I found Hilary Gary’s Black-White-Text and Peter Campus’s Three Transitions to be the most interesting of the 50 great works of video art. The difference between the videos are visible in the sense that they both are visually very distinctive.
Black-White-Text from my interpretation is a play with the idea of repetition and how our human mind is bound to become accustomed to the very idea. The use of the black and white rectangle is a form of an abstraction, almost drawing you into the video making you wonder if it’s going to be consistent. The use of audio is “rectangle” and “within a rectangle” in repetition which is also a way of drawing the viewer into the video in order to distinguish the two. Overall the idea of the video seems to be a emphasis of symmetry and consistency.
Three transitions, in my opinion, is the pure understanding of the self as an interpretation. The man in the video goes through three different transitions, all three that seem to convey an idea of who he is in actuality. The first transition portrays the notion of ripping out of a version of him that he is familiar with only to reveal a new version that seems to be the same. The second transitions involves him wiping his face to reveal the image of his face again. The final transition is burning of a mirror image of him that leaves behind nothing. These ideas all seem to convey some sense of how the guy in the video feels about interactions with his own personality. However, the essence of the video lies in its abstraction and the illusion that the manipulation of videos create.
Both videos are similar in the sense that they are both some forms of abstraction, using unique video techniques. They both draw the onlooker into the video so much so that their is room for open interpretation as a result of abstraction. The difference between these videos is that they are visually portrayed differently and take on two completely different purposes.