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Yoko Ono (American, born Japan, 1933)
Sky TV, 1966
Sky TV is one of the earliest examples of video sculpture and Yoko Ono's only video work. A camera placed on the outside wall or roof of the gallery, trained on the sky, transmits live images of the sky to a television monitor in the gallery, projecting the exterior world into an interior space. Sky TV reflects Ono's conceptual approach to video, in which the idea becomes the subject of the work.
Sky TV was made shortly after the Sony Portapak was introduced on the market and before the advent of videotape; a time when all images on television were generated and controlled by a few commercial television companies and cable TV was still a dream. Further, the ubiquity of surveillance camera technology in contemporary society was largely unknown in 1966, indicating how precocious Ono's vision was. Significantly, the camera is aimed not at the viewer but at the sky, implying the necessity of considering an infinite world beyond the ego and the hypnotic pull of commercial television.
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About Yoko Ono
Born 1933, Tokyo, Japan
Lives in New York, New York
Along with artists such as Nam June Paik, La Monte Young and George Maciunis, Yoko Ono is of the founders of the Fluxus art movement. Beginning in the 1960s, Fluxus united a group of international artists making conceptual works about the nature of art and human existence. As a child Ono attended Jiyu-gakuen Music School in Japan, a prominent training ground for Japanese composers. There, she learned piano and composition. Her art is known for engaging the viewer and breaking down differences between art and everyday life. Ono's work has long contributed to the New York, Tokyo, and London art scenes, influencing conceptual art movements, underground film and performance art.
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William Anastasi (American, born 1933)
Free Will, 1968
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