The Emergence of Video Processing Tools presents stories of the development of early video tools and systems designed and built by artists and technologists during the late 1960s and 70s. Split over two volumes, the contributors examine the intersection of art and science and look at collaborations among inventors, designers and artists trying to create new tools to capture and manipulate images in revolutionary ways. The contributors include 'video pioneers,' who have been active since the emergence of the aesthetic, and technologists, who continue to design, build and hack media tools. The book also looks at contemporary toolmakers and the relationship between these new tools and the past. Video and media production is a growing area of interest in art and this collection will be an indispensable guide to its origins and its future.

Table of Contents:
VOLUME ONE: Section 1: Histories Introduction – Kathy High Beginnings (With Artist Manifestos) – Kathy High Mapping Video Art as Category, or an Archaeology of the Conceptualizations of Video – Jeremy Culler Impulses – Tools – Christiane Paul and Jack Toolin The Art-Style Computer-Processing System, 1974 – Tom Sherman Machine Aesthetics Are Always Modern – Tom Sherman Electronic Video Instruments and Public Sector Funding – Mona Jimenez TV Lab: Image-making Tools – Howard Weinberg The New Television Workshop at WGBH, Boston – John Minkowsky The National Center for Experiments in Television at KQED-TV, San Francisco – John Minkowsky The Experimental Television Center: Advancing Alternative Production Resources, Artist Collectives and Electronic Video-Imaging Systems – Jeremy Culler Interstitial Images: Histories Section 2: People and Networks Introduction – Sherry Miller Hocking From Component Level: Interview With LoVid – Michael Connor Memory Series – Phosphography in CRT 5", Mexico, 2005 – Carolina Esparragoza The Rhetoric of Soft Tools – Marisa Olson Jeremy Bailey and His ‘Total Symbiotic Art System’ – Carolyn Tennant De-commodification of Artworks: Networked Fantasy of the Open – Timothy Murray Virtuosity as Creative Freedom – Michael Century Distribution Religion – Dan Sandin and Phil Morton A Toy for a Toy – Ralph Hocking Woody Vasulka: Dialogue With the (Demons in the) Tool – Lenka Dolanova with Woody Vasulka A Demo Tape on How to Play Video on a Violin – Jean Gagnon Application to the Guggenheim Foundation, 1980 – Ralph Hocking Thoughts on Collaboration: Art and Technology – Sherry Miller Hocking Interstitial Images: People and Networks VOLUME TWO: Section 3: Tools Introduction – Mona Jimenez Mods, Pods and Designs: Designing Tools and Systems – Kathy High Computer-Based Video Synthesizer System, ETC – Donald McArthur, Walter Wright and Richard Brewster Design/Electronic Arts: The Buffalo Conference, March 10–13, 1977 – John Minkowsky Instruments, Apparel, Apparatus: An Essay of Definitions – Jean Gagnon Expanding ‘Image-processed Video’ as Art: Subverting and Building Control Systems – Jeremy Culler The Grammar of Electronic Image Processing – Sherry Miller Hocking ETC’s System – Hank Rudolph On Voltage Control: An Interview With Hank Rudolph – Kathy High and Mona Jimenez 'Insofar as the rose can remember…' – Carolyn Tennant Analog to Digital: Artists Using Technology – Yvonne Spielmann Analog Meets Digital In and Around the Experimental Television Center – Kathy High, Mona Jimenez and Dave Jones Multi-tracking Control Voltages: HARPO – Carl Geiger and Mona Jimenez Finding the Tiny Dot: Designing Pantomation – Mona Jimenez Preserving Machines – Mona Jimenez A Catalog Record for the Raster Manipulation Unit – Mona Jimenez Copying-It-Right: Archiving the Media Art of Phil Morton – Jon Cates Proposal for Low-cost Retrieval of Early Videotapes Produced on Obsolete Equipment and/or Videotape That Will Not Play Back, or Resurrection Bus (1980) – Ralph Hocking Interstitial Images: Tools