Steve Seid is video curator at the Pacific Film Archive. With two other curators, he is working on a history of the experimental moving image in the Bay Area, which will be accompanied by a comprehensive book.

When Video Came (Andres Tapia-Urzua, Ralph Vituccio, U.S., 2003, 42 mins) is a hyperkinetic look at the early history of video art, told from the critical standpoint of seminal media artists. This portrait places the nascent articulations of experimental video within an immersive mass-media culture emerging at the same moment. Eloquent and insightful testimonials from such prominent artists and critics as Dara Birnbaum, Bill Viola, Mary Lucier, William Wegman, Gene Youngblood, Doug Hall, Jeanne Finley, Bill Judson, and George Kuchar address the aspirations of alternative media within the onslaught.

To complement When Video Came, we turn to the de facto Father of Video Art, Nam June Paik. Paik's prodigious creative output includes electronic sculpture, installation, performance, and, of course, videoworks, the earliest efforts dating back to 1963. Global Groove (1973, excerpt) is as much a manifesto as a singular tape. The frantic collage of televisual tidbits bodes a future when “TV Guide will be as fat as the Manhattan telephone book.” Nam June Paik: Edited for Television (1975, 28:14 mins) is an encounter with the artist in his SoHo studio in conversation with art critic Calvin Tompkins, illustrated with excerpts from Suite 212 and Electronic Opera Nos. 1 and 2; Charlotte Moorman performing TV Bra for Living Sculpture; a glimpse of the Paik-Abe Synthesizer; and demonstrations of Paik's early altered television sets and video sculptures. In Blue Studio: Five Segments (1975–76, 15:38 mins), Merce Cunningham dances through video space with his own multiplying personas, the more Merce the merrier.