Video as Ambience: Reception and Aesthetics of Flat-Screen Video Display

Abstract. The widespread dissemination of high-resolution flat-screen display devices will remediate the presentation of video, and therefore the aesthetics of video production. This technology will lead to new video aesthetics. The crafting of the new video will relate to the current television norms in ways similar to television's earlier relationship to the film aesthetic. Many techniques and poetic devices will be shared between the old video and the new video. At the same time, producers will discover styles and techniques better suited to the presentation potential of the new device. Out of these discoveries will evolve a unique body of practice and critical theory. Much of the next generation of video production will become more cinematic and pictorial in its style. Visual devices such as the split-screen and layered effects and transitions will be rejuvenated. At the same time, home video will also be used as an ambient display device. Viewer reception of such ambient video works will oscillate between foregrounding the video display, and allowing it to run in the background of the domestic social environment.