The Greatest Hits of Scratch Video Vol. 1

By using television images as its raw material, Scratch positioned itself, and video more generally, as the medium for a more dynamic, more interactive mode of image-consumption, and even a more networked mode of viewership—as the group Gorilla Tapes later put it, Scratch was a way of “talk[ing] back to television.” Enabled by the development of innovative professional and consumer video technologies, artists like Gorilla Tapes, George Barber, and Sandra Goldbacher and Kim Flitcroft deployed a style characterized by the rapid sampling, editing, and manipulation of dissociated images drawn from video archives and broadcast television. Exploiting this newly available battery of tools, Scratch Video artists warped, composited, windowed, posterized, keyed, colorized, and superimposed these images, exploring uncharted aesthetic terrain that in many ways anticipates, and has strongly influenced, the types of image-manipulation made possible by today’s digital image software.