Videoscapes

The videoscape We can distinguish three levels of videoscapes, that all involve their own level of awareness. First there is the found environment, consisting of representations created by continuous, natural, human and animal forces. Apart from this found videoscape, there is the domain of 'primitive' visual culture, consisting of signifiers and other (more) discrete elements that we navigate on autopilot, governed by the flow of our everyday life. These are the houses we live in, the fabrics we work in and the highways we drive on, in short all the environments humans purposefully created to move around in in our everyday life. Finally there is the imaginary videoscape, the staged environment of make believe, the vista of television, tabloids and the virtual worlds. But these scapes are not only the sites where one can trigger the sensation of experiencing a particular environment, but also the place where artists can create a new, visual ecology that gives (playful) feedback on the genres, conventions and beliefs that control the spectator. This third scape is the landscape I explore in the ongoing series Videoscapes. Formed as an analogy on landscape, the videoscape here signifies the environment or architecture that is not created out of science or functionality, but as an experience of sound and video. It is a research of madness and reason, discontinuities and flows, inconsistencies and order, flaws and functionality and paradoxes and consistency. These videoscape are part of the domain of the feedback ecology; they focus on new ways of seeing - with little preconceived understanding - and subsequently on theorizing the human thinking about technology. The feedback within these videoscape thus creates an opportunity for self reflexivity, self critique and self expression. ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒