Infolding the Self: From Video Therapy to Video Art

Abstract

When video art emerged in the late 1960s, video became a boundary object facilitating interaction between artists and scientists, particularly psychotherapists interesting in the effects of watching oneself on tape. Both groups were interested in the experience of watching oneself on television, which they conceptualized as feedback. “Videotape,” wrote Paul Ryan in 1970, “has to do with infolding information,” a vision he demonstrated in installations designed to use feedback to facilitate a holistic understanding of the self. Similarly, Ryan’s friends Frank Gillette and Ira Schneider sought to integrate the individual into society with their multiscreen “Wipe Cycle.” In a series of conference and publications, these artists collaborated with therapists who similarly saw video as a potentially holistic technology of the self. Under anthropologist Gregory Bateson’s influence, their holism expanded to an ecological scale as they turned their cameras on the natural world.