big screen

[Bongo]

Back at the turn of the century, flat-screen Televisions were emerging on the market. They were a bit pricey and small by today's standard, but I foresaw a future where these flat-screen Televisions would be commonplace. People can only watch so much Television, which means the vast majority of time these behemoth 30 and 40 inch marvels would be a big ugly blank smudge hanging on the wall.

But I had a grand plan - a thought experiment - what if I could fill that big ugly blank smudge on the living room wall, with artwork, fresh original digital displays of paintings many(most)(all) of which had never been seen before .

At the time some musicians were making more money selling ringtones for smartphones than they were for albums. So why not a streaming service, or DVD in the mail, or..etc. of paintings, curated to taste to proudly display on the wall(s).. a .monthly subscription.

Flash forward twenty-plus years and I, like many, have a giant flat-screen on the wall, mines 75", and almost never use it to play paintings -. I doubt virtually no one uses it as a replacement for wall art. But putting the monetizing schemes aside maybe...maybe it's time to revisit the idea.

 

[stevenD]

A hanging picture uses a lot less electricity...

 

[Bongo]

More problems than that. The medium is the message. You watch TV, you look at paintings. Rooms with large TVs are often arranged so that the TV is the focal point. Chairs, couches, and other seating are arranged more to watch the TV and sit comfortably for an extended time. People will make time to watch TV or schedule time to watch it. Not so much to look at a painting.

We consume painted images hanging on walls differently than programming playing on TV. Just putting a painting "inside" a TV is not going to change that.

You might have a better chance if a flat screen monitor - the same aspect and size of a painting was hung in the same place and manner as the painting it's replacing (and not in a room with a TV). Better still if more than one were arranged in a way paintings typically are.
Once the novelty wore off however, it would likely be treated with the same economy of attention and anonymity that paintings suffer.

Although there might be advantages to replacing paintings in frames with paintings on a screen. With the cost of small flatscreens going down, and quality picture frames going up - the price of a painting vs the cost of a digital file - to effortlessly and frequently swap images as desired - storage, shipping, archiving vs pushing a button.

 

[Bartc]

Didn't SONY or someone market "The Frame"?

 

[Bongo]

thanks Bart - Samsung has it. comes with a flush mount and an an external frame that clips around your tv and looks like a deep mount picture frame. You can get various colors and styles. Very pricey - but they look exactly like a framed picture - just like other framed pictures you might have around it. of course the image has a "video" look.

You can give a TV the "frame TV" look yourself by encasing it with molding. There are even how-tovideos on YouTube.

So it's all available here, now.. making one myself is now on my to do list.

 

[Triduana]

I use my TV to look at my own paintings - that's usually how I see the mistakes.