We present an animated video from the 1990s by the film director and graduate of the Academy of Arts Tomáš Mašín (*1965).
Author:Tomáš Mašín
Digitalization from VHS:Sláva Sobotovičová, VVP AVU
We wish to thank Tomáš Mašín for providing the video to the videoarchive of VVP AVU.
Curators:Zuzana Krišková, Terezie Nekvindová, Sláva Sobotovičová
Tomáš Mašín studied at the Academy of Arts from 1986 to 1992. During this period the non-violent transition of power took place in what was then Czechoslovakia, the institution of the Academy of Arts underwent change and a revolution took place in the existence, perception and availability of art technologies. Tomáš Mašín experienced classical art processes as well as work in the newly founded Studio of New Media at the Academy of Arts. After graduation he worked as an architect of films directed by Vít Olmer and later on he founded his own film production company. At present he is a renowned film maker whose work spans from commercials and video-clips to feature films.
His two-minute video called Tamagotchi is a proof of his interest in new art forms. The time of its origin is not known, some people say it was made at the Academy of Arts before 1992. However, it seems more probable that it was made a couple of years later since the theme of the video – the Tamagotchi toy - appeared on the market in 1996. Also the number of the mobile which appears in the video is written in a format which began to be used only in 1996.
The structure of the Tamagotchi video is based on the alternation of simple animations and texts. The animations remind us of early video games or simple computer games. For the texts he used the Chicago typeface which was designed for Apple Computer and was used between 1984 and 1997 in the operating system user interface. Unlike the main stream of Czech video making in the mid- 1990s, mostly based on performative elements or artistic unusualness, Mašín´s approach is radically different not only in terms of aesthetics but also conception. While the above mentioned mainstream expects the viewer to be a passive observer, in the formally modest Tamagotchi Mašín creates a kind of false interactivity and builds a tense relation between the work and its observer. The little dog in the video directly addresses the viewer, asks for food, begs and emotionally blackmails the observer. The inactivity of the viewers – which in fact has no other option – results in the death of the sweet little pet. The viewer gets into the position of someone who participates in the story. The simple and irrecoverably linear story is based on a script or perhaps on a causal scheme which despite its factual non-interactivity evokes the structure of a computer game or a toy of the Tamagotchi type. The feedback between the viewer and the video is boosted also by the telephone number which was made public in the video and which evokes a possibility of direct communication with the world of the two-minute story about life and death. We wonder who it belonged to.
Tomáš Pospiszyl
