For us, and perhaps for others, those early videotapes represent a unique window on some origins of our present culture. In their often shocking intimacy, their imaginative improvisations, and floating human eye and ear representation of the world around them, the tapes that the proto-video artists of the late sixties and early seventies produced threw a privileged light on both the countercultural and artistic world of that time. They also influenced commercial media, of course. Early video often involved a strong element of prediction and some of it consciously relied for its ultimate rationale upon the future. For some it represented the first unrealized vision of a connected world, a world where information flowed freely, where everyone had access and no individual or institution had ultimate control.
Media seem familiar in the present, but are always conditional.
For some artists the 'post-modern moment' began with the realization that the conditions of life and art are always fluid. But not for us. A new generation of scholars is interested in this subject now. Scholars are only as good as their sources. We may not always be able provide definitive information in this site, but if we can help direct interested people to where it can be found then this site will realize some of its purpose.