Video art has long been a mainstream medium in the art world. What is still being debated is its presentation and commercialisation. Whist the museum visitor is familiar with its modes of museum presentation (the couch, the headphones, the flatscreen) the issue is complicated by the ubiquity of the internet. Whilst sites such as Vimeo and YouTube provide provide the equivalent of a digital image of a painting, allowing the widespread viewing of the work by a wider audience, the mode of presentation is sometimes very different to the intended mode of viewing in a gallery, museum or domestic context. Whilst the artist’s permission should always be sought before a work is reproduced online, this is par for the course of being an artist in the age of virtual reproduction.

What is more problematic however is the commercial availability of video work. Where printmakers and film photographers have long since come to terms with the editioning of their work, for video artists their medium presents an inherent problem.The reproduction of video art is unencumbered by plate or negative. The work is there, available for ‘burning’ to any who have access to a copy. The difference between a viewing copy lent to a museum and an editioned disc bought by a collector is in name (and sometimes container) only. Some artists provide more durable digital storage of their work (such as a hard drive) to those who purchase a limited edition of it, whilst others embrace the nature of the medium by making the work an unlimited edition and pricing it accordingly.

All this of course makes video art a synecdoche for the entire global trend toward the illegal downloading of the moving image. Television and film studio conglomerates consistently assert their rights in the courts of the world (with varying success) whilst in the meantime millions of people continue to obtain, share and consume pirated video material. In the case of video art, each edition of a video work (whether it be 1 of 5 or 1 of 100) must be authenticated by the artist using more traditional or artisan means (a signature, a specific DVD case and so on) in order to protect its artistic, as well as commercial, legitimacy. However as consumers become more and more comfortable foregoing album covers and boxed sets in favour of immediate listening and viewing gratification, one wonders where video art will sit in this evolving marketplace.

A disc is still a disc.