Examining the history of the rising of the video art, we see its connection with the technological inventions”]Portapak”^and the new cultural environment created by the television. Its first paradox resides in the historical fact that, using a new technological medium, it is quickly accepted by the art world. With an antiestablishment characteristic, it improves itself a lot when it has access to establishment and creates a complicated, contradictory history of their interaction. The Reverse Television 1983 by Bill Viola is a good example. The video art participates deeply the vast subject on the relation between the technology and the humanity. The essential thought of Bill Viola on this subject is that an artist, after mastering the necessary technological requirement, should use it for the self-development and self-discovery. In our analysis of Room for St John of the Cross 1983, we show that self-discovery leads to the renouncement of the self, but also the place of the body of the viewer.
The instant feedback characteristic and the auto-recording practice by the artists make the video work like the mirror. Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House 1982 shows Bill Viola as a talking head but make us enter his body by the sound installation. We can see here the insisting motif of "going through the looking glass" and how the video-as-mirror becomes the video-as-connecter.
Another cluster of paradoxes of the video art exists on the level of its reception. The video art seems to be dispersed, de-centered, not well defined and frontier-blurred. The video installation comes against the notion of unity of classical idea about the work of art. By the exploration of Marshall McLuhan, we now understand that the television image has a specific connection with the synaesthesia. In our analysis of his He Weeps for You 1976, we can see that, in Bill Viola's works, the synaesthesia does not lead to the magma of sensations of the total work of art, but rather an infinite echo between the senses which are activated one after another. It allows also the intermittence, contraposition and displacement, as we can see in The Stopping Mind 1991. This work leads us to discuss the relation between the body and the deeper self in works of Bill Viola.
The human body appears in great amount in the video art, often as a compensation
of the technological distancing effect and the feeling of coldness. It also
represents the trace of the Nature in more and more artificial world. The
video image, on the ground of its ontological status, can be said as an image
without coporalite, contrasting with the large presence of human body representation
in the video art. For Bill Viola, the most important characteristic of the
video image is its constant movement by nature. He thinks that a genealogy
of images could be formed by the suit of the Eternal Image, the Temporal Image,
and the Temporary Image. But the Video Black as the Last Image absorbs the
subjects we have discussed before: the reflection of the self and the renouncement
of the self, the synaesthesia and the pure body sensation, the strategic place
of the body and the life and death and the transformation of the Image. It
becomes the ground of the possibilities of the renewal. The Crossing 1996
shows this point very well.