Overview

We watch television for hours at a time, but the television set is never itself the object of our attention. We forget the tv is in our room as we engage with images from afar. How do we account for such an everyday piece of furniture? This book focuses on the tv set's contradictory presence both as a material object and as a receiver of images. Chris Horrocks traces the prehistory of television as a fantastic vision innineteenth-century culture, and charts its emergence through the fears anddesires that society projected onto this alien presence in the living room.He follows television's journey from its strange roots in spiritualism, imperialism, and Victorian experiments with electro-magnetism, through itscontested 'invention' by heroic figures such as Baird and Farnsworth, to itsarrival as essential consumer product. Along the way the tv acquired a significance and role that advertising, literature, and cinema amplified. The tv appears in culture as a sinister object capable of controllingthought, monitoring its audience, and causing mental and physical harm.The design of the television console and cabinet imbued it with signs ofstatus and good taste, and more radical designs drew on the space race andavant-garde design. The set has even become a radical medium in the workof artists Wolf Vostell and Nam June Paik. Yet the television as a classicobject began to disappear once the cathode ray tube became obsolete andflat-screen versions merged with the wall. The Joy of Sets brings this mostelusive object into critical and historical focus for the first time. 

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9781780237589

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Reviews

Television, reveals cultural historian Horrocks in this compact chronicle, has tangled roots. . . . Along with sets, from Baird's 1928 'Noah's Ark' televisor to today's ultra-thin screens, Horrocks examines the technology's military uses, the ethical furor over content, and its uses as a symbol in art, film, and literature. --Barbara Kiser Nature Horrocks offers a glimpse into how television sets developed from the meeting between technology and culture, becoming both familiar and alien objects in our lives. He asks that we look more closely at them and, in doing so, see them afresh. At a juncture when the future of the television set is being called into question with the arrival of smaller, portable screens, this is a timely contribution. Dotted with interesting vignettes, The Joy of Sets is a wide-ranging and well-researched book, which provides an unconventional perspective on TV. --Times Higher Education

Television, reveals cultural historian Horrocks in this compact chronicle, has tangled roots. . . . Along with sets, from Baird's 1928 'Noah's Ark' televisor to today's ultra-thin screens, Horrocks examines the technology's military uses, the ethical furor over content, and its uses as a symbol in art, film, and literature. --Barbara Kiser Nature

Author Information

Chris Horrocks is Associate Professor in the School of Critical Studies and Creative Industries at Kingston University, and a film-maker. His previous books include Genteel Perversion: The Films of Gilbert and George (2014), Cultures of Colour (2012) and Marshall McLuhan and Virtuality (2000).

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