Video is a very new medium; painting a very ancient one. This fact inevitably creates a great difference in the two, but not nearly so great as the confusion of this moment makes it seem. In an effort to reconcile the two media four concerns--naturalism, surface, a respect for the properties of the medium, and motion--appear to be important. These things do not represent goals--these are creation and expressiveness--but they do represent the ways one tries to reach goals. Video has almost no aesthetic history of its own, only the aesthetics of other media. In a sense it's too new for an aesthetic to be formed about it, but any art form that's a living, vibrant art form is always too new for an aesthetic about it to be formed. If it stops being too new, then it's an historical phenomenon and is probably no longer being done. That's true of painting, as well as video. (Author/MC)