During the course of the past thirty years, video art has blossomed well beyond the expectations of its early practioners and theorists. Born as a critique of television and a medium at odds with traditional pictorial forms, at its inception video was filled with an utopian promise that lead artists to believe in a true democratization of art...

During the course of the past thirty years, video art has blossomed well beyond the expectations of its early practioners and theorists. Born as a critique of television and a medium at odds with traditional pictorial forms, at its inception video was filled with an utopian promise that lead artists to believe in a true democratization of art. Today it has reached a pinnacle of technical sophistication and aesthetic importance that was only dreamed of in the 1960s when the accessibility of the Portapack camera seemed to allow limitless creative possibilities. Tony Oursler stands as a major figure within the evolution of the medium, poised at the crucial turning point when the television monitor could no longer contain video's still developing potential. With a keen understanding of its technical intricacies, as well as its limitations as a time-based form, Oursler began to paint in moving images a broad picture of how visual technologies influence -- even modify -- our social and psychological selves.

The intelligent irony that emanates from many of his video productions results from the subtle combination of sound, language and images, aspects that are widely and specifically dealt with in this book. Together with his personal writings, this book also includes two long conversations with Mike Kelley and Dan Graham, which testify the three artists's long-lasting complicity.

Photo-Entropy

Why I Like Flowers

To Paint In Moving Images

An Enless Script:

A Conversation with Tony Oursler

Who Will Give Answer to the

Call of My Voice?

Sound in the Work of Tony Oursler

Sketches at twilight

Conversation About Some

Recent Work

Phototropic

Proposal for Judy

Saving the Image

You Not You: Language in the

Work of Tony Oursler

Psychomimetiscape

Fragments of a Conversation:

Dan Graham Talks with Tony Ourslr

An Optical Timeline

Biography

Bibliography

Catalogue of Works