Calling Nam Jun Paik a video art pioneer would be too narrow to describe his impact. In exploding the idea of what television and television processing could be in his art, he helped create a conceptual revolution that cleared the path for today’s ubiquitous and always-dynamic screens. But to really understand that work, you might want to delve into the theory of cybernetics, for the same reasons that can help understand early, radical electronic music and the path we’re on today.

Rhizome has a lovely essay by Carolyn Kane, framed by a new gallery show in New York. That show should be a pilgrimage for ardent Paikists. With animal-machine hybrids and screens everywhere, this is the cybernetic thought process made manifest, just at a time when we’re finding new insight into our relationship with technology as it becomes mobile.

As a Buddha gazes into a screen, visualists can contemplate being the screens on which they project. As Kane writes:

Paik is well known for transforming the architectural function of the television set from a mere box to an element distributed in space. However, these interventions must also be contextualized with his ongoing interest in cybernetics, a theory of animals and machines in their environment. In 1971 Paik asserted that today, the “nature of [the] environment is much more on TV than on film or painting. In fact, TV (its random movement of tiny electrons) is the environment.”

Maybe it’s time for some new visualist manifestos.

The Cybernetic Pioneer of Video Art: Nam June Paik [Rhizome]

DRM on displays and projectors? Believe it. Apple, like many computer vendors, has added DRM to its new laptops in the form of HDCP (which, bizarrely, stands for “High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection”). This is doubly odd, because Apple cited technical restrictions of Blu-Ray as a reason for not including those drives on their machines – only to turn around and add restrictions to their own content on the iTunes store.

It might not be worth mentioning at all, but it serves to demonstrate yet another disconnect between vendors and the way people actually use video output features on laptops. You might think that you could connect a flat-panel computer display or projector to your new, pricey MacBook, and watch a show or movie you bought from iTunes, right? No can do. But that’s the reality: a lot of people aren’t hooking up video out to an HD TV. Heck, some of us still have old, tube TVs – only to discover a lot of laptops (not just Apple’s) no longer include a dedicated TV out.

Think A/V artists, visualists, and VJs can’t get work? Don’t tell that to superstar production team Addictive TV. They’ve been proving that you really don’t need a trailer for a film any more – just hire a VJ. It started when they created a web viral for the movie Take the Lead, and they went on to remix the Olympics

Now, the only problem is, I think you might actually need a VJ for the entire film to make a movie based on a computer game that isn’t crap. (Maybe Max Payne will be The One … even if it does come eons after anyone was playing Max Payne.) But for a couple of minutes, they can certainly make Max Payne cool; whether that sustains an entire cinematic evening I leave to Mark Wahlberg and the production team.

Even cooler, however: remixing Kristin Scott-Thomas and the music of Cole Porter (top). Cole, I’m sure, would approve, as would Kristin’s Greatest Fan, Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson. (I wish I could remember some lewd comment he made about Kristin, but then, this is a Family Site.)

Best of all? Watch them both at the same time. (Get someone to hold open your eyelids for a full-blown Clockwork Orange-style viewing party. Thanks, Brian Kane.)

It’s good stuff. And things are beginning to align – MGM is posting full films on YouTube, though not necessarily under a remix-friendly license (the usual copyright protections apply).

But could people soon be grabbing popcorn and really watching live cinema? Could VJs replace trailers with the same, generic booming sound effects and some dude saying meaningless lines like “Sometimes, the only way home is to start over again.”

Yeah. I think so. History is on our side, people.

More on Addictive TV:

Addictive TV @ MySpace

addictive.tv

Create Digital Motion interview: Addictive Remix Olympics Live

CNN Hologram - Behind the Scenes video

Just in case you haven’t seen it yet on, I imagine, zillions of other blogs, here’s how CNN used “holograms” to “beam in” remote correspondents on Election Night. The short answer: green screens and a whole bunch of computer-controlled cameras, for some real-time “Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope” action. It continues CNN’s apparent campaign to be the TV network most like sci fi movies. (Hello, Minority Report-style gestural screens!)

Of course, it’s notable for some other reasons – somewhat silly reasons:

• It’s probably the only time someone intentionally added blue fringing to a chroma key effect. Yep, that’s right: the blue halo around the participants had to be added intentionally to emphasize what they were doing, even though fringing is usually what you try to avoid.
• It’s mixing sci fi metaphors like no tomorrow. Princess Leia? Beam me up? Holograms? What? “Cap’n, Scott here! I cannu keep the Death Star from blowing up! These damn Cylons!”
• It’s probably the most inaccurate use of the word “hologram” ever. It’s a chroma key effect. The whole point is, it’s the first 3D key effect I’ve seen in real-time on TV – as far as I know – but keying sure isn’t that exciting if you’ve been watching the weather in the last half century. So they add the word “hologram.” They might as well have called it the “Holodeck” or “transporters” or just “magic.”

Technologically, though, it is very impressive. The real irony here isn’t that CNN used silly magical terminology and played terrifying drum sounds. (During the course of the evening, they had other sound effects that sounded like Nintendo platformer power-ups and massive explosions, as though Obama had just attacked North Carolina with an alien invasion.)

No, the real irony is that this impressive, expressive technology winds up becoming yet another way of doing boring talking heads. I can’t wait to see what happens when someone comes up with a more interesting use for this stuff. Stay tuned.

Create Digital Emotion, perhaps?

Beam me up, Wolf! CNN debuts election-night ‘hologram’

So, you’ve got a shiny new MacBook / MacBook Pro — or any number of newer PC notebooks — and suddenly you realize you have no analog video output. Sure, you might be happy to output to VGA/DVI or even HDMI when you can, but for those Special Moments when that isn’t possible and you need to go a bit oldschool, you need a solution. Short of a pricey scan converter (see extended discussion on our last post on this topic), what to do?

There’s been plenty of discussion about these questions over on the Apple support forums:

Mini DisplayPort to Composite/ S-Video??

One possible solution on Amazon with some nice reviews behind it that some folks there are trying:
VideoSecu PC to TV Presentation Converter VGA2TV 1L7

Apple forum poster Lougle has posted an extensive hands-on review of the PC to Video EZ product here. Lougle gave us permission to republish here. (Warning: if you’re offended by graphic imagery of various dongles, adapters, and additional cables protruding from the pristine aluminum industrial design of Apple’s stylish new laptop, you may want to shield your eyes.)

I, and many others, have been looking for a way to output video (composite and s-video) from the NEW Macbooks and MacBook Pro’s sporting the Mini DisplayPort since Apple as yet to release such adapter. I use my computer to output video (s-video) for digital slide shows and presentations. If our new aluminum MacBook could not meet this requirement back to the store it would go.

While searching the web for a adapter, converter or whatever could help get video out of the new MacBook I quickly learned ($10 later) that a simple VGA to s-video cable would not work.

NO GOOD!

I soon came across the PC to Video EZ. It is sold at several online retailers but I finaly decided to buy it from NewEgg.com (links at bottom of post). NewEgg is retailer I knew I could trust and get fast shipping from. I ordered the converter box on Friday and it arrived today (Monday) with standard shipping!

Bottom line, the PC to Video EZ from GrandTec outputs video (both composite and s-video) at equal quality to Apple’s own video adapters used on previous (pre-DisplayPort) computers. I, owning a MacBook Pro with DVI to video adapter, could not tell the difference.

The device itself is small. It is nothing you would complain about carrying around and it gets the job done.

PC to Video EZ from GrandTec