“Videosphere” is a term coined by critic and theorist Gene Youngblood in the book Expanded Cinema (1979)

At the time of writing, Videosphere was a conceptualization of a new video enviornment influenced by the dominance of broadcast television as means of mass connectivity. As new video technologies infiltrated homes and industries, video would shape architecutral and metal space globally. Video colonizes real space with its live signal which turns all spaces into live and observable places. While we observe video we are simultaneously observed by a surveillance system of physical and virtual cameras existing within and around the interfaces of video screens. Wherever video occupies we ineivably appear on a screen somewhere else...

To represent this idea of the video environment of the Videosphere as a global surveillance space created by an infinite number of video devices, I assembled an installation of analog and digital video technology. The apparatus comprised of cathode ray and LCD monitors, digital projections, tablets, and a virtual reality headset provide individual sites of interactivity for audience members who become particpants in a performance with video. These sites of video as historical and interactive objects also made the Videosphere a labratory akin to the uses of panoptic surveillance (Foucault). The reason for this “Video Archeology Lab”  with different eras of technology was designed to show how the passage of electronic signals from one era to another reveals the purpose of video as an invisible medium meant to make all things totally observable. We become aware of a surveillance system by seeing ourselves in screens in the same enviornment that is simultaneously represented as video.

The spaces of physical and video signal are not truly seperate but indivisible as video has come to play an integral role as mass media and user interface. That the space outside and inside of video screens is equally observable.  Yet as an installation with overt channels of observation the shock of so many cables, cameras, and lit screens fades out as interactivity between the audience and their transmitted appearance erase fearfulness of this raw surveillance system. There is not even a point at which a human observer can see and not be seen in the classical sense of private surveillance. Instead what we get is video watching and appearing with/within in itself, waiting to be activated and observed. The Videosphere operates openly.

When first entering Videosphere, audiences are met with stacks of analog video monitors. Instead of centralized observation, the studio monitors are turned in differenct directions while security cameras watch the monitors. These old technologies provoke a sense of surprise and bewilderment upon seeing so many screens that are now obsolete but were once the dominant way of seeing information. But video image as a box is an “other” object that attracts viewers to see what exactly is on screen. What they got was the room it self on multiple closed-circuit feeds. Within monitor screens is the presence of the monitors. And when the audience aproaches the monitors, the vieweres themselves appear on one screen, then turn and see themselves elsewhere. A game begins where invidivuals try to figure out which cameras are connected to which monitors and what monitors are displayed. Knowing the locations of overt or open surveillance can be resolved by using one’s own body to activate screens. Interactions with self-image and the screen serve to help the viewer understand dislocated space.