Videotexts

When the video camera first appeared on the market, artists hailed the newly available equipment as the new pencil, the better canvas, the best eye of all. The medium was exciting and revolutionary: low-cost and low- tech; "everybody" was curious as galleries and museums hastened to program new video works in festivals and exhibitions. However, little aesthetic or critical material was available on either artists or issues: it was generally assumed that artists' video was just some kind of wannabe television - its concerns and achievements, and its relationship to the visual arts generally were too often undervalued. But video artists continued to explore and advance in the medium and works produced in the seventies are strikingly different from those of today.Gale, Peggy is the author of 'Videotexts', published 1995 under ISBN 9780889202528 and ISBN 0889202524.