In the gallery, an automaton, equipped with a video camera that captures its surroundings, slowly circles around two television sets, one of which plays a live feed from the camera. Through this live stream, Baharudin Mohd Arus asserts that the viewer is not merely a passive receiver of images and messages; by appearing before the camera, the viewer becomes a part of the artwork and influences its meaning. The viewer’s participation in the live feed speaks to how video cameras, which became increasingly portable and affordable, enabled ordinary people to create videos and document their own lives through the moving image. In a time when televised content was largely determined by broadcast companies, corporations and the government, video cameras were a means for individuals to shape the media. Baharudin thus unveils a symbiotic relationship between video technology and the viewer, demonstrating media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s proposition that the nature of the medium used to convey a message determines how the message is perceived—or, concisely phrased, The Medium is the Message.
