Video Projection: The Evolution

Hi class, my name is Jay and I'm a third year, marketing major. My plan is to make it into the video game industry as a marketing field rep. Thus, I figure taking these digital arts classes will help me understand the industry better and how the people work in it. First impression of this class is that it seems complicated, but I'm going to trust Pat that if I can understand this first part, everything else will be smooth sailing, which brings me to discuss our first article reading.

First of all, I never knew video projection was considered an art form. I just thought of it as a way to make screens really big for large crowd-viewing purposes. I like how video projection contrasts with traditional art forms such as 2D displays on a canvas. The fact that the beauty of video projection lies in what you see and that it continually changes to tell a story as opposed to analyzing a still image. It's a lot more thrilling to say the least. However, video projection can also be very abstract as Gary Hill demonstrated through his piece, Tall Ships. I'd like to call it moving art just because it seems fitting. Today, art has branched out so far and I feel as if traditional art has lost its prominence, but video projection seems like a promising field in this generation.

It's funny how video projection started centuries ago with the Magic Lantern, and how it was basically used to troll people. The wikipedia article even states that Johann Georg Schröpfer tricked people by depicting spirits of revolutionary figures with the magic lantern mounted on a trolley. Maybe this is where the term, "trolling," comes from. Anyhow, it's just amazing how they came up with this device back in the 17th century and how it has progressed since then. Here is a picture: