PETER WEIBEL

I have permitted myself to present one of my own works, not only because it embodies the sum of my technical imaginations, but also because it is an encyclopedic anthology of all the special effects which I compiled during my time as professor at the State University of New York in Buffalo. The aim of this work was to visualise the history of the industrial revolution, which culminated in the computer, and especially to demonstrate artistically this history with its end product, the computer. At that time one spoke of ›digital video‹ and ›digital vision‹.

In its early days in the 1960s video art met with heavy resistance on the part of galleries and museums. Well known curators, like Harald Szeemann, did not start to include it in their major exhibitions until the 1990s. Video artists had no chance to display their works in galleries and museums. They had no alternative other than to band together in video cooperatives or to organise festivals by their own in order to make the public aware of their artistic activity. For the development of video art, the video festival in Bonn was of great importance not only in Germany.