Prehistoric cave paintings, storytelling projections of Chinese shadows, the magic lantern.

The magic lantern, invented in the middle of the seventeenth century, is essentially the oldest form of slide projector. It consists of four basic parts. The first is a lightproof box that holds the light source. This was originally a candle or oil lamp, but later versions made use of electric lamps. At the front of the box, a condensing lens focuses the rays from the light source onto a slide. This slide carries the image to be projected and was the third part of the mechanism. The final part is a second lens, set in front of the slide, which ensures that a sharp version of the slide image appears on the screen.

Early magic lanterns were commonly used in homes, but by the end of the 18th Century a special form of lantern show had developed. It was known as the 'phantasmagoria' (meaning collection of phantoms) and was made up of images of ghosts, skeletons and goblins. The magic lantern was used as a projector for the first films that were projected.  After the invention of electricity, film projectors replaced the lanterns. Since then artists have been attracted to the idea of dark gallery spaces where sequenced images engage the audience on a specific journey.

The enchantment of video come to light in the 60’s and in the 70’s many of the early prominent video artists were those involved with concurrent movements in conceptual art, installation and performance. Forty years after the digital video "revolution" has given wide access to sophisticated editing and control technology, allowing many artists to work with video and to create interactive installations with changing frames.

Video art has the capacity of seduce the audience to some kind of aesthetic experience that is never a result but instead a suspended time experience. Most of the times, there’s no physical aspect to experience when watching a video. One can see this moments as dreams as one jump to a subconscious place where peculiar life statements are made as moments pass by.

VAFA – Video Art For All first open call proved that when working in video art, performance, light, set up and substance are often overextensions of something else suspended on the screening act. From 180 works submitted the more mysterious or the more conceptualized metaphors were the chosen ones. The Jury composed by Hung Keung and João Vasco Paiva from Hong Kong, Bianca Lei and me from Macau searched for the works capable of subjecting the audience to a certain kind of captivating visuals and contents.
It seems that there is no limits on what artists can do with moving images and magic lanterns.

- José Drummond