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VHS tapes were the first genuinely popular, available to the masses media format. So much happened with VHS (and BETA, too) that it is easy to misunderstand what its death means for us: the replacement of VHS with digital alternativesalternatives that change the balance from what the people using the tapes want to do with their technology to that they are allowed to do with it.
With the end of analog media, in spite of all its limitations (poor quality, poor reproduction), will also move us all that much closer to there being less independence and less ability to control our own media culture. In the past several years the established companiesTIVO, Creativehave chosen to cripple their devices to make the corporate producers and distributors of media happy, a crippling that in every case was based on the removal of those parts of the device that gave users the ability to control media.
For artists who work with the consumer and low-end media equipmentequipment readily available and usable with only limited skill setsthis is cause for concern; for those whose work is commercial and who work through post houses and production facilities, these changes may only appear as a slight annoyance, but which has no impact on their actual work.
If the Sony PortaPak caused video art, what will the death of VHS cause?
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