In the program notes, Bienstock wrote,

It was decided instead to limit the program to tapes which focus on the ability of videotape to create and generate its own intrinsic imagery, rather than its ability to record reality.  This is done with special video synthesizers, colorizers, and by utilizing many of the unique electronic properties of the medium (emphasis added)." 1

More recently, Sherry Miller, assistant director of the Experimental Television Center, wrote in Exposure,

Electronic image processing uses as art-making material those properties inherent in the medium of video.  Artists work at a fundamental level with various parameters of the electronic signal, for example, frequency, amplitude, or phase, which actually define the resulting image and sound." 2

Yet another recent example is the catalogue introduction to "The Electronic Gallery," an exhibition that included tapes by a number of people who use the Experimental Television Center.  In it Maureen Turim writes,

The Center explores video as an artistic medium.  To figure out, to give form to, to embody, to display the various properties that a video system can possess. 3

Such generalizations pose a number of problems.  It is highly questionable whether synthesized or manipulated video can claim to embody all the medium's "inherent properties."  Couldn't one easily argue that video's instantaneity and potential for interactivity are also inherent?  More important, I think, is another point Turim makes, "Ultimately, though, the works gain their communicative impact in reference to other concepts and issues. " 4

These quotes refer to any and all kinds of image-processed work.  However, of all the prominent artists associated with this type of video, Steina and Woody Vasulka have been consistently associated with technological experimentation and all the ensuing formalist implications.  Their work has been described as systemic, didactic, formal, and syntactic, and the Vasulkas - who are both very articulate - have encouraged such readings.  Turim's comment may be worth considering, though, since the effects and meanings of their work cannot be so neatly confined to these categories. As Shalom Gorewitz has remarked

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