Video sculptures, a type of video installation, involve one or more video screens that spectators move among or stand in front of. Video sculptures formed of more than one screen may broadcast a single program or may simultaneously broadcast different interconnected sequences on several channels. The screens of which the sculpture is comprised can be arranged in many different ways. For example, they can be suspended from a ceiling, aligned and stacked to make a video wall or even randomly stacked on top of each other. In some cases only a television cabinet is displayed or a cabinet is emptied of its contents and displayed with something else inside.[1] Video sculpture is a medium that offers performing artists a chance to have a more permanent artistic forum.[2]
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, artists Wolf Vostell and Edward Kienholz began experimenting with TVs by using them in their happenings and assemblages respectively. In March 1963, Nam June Paik's debuted his video sculpture entitled Music/Electronic Television at the Parnass Gallery in Wupertal, which used 13 doctored televisions. In May of the same year, Vostell's TV-dé-coll/age at the Smolin Gallery in New York utilized six televisions, each with an anomaly.[1] Shigeko Kubota was also an innovator in the use of video in sculptural form. Her Duchampiana: Nude Descending a Staircase was the first video sculpture acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. This work is a reference to Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912)[2] Video sculpturist are becoming influential among early 21st century artists.[3] One of Paik's video sculptures in which the six windows of a 1936 Chrysler Airstream were replaced with video monitors sold for $75,000 in 2002.[4]
Charlotte Moorman was a notable subject of video sculptures as a renowned topless cellist.[5]