Video Killed the Video Star Sculpture – By Val and Alex
Reflection
Val and I’s sculpture ‘Video Killed the Video Star’ is an interactive zoetrope and video installation concept. The sculpture focuses on the theme of revolutions within short form content and the strange receding back to the video medium as a miniature, digestible and hypnotically pleasing spectacle. At this point in history, the herald of short form is not from necessity or lack in technology, but a collateral preference for mindless video consumption. A background element to the installation is a repetitive playthrough of the popular iPhone app ‘Subway Surfers’ (developed by SYBO and Kiloo). This content has become popular as a way of absorbing more critical content (visual or audio) with a subdivided focus on the sedating game play. Within the zoetrope, plays a silent snippet accompanied by the mechanical noise of bearings from the 1979 music video for The Buggles ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’. The video was the first music video to be aired on the television channel MTV, signposting a significant movement towards video content as king, the end of the radio reign. The songs lyrics are inspired by the rapid advances in technology which are hauntingly relevant today (American Songwriter, 2023).
The process of building our sculpture gave way to a plethora of untapped ideas to do with its message, a pleasant surprise to us both. The turntable we used to create our zoetrope was not especially lubricated so it requires a constant touch to operate, similar to the action of scrolling. Additionally, the video was best presented in a vertical format, akin to the displays of social media and mirroring the vertical slits in our zoetrope (the combination of these elements married nicely together, in an unexpected way). You can watch the subway surfers through the slits of the zoetrope as well. Lastly, upon uploading the video to YouTube – the website took it upon itself to class the video a ‘YouTube Short’, due to its length and format which was amusing.
I think this sculpture would have a great impact on spectators with an increase in size, quality and appropriate exhibition. I think it would be very effective in a dark and liminal space, potentially lit purely by the iPhone video.
American Songwriter (2023) Remember When: MTV Debuts with “Video Killed the Radio Star”, accessed 30 August 2024. https://americansongwriter.com/video-killed-the-radio-star-mtv-the-buggles/