There has been some discussion in the Guardian online on publishing video art on the Internet, in the article ‘Moving images stay in the dark - Why are video artists so reluctant to show their work on the internet?’ It is interesting to see that reputable institution like the Museum of Modern Art in New York has created a video channel on YouTube to publish video art trailers. Yet as the article points out there is not a lot of video art collections showing up online, instead most of the video art on YouTube is captured and posted by people attending exhibitions (via mobiles etc.) Although it is interesting to see what is happening with tank.tv in the UK via www.lux.org.uk and the luxonline project.

Back to the earlier Guardian article which discusses things like size restriction (working in the miniature), quality and of course the ability for the viewer to scroll back and forth. In terms of YouTube having frame size, file type and therefore compression quality control of your video uploads this does not leave much room for individual aesthetic input from the artist. I see this as setting publishing standards, a referral to old media like TV broadcasting. A video sharing site like blip.tv at least lets you chose some file types, determine frame size and choose a creative commons license. Also there is some key differences in the terms of use in regards to copyright and intellectual property. But this type of flexiability could be taken a lot further. I discuss the notion of standards in more detail here on my blog. The idea that apple also like YouTube aims to gain some form of control over the way content is distributed often in a manner that Nicholas Carr points out as being unsympathetic towards what the Internet offers as a networked environment.

The question here is whether artists, (like YouTube or even Apple with video podcasts) should be thinking of the Internet as a place to reproduce video in a single-channel form (or in the way that it was originally designed for off the web, i.e live etc.)? This approach is emblematic of most television, cinema or even a lot of video art. Perhaps it is more about how video may be repurposed within this environment. I notice on the MOMA YouTube channel that the closest they can come to this, is a lame form of trailer, again a direct referral to cinema.

In this other Guardian article ‘Bringing video art online’ video art as a commodity, along with copyright issues is seen as restricting factors. Although, the writer points out that painting and sculpture has got past this barrier quite some time ago.