Video: From Technology to Medium

In this article I propose to discuss video in two ways. First, I will examine video as an electronic technology of signal processing and transmission that shares these properties with other electronic media, notably television. Second, I understand video as a medium in its own right that—like any other medium—develops step by step from the emergence of a novel technology and through the articulation of a specific media language and semiotic system to successfully establish an aesthetic vocabulary, in this case specific to the videographic capacities of electronic signal processing. Once such a media-specific set of means of expression is achieved, video becomes a medium that can be distinguished from other, already existing media. The development from technology to medium also demonstrates that video has some features of analogue recording in common with film and shares processes of both signal-encoded information and transmission with television, but it also incorporates programmable functions in image processors that closely connect to digital programming in computers. I wish to focus on the matter of specificity from two angles: the first is the development from technology to medium, the second is the position of video in the context of analogue and digital media forms and the conceptual linkage among video, analogue processors, and digital computers.1