This one, a seminal text of early video art, is long out of print, and makes for interesting reading (and looking) now--making me nostalgic for the early days of experimental video, but also speaking to issues inherent to shifts in modes of communication more generally. (I'm thinking a lot these days about the points in history where major technological advances spur periods of grappling with what that means for art making, and creation/representation more broadly.) I don't do very much bookselling, but happened to come across this first edition copy, and as a huge fan of MIT press, and early video, and many of the artists and thinkers who contributed it, I grabbed it. And turns out to be very scarce and also rather iconic.
From Electronic Arts Intermix: "This 289-page publication, currently out of print, is one of the first collections of serious writings on video as an art form. Based on the 1974 conference Open Circuits at The Museum of Modern Art, the publication includes essays, statements and documentation of videotapes by forty contributors. The content was organized into three sections: The Aesthetics of Television; The Support Structure: Change and Resistance; and The Politics, Philosophy and Future of Television. New Television also included a Video Chronology (beginning in 1959) and a Video Bibliography.”
From MIT press: "Open Circuits was an important event in establishing video art in American museums and articulated a range of conflicting teloses for the medium, some which materialized (like local cable television) and others that remain unrealized. The conference proceedings were published in 1977 as The New Television: A Public/Private Art, and the radical design of the book reflected the conference's utopian aims."
Softcover, 1977. 9 3/4" x 6 15/16", 289 p. Light corner wear to covers, signatiure on inside cover signature. Pages clean and unmarked, overall good condition.
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