Commentary on Kate Horsfield - Busting the Tube

Commentary on Kate Horsfield - 

Busting the Tube

A decade of profound social change propelled by political conflict, inventive action, and ideological opposition The argument was not just about creating new forms for new content, but also about altering the nature of the relationships between readers and literary texts, spectators and spectacles. This alteration of these relationships was predicated on new ways of thinking about the relationships between art (or more generally "representation") and reality. 

Television was a primary target. 

In the 1950s, television had a great deal of influence. While the general public was becoming more and more enthralled by its presence, others, in particular intellectuals and media theorists, saw that television served to maintain the status quo while simplifying or removing representations that did not appeal to consumerist demographics. When he referred to television as "a vast wasteland," FCC Chairman Newton R. Minow voiced concern about the detrimental impact of formula-based television programming. 

It created social acceptance and rejection through conformity.

The Portapak, a new Sony portable camera and recording deck, was released in the midst of the 1960s political unrest despite being intended for small business and industrial applications. 

Social activists who saw video as "a weapon and a witness" to be utilized to develop new sorts of representation that were opposed to the pervasive commercialism of the television business and artists who quickly recognized its potential as a creative instrument.

Radical Software and other media visionaries saw it as a tool for creating a decentralized communication system and for generating alternative media content for expressing countercultural ideas outside the confines of mainstream channels. 

Media activists viewed portable video equipment as a means to capture a new kind of unbiased, direct-from-the-scene reporting that did not alter reality in any way. The video verité method, which is sometimes referred to as "guerilla television" because its practitioners used video in a warlike operation against network television's hegemony, used technology in an understated manner, going to places where cameras had never been without attracting much attention. Video "reversed the process of television, allowing people access to creation and distribution tools, giving them power over their own images and, by extension, their own lives," which was one of its main draws. 

Peoples Video Theater, one video collective, recorded street occurrences on video and brought it back to a loft in lower Manhattan for immediate screening in an effort to spark conversation and "feedback" from the neighborhood. 

This is a little example of how video activists used it to try and democratically react to social and political events that were happening while also increasing a sense of engagement in the televisual process. 

It has been an issue that watching a television or a video the watching concept is a passive action, not until this “feedback” scenario happened. 

The difference between reporting then and now, can be the accessibility and freedom. Freedom of the press, to broadcast, to speak up, to inform the countrymen, and able to access the truth. In the book Kate Horsfield - Busting the Tube; A Brief History of Video Art, people were immersed by the art, media, and sweeping on its social change. Which is also present today, but it is still relevant. 

The work of Jacques Derrida also gained popularity in the art world. The emphasis on hierarchies and oppositions provided a fresh angle for analysis and continued the goals of Radical Software, which encouraged a range of video uses that were decentralized and more democratically inclusive of underrepresented voices and content in order to expose cultural biases. The video was particularly positioned to disclose layers of meaning as well as paradoxes and inconsistencies in the hierarchical constructs in art, media, and society since it stands at the intersection of art, community, individual expression, and mass communication. Deconstruction was a technique employed by video artists to examine political differences in class, race, gender, and sexual orientation. Video art has become a political stand that can encompass every societal issue. 

The most effective tool we can use at this present is online. There are more audiences on online platforms. This can be corresponding to an item that you need to sell, rent, lease, or any method that can lead to a cash flow. The seller will go to the market, not to make their own market. Same as being a media practitioner, how can you broadcast–scatter a piece of verifiable information into a weak channel? It is an absolute truth that the people today are louder, relentless, and aware of substantial news or truth no matter how their environment is oppressing. The technology and boldness of people are now advanced and it is incomparable today, people can always engage in social and political conversation, pushing their beliefs and perspective. It has become an active action, there is a message was sent, going through the channel, received in their on the choice of platform, and also creating their feedback.

 Adding parallels of underground and eventual counter-culture movement during the Martial Law in the Philippines is when:  

The nation's free press and mass media were the first casualties when the late deposed tyrant Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law on September 21, 1972, by Proclamation 1081. A functional democracy must have a free press since the media acts as both a citizen information source and a watchdog over the government. Knowing how important the media was, Marcos made care to strip them of all authority when he proclaimed martial law. Marcos issued Letter of Instruction No. 1, allowing the military to seize the assets of the nation's major media enterprises, on September 22, 1972. Marcos explained the reasoning behind the decree, stating that it was implemented to stop the use of privately owned media against the government.