often indecipherable and accessible only to the wealthy. Rather, with video and other time-based media, art defies commoditization and can become an immersive experience. Video art is often in dialogue with the kinds of narratives that inform our everyday lives, as well as a potential tool for social critique and change. However, time-based media have also been important in furthering conceptual dialogues surrounding the nature of truth and reality, as the 2017 Dallas Museum of Art exhibition Truth: 24 frames per second explored.

The authenticity and truthfulness of lens-based media have long been open to contestation and debate. In 1878 Eadward Muybridge successfully captured the stride of a galloping horse. The results were widely publicized, and he spent the ensuing years improving his technique, photographing men and women performing everyday chores. Muybridge's intention was to faithfully capture human locomotion. However, critics were quick to point out that his images—though real—were somehow untrustworthy. The photographs documented something the human eye was unable to see. The question then arose, which is truer, the image depicting things as they are, or the way we believe them to happen? This is a recurring question of time-based media. Artists' manipulation of our innate distrust of recorded video and audio (despite its seeming veracity) awakens a certain questioning in us of what is real and what is unreal, what is true and what is false.

Although the Dallas Museum of Art did not begin collecting video in its incubation as an artistic form, it has in only a few years (beginning in 1998) created a time-based media collection that is both critically significant and popular with visitors. It is a rich, varied collection, including single-channel videos and films that can be played on a monitor or projected, as well as video-sound installations that demand one or more galleries. The ideas, strategies, and practices explored by the different artists are challenging and thought-provoking.

Chloë Courtney, Digital Collections Content Coordinator, 2018

Drawn from

Suzanne Weaver, "New Media at the Dallas Museum of Art," in Dallas Museum of Art, 100 Years , ed. Dorothy M. Kosinski (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 2003), Pamphlet number 79.
Gavin Delahunty, "Reality within a frame," in Truth: 24 frames per second, ed. Gavin Delahunty and Kelly Filreis (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 2017), 10-19.
Excerpt from "Contemporary Art Docent Guide." File on TAZ.
"Time-based Media," Conservation, The Guggenheim Museum, accessed June 7, 2018, https://www.guggenheim.org/conservation/time-based-media.
"About Contemporary Art," Who's Afraid of Contemporary Art?, The J. Paul Getty Museum, accessed June 7, 2018, http://www.getty.edu/education/teachers/classroom_resources/curricula/contemporary_art/background1.html.

Fun Facts

Archival Resources

Web Resources

Oxford Bibliographies~Explore recent publications dealing with time-based media and new media art.
Tate~Learn more about time-based media in the sixties.

Notes