Week 10 (1st September 2017): Video Art and Commercials (Advertisements)

Week 10: 1st September 2017
                                 Video Art                                                                Commercials

Definitions 


 Video Art:-Video art is an art form which relies on moving pictures in a visual and audio medium. Video art came into existence during the late 1960s and early 1970s as new consumer video technology became available outside corporate broadcasting. Video art can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast; installations viewed in galleries or museums; works streamed online, distributed as video tapes, or DVDs; and performances which may incorporate one or more television sets, video monitors, and projections, displaying ‘live’ or recorded images and sounds



 Commercials (Advertisements):-Commercials are a form of advertising in which goods, services, organizations, ideas, etc. are promoted via the medium of television. Most commercials are produced by an outside ad agency, and airtime is purchased from a channel or network in exchange for sponsorship of its programming.


Examples of Video Art 

1.Sun in Your Head by Wolf Vostell (1963) 
 
Vostell, like a lot of video art pioneers, came from performance and installation movements, including Fluxus. His is possibly the single earliest work of video art on YouTube, and among the earliest works in the genre ever. Link to video:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJcOQ5FAlGw

2. I Couldn’t Agree with You More by Pipilotti Rist (1999)
 
While in the more recent past, Rist has been known for her room-size projections of organic blobs, which she hoped would massage the world’s eyeballs, in the past, the Swiss artist tried her hand at more intimate, humanistic ways of looking at the world. Link to video:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3DSvija2pc 

3.Pinch Neck by Bruce Nauman (1968)
 
Part of what video art made possible was the intimate observation of human activity. In much of Nauman’s work, watching that activity closely — even if it was banal — has been a exceedingly rich source of meaning and drama. Link to video:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkfOgavdhak

4.Sonne statt Reagan by Joseph Beuys (1982) 
 
Performance art messiah Joseph Beuys was not uninterested in politics. He actually ran for a seat in the German parliament as a Green Party candidate. For Sonne statt Reagan (a play on regen, the German word for rain) he and his fellow musicians made a cheerful call for nuclear disarmament, with the lyrics: “Sun! Instead of Reagan, to live without weapons! Whether West, whether East, let missiles rust!”  Link to video:-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ1_ALxGbGk

5.Telephones by Christian Marclay (1995) 
 
The most famous work of video art in the world right now is Marclay’s The Clock (2010), a montage of recognizable moments from TV and movies that feature clocks or watches, which Marclay and his assistants pasted together to create a fairly accurate timepiece that could run continuously for 24 hours. Many historians have read Telephones as a harbinger of this kind of a supercut tribute to the history of cinema. Link to video:-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MMfgRg53SU



Examples of Commercials

1."Pass The Heinz" by Heinz 
  
Heinz finally approved this ketchup-less ad campaign 50 years after Don Draper first fictionally pitched it on Mad Men (and four years after the episode aired on AMC). A delightful bit of defictionalization, the work ran as print and outdoor ads in New York City. 

2."Breaking 2" by Nike
 
 Nike’s remarkable effort to break the two-hour marathon barrier had echoes of Red Bull Stratos—a marketer applying its carpe-diem message to a real-world challenge that tests the limits of human potential. Link to commercial:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm37fUTvovc

3."Google home of the Whopper" by Burger King 
 
It’s been a strong year for Burger King advertising, and this was its most audacious gambit—a TV spot that intentionally got people’s Google Home devices to unexpectedly start yapping about the Whopper. Invasive? Sure. But BK was thrilled with the one-time stunt, which was a major PR coup.
Link to commercial:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUj8SUoJ-ZM

4.“The Truth Is Hard to Find” by The New York Times
 
In a year of mighty political upheaval, the Times used a remarkable series of ads to urge consumers to value, and pay for, the truth that journalism uncovers. The most viscerally compelling were the Darren Aronofsky spots with Times photojournalists narrating harrowing true stories, punctuated by their cameras’ shutter sounds. Link to commercial:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs4-rb0f7HI

5.“The Journey” by 84 Lumber
 
The best ad of this year’s Super Bowl, “The Journey” was a beautiful and provocative take on immigration, with 84 Lumber workers building a door in Trump’s border wall to let in an immigrant family from Mexico. A home run on the biggest stage from a smaller agency and an all-but-unknown marketer. Link to commercial:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPo2B-vjZ28