"One of the most appealing qualities of video for everyone was its cheapness, in terms of monetary comparison to film," said video artist Martha Rosler, Penn's first Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Visiting Professor of Contemporary Art. "Then there's its sketchbook character, its 'throwawayness,' its relationship to television, and its ability to tell a story, to show some reality, to be unaesthetic."

An artist who finds the unaesthetic appealing? This conundrum is readily solved after a few minutes of conversation with Ms. Rosler, who is teaching "Video Between Art and Television" this semester to a group of graduate and undergraduate History of Art students. Her presence on campus is made possible by the recently established Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Initiative in Contemporary Art, which brings prominent artists to Penn for a semester's residency.

Ms. Rosler's course is an introduction to independent video production--or video art--with a primary focus on the United States. Her students are viewing most of the history of video art, which has been around for only 30 years. The late 1960s ushered in the availability of portable equipment. Since then, Ms. Rosler said, video has been a medium of choice for many "studio" artists (as well as for filmmakers) who had begun working, and often continued to work, in a variety of other, more traditional media. She also noted that artists' videos began in what might be characterized as an anti-gallery, "artists' power" sentiment of that era.

"Some studio artists gravitated to video because it was modern, accessible and in effect 'unmonitored,' " said Ms. Rosler. "Perhaps most of all, it was completely free of being a commodity. This was all part of the artist revolt against the traditional modes of 'delivery' of art, against the gallery/museum domination."

She went on to say, however, that the gigantic increase in wealth among the corporate and financial elites in the leading countries in the 1980s inflated the value of anything that the art system could get its hands on--even things specifically intended to escape such treatment, such as video art.

She also noted an important distinction between videotapes, which are meant to be easily accessible through distribution to a wide variety of audiences, and video installation, which is intended for a museum-going public. "The former is still alive and well and growing by leaps and bounds, or so my distributors tell me," Ms. Rosler explained. "But the museum world and the collectors, of course, focus primarily on the work that lives within institutional walls."

Ms. Rosler's course examines a particular type of video art, one that is critical of broadcast television and often to other elements of contemporary culture. She said that many artists who have chosen to use video have de-emphasized its relationship to broadcast television, in favor of other elements of the technology.

A glance at the course roster of videos that are being seen by Ms. Rosler's class reveals a broad range of subjects examined by video artists, including World War II; prime-time television; "Dynasty," as in Joan Collins; Sarajevo; and Ms. Rosler's own classic, "Semiotics of the Kitchen," in which cooking utensils are displayed alphabetically.

"I started out as a painter, but I felt that I had more to say than my abstract painting could allow me to do," Ms. Rosler said. "I realized that painting wasn't engaging the most vital parts of myself, so I began doing sculpture but that still seemed lacking.

"I also began doing performance art at one time and pretty much quit painting. And as with many artists, I'd also begun using a camera, and I extended my photographic skills," she said. "Then, when the chance came to learn video from a technician in the University of California at San Diego medical school, while I was in grad school there, I took it, as did several of my classmates."

Asked about what visual artists are doing with new technologies, such as computer-generated art, Ms. Rosler replied, "I don't yet know what computer art is. But it has certainly been developed in a climate of much greater artistic subordination to the goals of the distribution system. In addition, computers are relatively expensive. Video has also become fairly expensive, and those who have access to the most expensive editing technology are the most highly acclaimed in the world of art consumption, though not necessarily among other artists.

"At present, computer art has not found its real network," she added, "but many people think that the Internet will make for a new form of art that will not necessarily involve classically structured work. So far I'm not persuaded, but so much of this is still in flux."