Danielle Schwartz reviews an ambitious joint project between the Video Data Bank, Electronic Arts Intermix and the Bay Area Video Coalition. The 17 hour anthology series released by the Video Data Bank titled Surveying the First Decade: Video Art and Alternative Media in the United States, 1968-1980 shows the work of fifty artists, in 34 complete videos and 27 excerpts. The series is accompanied by a publication Rewind which includes writings from curators and scholars as well as articles and manifestos from collectives and artists from the time period. Starting in 1968, the year Sony released the Portapak, to 1980, Surveying the First Decade forges a dialogue between video art and video made by activists, firmly planting video art's formative roots in political activism.

The anthology, intended for educational and institutional use, preserves many of these tapes, which would have otherwise been lost to technological obsolescence, providing a history of video which is an alternative to broadcast media in the United States.