85 Expanded television: Making sense of Gene Youngblood in a digital age Introduction Gene Youngblood is primarily known for his book Expanded Cinema (1970), in which he develops his ideas on experimental cinema, television, and video. This paper focuses on his writings on television. Youngblood’s ideas on television can at times be difficult to distil as they are frequently integrated into his discussions of film and video. However, he dedicates an entire section of Expanded Cinema (1970) to television titled ‘Television as a Creative Medium’, and in 1977 he wrote the essay ‘The Mass Media and The Future of Desire’, (1977/78) which focuses Teresa Rizzo, Department of Media and Communications, University of Sydney, Australia. ABSTRACT: This paper evaluates the work of Gene Youngblood on television in the context of a digital multiplatform television environment. In the 1970s, Youngblood called for a media revolution based on an inversion of the structure and function of the centralised mass media. For this to occur Youngblood proposed that the public be given access to a multiple-address communication system so that they could create and distribute content. Television has a special place in this process because, as Youngblood argues, it acts as a kind of expanded consciousness that connects people from across the planet. Today’s digital television environment seems uncannily similar to that described by Youngblood over 40 years ago. It connects people with shared interests from across the globe; it offers interactive possibilities and avenues for production and self-distribution. This paper reflects on some of Youngblood’s ideas about television, art, and consciousness to see what we might make of them in today’s media environment. It does this with a focus on two specific forms of media art that have emerged in an online digital television environment: the video remix and the web documentary. These examples seem to embody much of Youngblood’s ideas on how media can expand consciousness by making art an everyday practice. Expanded television Making sense of Gene Youngblood in a digital age Teresa Rizzo