Video as a function of reality. 1 If we are to avoid the problem of creating a visual system that will reduce the capacity of the eye, it is necessary to disassociate the video camera from the eye and make it an extension of the room. Instead of limiting the amount of visual information coming to the eye-brain by replacing the natural field of vision with an abstracted one, it is possible to include the video information in the viewer's field of vision, increasing the potential of the visual situation. The video camera makes possible an exterior point of view sim- ultaneous with one’s own. This advance over the film camera is due to the videcon tube, similar to the retina of the eye, continuously trans- posing light (photon) energy to electrical energy. 2. The monitor is an object sitting rigidly in space. This allows the viewer to locate the monitor in space relative to him/her. Compare this to a movie theatre where every effort is made to erase one’s ability to locate the screen in the viewer's space, containing all possibilities for central (foveal) eye movements. In a video monitor situation, cen- tral eye movements tend to move off the surface of the screen, locating the screen and relating the screen to the room By locating the monitor in space, the viewer has the option of identifying with the monitor and seeing all image movement as moving through it or identifying with the image movement and thereby losing his/her illusion of stasis. It is easy to utilize video to clarify perceptual situations because it separates the eye surrogate from the eye-brain experience we are all too familiar with. Scalar clues become obvious. Visual movement separated from eye muscle, head and body movement information allows us to see things we thought static to move freely past our field of view. A simultaneous comparison makes it even more evident. If the material on the monitor screen is recorded material (that is emanating from some past moment and of finite duration), it may be considered as subtractive. But this information, negatively located in space-time, is as relevent as any simultaneous situation, and the outer associations are as interesting With closed circuit video, duration is reduced to a point (the world point of the Minkowsky universe) and the viewer is presented with a simultaneous point of view contained within his/her surrounding space.3. The reconversion from electrical to light energy that takes place in a video monitor may further be focused on a wall or screen by means of a video projector. This change is quite dramatic, ac- companied not only by increased size, but also by a loss of detail and a loss of illusion of depth. The viewer is generally unable to make scalar distinctions, That is: an enlarged object does not surprise, even though one would perceptually expect the object to be much closer Although the image is easy to locate in the context of the room, central eye movements may be contained within the screen sector, allowing the eye-brain to lose its bearings. 4 A further development of the video space - viewer's space situa- tion occurs when the camera is turned on the viewer and the resulting image projected in front of him/her. Because we are conditioned to a reversed mirror image we are constantly surprised when the direct video image is presented. Any asymmetric movement causes loss of identification with the projected self-image. The answer to this is only apparent when the viewer becomes aware of the whole mechanism: the camera-projector-screen-viewer. He/She must be aware of the relative position of the camera to under- stand the image. Thus this abstraction, presented simultaneously with reality, forms for the viewer a durational perception rooted in observation and leading to a higher order of reality. 5 | have been dealing here with a simultaneous or, more exactly, a nearly simultaneous image. (Nearly simultaneous because there is some time loss but it is of the order of the speed of light, the speed of electrons or the speed of neural impulses and therefore imperceptible to human consciousness. In a closed-circuit video situation one is no longer dealing with images of a temporally finite nature. The duration of the image becomes a property of the room. Peter Campus January, 1974