The National Center for Experiments in Television (NCET) was a San-Francisco-based creative community in which artists from a wide variety of disciplines collaborated in order to explore the artistic potential of video. NCET was a space for experimenting with new video technology to see what could be done with video cameras and monitors.

NCET videos became instructive records of processes. NCET was very interested in archiving personal and inventive interactions with new technologies, rather than showcasing the technologies themselves.

The author discusses three works by NCET artists: Stephen Beck's "Video Weavings," Warner Jepson Henry's "Self-Portrait," and Joanne Kyger's "Descartes." He describes these works as displays of auto-archivization, they pinpoint the artists' means and methods while also displaying various possibilities and limitations at given stages of video's development.