Video: The Reflexive Medium

I picked up this 2008 published book Video: The Reflexive Medium by Yvonne Spielmann in Amsterdam at the beautiful Athenaeum Boekhandel.

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From book description:

Video is an electronic medium, dependent on the transfer of electronic signals. Video signals are in constant movement, circulating between camera and monitor. This process of simultaneous production and reproduction makes video the most reflexive of media, distinct from both photography and film (in which the image or a sequence of images is central). Because it is processual and not bound to recording and the appearance of a “frame,” video shares properties with the computer. In this book, Yvonne Spielmann argues that video is not merely an intermediate stage between analog and digital but a medium in its own right. Video has metamorphosed from technology to medium, with a set of aesthetic languages that are specific to it, and current critical debates on new media still need to recognize this.

Full reference: Yvonne Spielmann, Video, The Reflexive Medium, MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, (2008) First published in German (2005)

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