This book is an essential and highly entertaining guide to video art and its history. Elwes, herself a pioneer of early video, traces the story from the weighty Portapak equipment of the \'60s and \'70s to today\'s digital technology, from early experimenVideo art dominates the international art world to such an extent that
its heady days on the radical fringes are sometimes overlooked--often
unknown. This book is an essential and highly entertaining guide to
video art and its history. Elwes, herself a pioneer of early video,
traces the story from the weighty Portapak equipment of the '60s and
'70s to today's digital technology, from early experiments in "real
time" to the "new narrative" movement of the 1980s. She also examines
video's love-hate relationship with television, from its literal
destruction in "scratch" video to its apparent absorption into the
mainstream with works commissioned by Channel Four. Throughout its
forty-year history, video has been allied to self-portraiture,
landscape, painting and sculpture and has been co-opted as a political
tool. Artists discussed include amongst many others Nam June Paik, Nan
Hoover, The Duvet Brothers, Dara Birnbaum, Bill Viola, Pipilloti Rist,
David Hall, Stuart Marshall, Shirin Neshat, Smith amp; Stewart, Steve
McQueen and Sam Taylor-Wood.