Olivia+Idris

















Judith Leyster Self-Portrait c.1630



media type="youtube" key="Mh9kQaJVgUE" width="560" height="315" **Krauss** Krauss’ thesis would be that videos are a narcissistic form of art because it gives the artist more control over what the viewers see and experience, and the artists’ ideas often influence what they choose to film, and how they choose to display it. Krauss speaks in depth about the reflective aspect of the video. She listed numerous examples of artists that made themselves the focus of the video, and she categorized these pieces of art as more self-interested than others.

If Krauss was writing this today, I believe that she would find that her ideas were largely correct. There has been an overwhelmingly large shift towards videography over the last few years. With the invention of technology like GoPro, people have started filming themselves doing even some of the most mundane activities, and calling it art. While cameras like this do have the potential to provide great footage of interesting events, some use it for taking a video of what they had for breakfast this morning. Furthermore, the new selfie sticks have made taking videos of yourself so much easier. While they have just become popularized, I am sure that they will have an influence on video art in the future. The popular app Vine also contributed to the continuation of narcissistic videos. Vine gives anyone with a smart phone the ability to take short video clips and instantly have them coalesce into about a 15 second long video. The most popular vines tend to be those of vine celebrities. By this I do not mean Hollywood celebrities who have started taking videos of themselves flying in airplanes, but rather the ordinary people who have taken to either making short comedic videos of themselves, or making serious videos with themselves as the focus. Vine has allowed a large amount of self proclaimed artists to take videos, and make themselves the focus of it.

Krauss’s thesis might defer slightly when applied to today because I have rarely seen videos that focus on the reflection of an individual, that being figuratively or literally. Most amateur videos, sundance films, and artistic videos tend to focus on a different subject matter. I often find that videos now are trying more to show the viewers something they have not thought of before by showing clips of that thing actually happening, rather than abstractedly trying to connect that idea to a video of the artist himself. While one could say that it is imposible for an artist to make a video without being narcissistic, or totally influencing the way the viewers experience the footage being displayed, I believe that videos today are slightly less narcissistic than they were in the past. Whether this is because video technology has been around for many years now, and people do not feel the need to put themselves at the center of attention, or if the expectations of a video have changed, videos today focus more on others than on the artist himself.

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