onCRT

on cathode-ray tube

The three essential theoretical foundations which underlie the philosophy of cathode-ray tube are:

1. cathode-ray tube: is an attempt on the part of the digital video artist to reconnect with his environment (i.e. people, animals, plants, & inanimate objects) through the medium of television, thereby freeing himself (& hopefully his audience) from the "cliché of alienation"1 in which our inaccurate perception of the postmodern age has imprisoned us. For in this freeing we will be helping to facilitate a more accurate perception of the postmodern age in which we live, an age in which Jean Baudrillard says that “we are no longer in the drama of alienation, [but] are in the ecstasy of communication.”

2. cathode-ray tube: is an attempt on the part of the digital video artist to bring art (in the fullest sense of the word) to the medium of television. A medium which has been blocked from "serious conceptual study"1 and as a result now faces "an artistic triviality as profound as its social impact.”1

3. cathode-ray tube: is an attempt on the part of the digital video artist to exploit the inherent aesthetic characteristics & potentials of the medium of television. Some examples of these aesthetic characteristics & potentials would be the fact that: “television represents the ultimate instrument with which to express [a] reverence for the now” thus allowing us to explore and learn to cope with the “experiential complexities of the now”2; and that when ordinary events are videotaped and shown on a television they “reflect life in a state of becoming, and when done with seriousness, integrity and love, they manage quite frequently to elevate the ordinary moment to a significant statement about human dignity and joy.2”

(1)

Quotes taken from: "The Form and Sense of Video", Artscanada: The Issue of Video Art, (Vol. XXX, No. 4, October 1973) by Robert Arn

(2)

Quotes taken from: “Television Aesthetics” (1981) by Herbert Zettl Published in Understanding Television Edited by Richard P. Adler