Rainbo Video: Art on the Web, Art for the Web

by Claire Lynch

Everything is changed. Newspapers are dying and your car knows where you live. You have to click in order to connect. Our digital culture is the norm now, most are acclimated, and to avoid embracing this is to live in the past. You are reading reviews of art on your phone or computer right now, which provides better images of the work than even the glossiest of write-ups could, anyway. Most of the art seen and talked about here, however, concerns a gallery’s latest show. Objects that you can’t accurately judge until you stand in front of them. The best ones will haunt you, both while you look at them and in memory. The best ones stretch your perceptions, change your mood, and make you wonder… what it means, if you like it, how on earth one constructs an image that way.

Living contemporary artists do this in a variety of ways, but one means of self-expression seems to have been given a lack of attention: the internet-based digital medium. Audio, video and textual art is enjoying a surge of attention in museum and gallery settings. But what about this form of art on WiFi? In many cases, the practice of over saturation, repetitive images, cryptic sound and confusing text is used by computer-friendly artists. These pieces are made digitally yet exhibited on a wall like a lithograph or sculpture. Luckily, many of today’s emerging artists are bridging this gap. Audio/visual, meet internet. Chicago art scene followers, meet Rainbo Video.

Rainbo Video is an artist, musician, and filmmaker based in Chicago. RV’s diverse use of media and prolific nature has gained notoriety, for the artist has conducted performances nationwide and can be seen at many of our city’s venues. However, Rainbo Video’s art predominates on the web. His videos are a must-see. Especially for those of us who question the Modern Wing’s inclusion of ‘film-based art’ as the archaic projector on a wall reeling images of a clown being tortured.

Rainbo Video’s themes center on creating systems of encoded information. Sound, image, text, brightness and vibrations are layered, creating an enticing build-up before a climatic reveal, or in some cases, a melancholy end. RV’s videos entitled Acid Colorform Taxonomy features two short films: ‘Twentieth Century’ and ‘Silent Night’. Watch them. They will challenge your perception and toy with your emotions. Interestingly, these internet-based videos are a great way to connect through a click. The artist’s mantra concerning this pair of films: “Strange images reveal and impose themselves upon us all the time. When they come to us in dreams, we watch, paralyzed.  When they come to us in real life, the same is true.”

Rainbo Video’s often fanatic fans (as aforementioned, the artist spreads his vision at The Nightingale and Empty Bottle) are often in anticipation of the young video artist’s next show. Any follower of contemporary art should know about his method of exposure. Rainbo Video proves that art can speak for itself, and should not rely on its installation or the exclusivity of its gallery. Using the internet as exhibition space, Rainbo Video’s works are resourceful, accessible and provide the highest quality of image, making audio/visual works the best they can be. After all, the only way to understand digital art is digitally.

http://www.rainbovideo.com/