If it all sounds too much, Mrs Kramlich points out that living with media art is really no different from living with fixed-image art. (The couple have works by Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys in their mock-Tudor San Francisco home.) The difference, she adds with an eye to California's electricity troubles, is that you have an on-off switch and when the images vanish, the house is an artwork of its own.

ECONOMIST: Showing video art: The glasshouse effect | The