Please note that we are no longer accepting applications to this program; however, art video courses and study opportunities will continue to be offered in the Department of Film and Media Arts. Please contact VPA’s Office of Recruitment and Admissions to explore other programs.
Our bachelor of fine arts (B.F.A.) degree program in art video focuses on the power of digital video as an interdisciplinary art form. The major is about the direct digital intersection of artists and audiences. Video is a visual and acoustic instrument with an unparalleled capacity to capture action and describe environments. Today’s video medium is a highly evolved, ubiquitous offspring of the once mass medium of television, a vast networked electronic delivery system of moving images and sounds.
Video closes gaps, eliminating the distance between people and things. The video medium opens up into sounds and music, performance, and images and ideas. Video cameras are deeply embedded everywhere in the world, and the videated world is immediately accessible and manipulatable with non-linear digital workstations.
Collaboration in this major is encouraged but not necessary. Unlike the crew structure and specialization inherent in film, the art video student can work effectively as an individual, in the manner of the visual artist or composer of music. Compared to a traditional art medium like oil painting, video is a devastatingly expansive medium that opens up and cascades into audio and music and digital multimedia and the web.
The digital video medium continues to proliferate online with established file sharing enterprises like YouTube and Vimeo, and there are increasing opportunities for live video transmission such as Skype and Facebook Live. Video projection is lighting up walls in galleries and public spaces of all kinds, and video projection-mapping is enhancing and transforming architecture. We ground our approach to this tsunami of video with the knowledge and literacy of six decades of video by artists.
Video art is an acknowledged classical form. Artists from all over the world have pioneered responses and made innovations to the television and video environment as it has evolved. Our program is looking for individuals who want to continue to adopt and exploit the power of digital video as an art form.
Digital video is also a communications medium. Art making is the most difficult and sophisticated form of communication. Hard-core creativity in video is practical and valuable in the rapidly expanding video universe. Literacy and accomplishment in digital video art is rewarded financially in the television and film industries, music video, advertising, the fashion industry, corporate communications, video journalism, web streaming and publishing, visual anthropology and ethnography, surveillance and forensic video, curatorial work, nonprofit arts administration, video post-production and editing, and of course video art, performance art, and video poetics of myriad variations.
The art video program is supported by digital video and audio facilities.
Student Work
Curriculum
Below are the general program requirements for art video.
View official major requirements.
Major requirements: 48 credits
Academic requirements: 6 credits
Studies in culture electives: 21 credits
Academic electives: 29 credits
Studio electives: 24 credits
First year seminar: 1 credit
Total Credits: 129