Videosphere: A term coined by critic and theorist Gene Youngblood (Expanded Cinema, 1979) for describing the new video enviornment due to the mass connectivity of events through broadcast television.This new enviornment will be expanded further by future forms of video technology will infiltrate homes and industires causing video to reshape architectural and global mental space.



Today video still colonizes real space as a live signal. All spaces in which video is present become live places contaning events and actions. Television, Computers, Tablets, Smartphones, Cars, and Appliances all have video embedded in them. As we observe and interact with video we are simultaneously observed by machines. All around us are physical and virtual video surveillance cameras which are within and around the interface of video screens. Video’s technical purpose is to make things appear on screen and the conglomeration of installed and mobile video devices expands video applied purpose which is make the world totally surveiled. Wherever video occupies us we ineivtably appear on a screen somewhere else...

To address the physical presence and occupation with video technologies I created my own VIDEOSPHERE, as a site- specific installation with multiple assemblages of video camera and monitor circuits. Each assemblage was an exhibited site in what I considered to be a Video Archaeological Lab, that demonstrated the dynamics of video surveillance by observing audience participation and interactive performance.  We become aware of a surveillance system by seeing ourselves in screens in the same enviornment that is simultaneously represented as video. The installation featured analog and digital video technologies such as: CRT monitors, LCD monitors, CCTV cameras, camcorders, digital projections, tablets, and a virtual reality headset.

This“Video Archeology Lab”  contained different eras of technology is becasuse the passage of electronic signals from one era to another reveals how video past and present is a contunuation for expanding surveillance over many iterations. 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 no 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 a viewer first entered VIDEOSPHERE, they see stacks of analog video monitors. These studio monitors represent a disassembled security video system. 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.

Meant to signify surveillance done with personal devices. The model is equiped with two iPads. The iPad strapped to an arm is pointed at an LCD monitor which recieves a distant hall view from a camera positioned on the opposite end, picking up passing car traffic outside the exhibition windows.

A live camcorder display was wired to a short throw projector. The result is a feedback loop where interactors who stand in front of the camcorder see their backside but cast no shadow. Viewers are the opposite of the screen can see people facing away and toward the camcorder unseen, except when they step forward and cast shadow from the projected light. The set up harkens to the closed participation of early television programming. Both physical bodies and shadows create afterimages resulting in two kinds of feedback and interaction across two rooms.

Hidden behind the white sheet used for and black plastic strips, the White Partition room hosted the VR (Virtual Reality) version of a Videosphere. This virtual experience was viewable on an HTC Vive headset and a large flatscreen monitor whose media source was a Windows PC running a UNITY build. The virtual experience is yet another surveillance space that recieves camera feeds not seen on physical monitors. 3D objects were programmed to become surfaces for webcams located in the exhibition. My reason for including VR is because it is video based.