Attempts to discover the conditions under which it is possible to speak, write and teach about the electronic media. The book provides a materialist account of video and computer media as they are practised and used today. There is also an analysis of work from amateur video to computer graphics.

This study attempts to discover the conditions under which it is possible to speak, write and teach about the electronic media. It provides a materialist account of video and computer media as they are practised and used today. A theoretical section tests the claims of various these in art history, media and cultural theory to account for the variety of video practice in the contemporary scene. The remainder of the book is devoted to close analysis of work, from amateur video to computer graphics. Sean Cubitt is the author of "Timeshift: On Video Culture".

Acknowledgements - Introduction: Video Media - PART ONE THEORY - Videography: The Helical Scan - Video, Modernity and Modernism - In Search of the Lost Audience - The Subject of Art - Vision - Video in the Field of Film - Enthusiasm - Video Looks at Television - Sound: Video, Noise and Music - PART TWO PRACTICE - Magnetic Memories: Video, Power and Representation - The Monk and the Maenad: Dialectics of the Video Apparatus - Allegory and Crisis of Signification - Inconclusion Electronic Ecology - Chronology - List of Videos and Distributors - Bibliography - Index