affections and disaffections
Arlindo Machado
Video has been characterized as a low-resolution image, at least until now and comparatively with other technical images, like the photographic and the cinematographic images. A low-resolution image means an image that works better in the small screen. It’s also an image in which you can put a small amount of information, since there’s always the danger that a frame too much abundant in motives dissolves in the storm of reticulated lines, losing thus the details and the deep focus. This has been suffering modifications in the last few years, due to the appearance of the digital image (of variable resolution) and of the high-definition television, but the 30 years of history of our video were really done with the granulated, mosaic image that characterized the first video. For this reason, video was always inclined to the analytical decomposition of the motives, to the dismembering of the scene in a series of details indicating its totality. The electronic image, for its own technical nature, uses a metonymical language, in which the part, the detail, the fragment are articulated to suggest the whole. This makes it the adequate way to the close-up, to the detail. This doesn’t mean, evidently, that there are only close up shots in video, but that all the shots are always inclined to the fragmentary cut whose model is given by the close up.