THE REAL IN VIDEO by DON FORESTA
In the present study, I would like to take a different direction: that of the subtle change in reality coming from the recording of this reality by electronic media. That is to say, we have a certain extension of the living once he/she is recorded and transmitted. Imagine, for instance, the performance of a musician in Los Angeles being recorded in holography, broadcasted live through laser and satellite to Paris where this very musician plays before a parisian crowd. Is he really there? Indeed, he is alive. By the same token, this representation of him could be considered artificial. Or both at the same time?
This ambiguity in the reality under study or placed on a higher level, is part of nature, exists in nature, at least the nature as we understand it at this stage of the evolution. We see it in the definition of light as a wave or particle. Science has solved the dispute concerning the nature of light at the end of the l9th century proving that light was both, wave and particle at the same time, and it will appear as either one, depending upon the kind of experiment used.
This observation has led Neils Rohr, who is an eminent physician and founder of the school of Copenhagen, to define the theory of complementarity which states that two opposing elements can coexist, not only in opposition but also in symbiosis. This contradiction is an integral part of reality, of nature. When Bohr received the knigthood from the King of Denmark, he chose the yin-yang of Orient as his armory which represents this very contradiction in human behavior.
The very well-known film director Shirley Clark said during a conference at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, that: we all know that it is impossible to put a volume in another volume, to put an object inside another one. "But, she went on, in video I can put my hand inside the other, and in real time. I see it, it must exist."
We were all disturbed by the first answering machines. Where was the real person? Now, being used to these machines and others, we very well know that we are talking with a real person, that we are really communicating, but that it is delayed in time.
Jacques Brel is dead but for a lot of people, when he is shown on TV, he is well alive. Has time simply become another dimension to be electronical]y manipulated? In my opinion, it is not. The interest of the examples cited here - the concert by hologram, the hands of Shirley Clark, the continuous life of Jacques Brel - shows the importance of the perception process.
The person or action that is perceived, Jacques Brel perceived alive by the viewer, is part of the process between the image of him on the tape and the viewer creating a different reality from that of Brel himself. This process is the same as those noticed in the definition of light. On the one hand, the process "A" including the observer "A", and the observation method "A" proving that light is composed of particles. On the other hand, the process "B" showing that light is also composed of waves. The subjectivity of the observer is a component of the definition.
These realities exist in the subjectivity of the observers. What is real becomes a lot less mechanical and induces the cybernetic process - the circuit between the observer, the observed with a well defined observation method, with the participation of the subjectivity of each other in the process.
It has already been proven that perception is not a mechanical process directly transmitting the image from the retina to the brain. Other parts of the brain contribute to the formation of the image adding for example elements of memory vis a vis the perceived object. We find ourselves more involved in the definition of what is real and what is artificial. In some instances, certain "real" things can be artificial and vice versa:. Relativity, that goes together with quantum physics in the scientific discoveries of this century, becomes also part of the definition of the real. According to Marcel Duchamp, a genius painter living unknown in the heart of Africa does not exist.
Therefore, all things would simultaneously include the possibility of being real or unreal depending on their relations with other things. We are here again led to the idea of complementarity of Neils Bohr, who summed it all up by saying that "there are two kinds of truths, the ordinary truths, the contrary of which is absurd, and the deep truths, the contrary of which are also deep truths".
Le Vivant et l'Artificie, Festival d'Avignon , Ed. Sgaffite.