Videos on the web and the net-art

Abstract

The videos shared on the web are a recent stage in the development of our media culture. Although many of the creators and viewers of online videos consider them as objects of a daily personal activity, with the blurry borders between art and the archive of memory, the simple fact of being on the internet places them in the circle of social communication. Watching videos on the Internet involves reading simultaneous content, such as texts and images, for example, when the video is embedded in a newspaper article or in the middle of still images that alternate with moving scenes of commercials. The computer reading experience often mixes this information with simultaneous images displayed in various areas of the screen. For the internet user, observing a complete image of a temporary object or still image is in practice, an exception. In the words of Andreas Treske, the essential characteristic of an online video is that it never exists alone.