Timeshift: On Video Culture (Comedia)

"Timeshift" explores the powers and capabilities of video and the cultures it thrives in. Adding a new dimension to film, television and computer media, video has the potential to become a uniquely democratic medium. Sean Cubitt shows that viewers have found a new cultural relation through electronic recording, whether in video rentals, off-air recordings, music video, community, campaign or artists' videos. Focusing on the aesthetics of video, "Timeshift" tests current semiotic, postmodernist and psychoanalytic approaches in the laboratory of real-life video viewing. It goes beyond the traditional emphasis on the producer and the text to consider the roles of distributors, reviewers, exhibitors, traders, censors, technicians, engineers and viewers.