In 2001, Wodiczko projected the faces of women on the surface of an Omnimax Theater in Tijuana. In his work, he confronts the viewer with his large scale projection, as well as gives a voice to the female workers of the city of Tijuana.
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In Serra's 1973 piece, Television Delivers People, the video is scrolling text, on a television screen, telling the viewer of their own consumption, that they have been tricked by mass media, and that every action taken by society at large is a result of the television. The message also states that television is driven by image, which drives the viewer, yet there is no image in his piece. It is also a longer piece which is meant to be watched in its entirety.
In Two Consciousness Projection (1973), Dan Graham has begun to explore the active viewer vs. the passive viewer. Two people are asked to speak about the other while being videotaped in front of an audience. Their faces are projected on live video screens. While one speaks of the other, the other's reaction is shown, and vice-versa. They create the performance, while simultaneously view the performance (Goldberg 162).
Like Stan Brakhage had done with the medium of film, The Vasulkas began to manipulate the form of video in Calligrams. During the transmission of the recorded video, they would manipulated the image with different tools, creating abstract shapes, and distorting the sounds being received. The tools they used to create the effects they wanted were: The Field Flip-Flop Switcher (1971), the Dual Colorizer (1972), the Multikeyer (1973), the Programmer (1974), and the Rutt/Etra Scan Processor (1974).
In his piece, Claim, Acconci sits in the basement of a gallery, blindfolded with a crowbar, while he is being recorded on a live feed to the gallery above. He recites, "I don't want anybody to come down here, I want to believe this, I have to believe this." He must defend the space and himself, while at the same time, he cannot, as his eyes are obstructed. Like Abramovic and John Cage, he places the piece in the viewers' hands.
The Paik-Abe Synthesizer was built in 1969 and named after Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe. It was a self-contained unit and it allowed the user to add color to a monochrome video image, and distort the image (Meigh-Andrews 116).
The Portapak was introduced by Sony in 1967. "The first Portapaks were entirely in the hands of the military and they were used basically to check where their napalm or bombs had gone. Like virtually everything in our society, the driving force is actually conquest" (Meigh-Andrews (61). However, the Portapak made video art available to the masses, placing it directly in the hands of the artist (9). Namely artists working against pop culture and mass media. A growing number of homes had televisions in them, and what was being viewed on the television was being filtered. The artists could now choose what was being recorded and projected, as well as manipulate that transmission. Significant events that were broadcast, such as Abraham Zapruder's recording of the Kennedy Assassination in 1963 demonstrated the power of what a camera could record.
The Fluxus movement was interested in the exchange of information and making that information accessible to all, however, the movement was also interested in redefining art, like its predecessors, the Futurists and Dadaists. George Macuinas wrote the "Fluxus Manifesto" in 1963, defining the term "Fluxus," which resulted in "the cadres of cultural, social, and political revolutionaries into united front and action." Fluxus artists include John Cage and Nam June Paik.
