ART CHANNEL - TELEVISION AS ART
Art Channel is an innovative concept in visual arts: TELEVISION AS ART. For the first time in the history of art we have an artwork that consists of modular media construction of digital video works that are broadcast via orbital satellites above the huge territories of Europe, Asia and Africa, aimed at large audience.
Television is the most dominant media of our time. Its development has reached unexpected proportions: television created its own reality which exists in parallel with the real world. Images created by television are convincing and expedient, its "truths" are more powerful, its capability to shape the public opinion is awesome. The consequences of its influence are universal and global (McLuhan). Television is the product of reality that generates its own, artificial, "TV reality". It operates by its own set of rules that are very different from those of the "real" reality experienced by our own senses. Those are the rules of illusions (Baudrillard). In its beginnings firmly dominated by the mechanisms of governmental control, television today, prompted by digital technology development, enters the phase in which its progress adopts many different aspects of interactive and computer technologies, thus generating ever growing semblance of freedom of creativity and content.
The mounting number of satellite TV channels, that can at present be measured in thousands, exceeds all possibilities or even needs for those programs to be appreciated by audience for which they were created. This inevitably leads to the creation of specialized programs that are intended for targeted groups of audience. On the other hand, in its foundations, television is aimed at addressing "mass audience" and its very nature renders a very poor two-way communication. Program production and editing is still very complicated and costly. Consequently, there is an invisible barrier created by the television itself in order to adjust its content with production feasibility, management policies and audience's expectations and demands.
The main premise of the Paris based Art Channel is that the invisible barrier between the realities can be reduced or removed, that the illusion of reality could get closer to the art reality itself. This can be achieved by carefully choosing the program concept and ways to communicate, thus altering or unmasking that very illusion, and even elevation of the artistic experience to a new form, medias focal point, that just might be the very foothold for the new millennium. It could be that new form of generated reality within the culture itself, i.e. perceived, recognized symptom on the body of normality of our everyday life (Suvakovic).
Art Channel is an innovative concept in visual arts: TELEVISION AS ART.
Art Channels' program concept is based on the culture of video clip in different short forms: video-art, short films, experimental, digital and documentary materials, musical video clips and visualizations, virtual art, personal documentation videos, exhibition openings and performances, artistic and "back stage" footage and all other forms of visual creativity.
In future phases of its development, ART CHANNEL will turn into a sort of open media ground that constantly transforms and modifies itself, thus becoming a "virtual satellite gallery", "virtual auction house", "on the air video festival", "planetary art container" - artistic scene in its own right.