Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. (It should not however be confused with television production or experimental film.) Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations. Video art can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast, viewed in galleries or other venues, or distributed as video tapes or DVD discs; sculptural installations, which may incorporate one or more television sets or video monitors, displaying ‘live’ or recorded images and sound; and performances in which video representations are included.

Video art is named after the video tape, which was most commonly used in the form's early years, but before that artists had already been working on film, and with changes in technology Hard Disk, CD-ROM, DVD, and solid state are superseding the video tape as the carrier. Despite obvious parallels and relationships, video art is not experimental film.

Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.

Video technology was first developed for cathode ray tube (CRT) television systems, but several new technologies for video display devices have since been invented. Charles Ginsburg led an Ampex research team developing the first practical video tape recorder (VTR). In 1951 the first video tape recorder captured live images from television cameras by converting the camera's electrical impulses and saving the information onto magnetic video tape.

Video recorders sold for $50,000 in 1956, and videotape cost $300 per one-hour reel. However, prices steadily dropped over the years; in 1971, Sony began selling videocassette recorder (VCR) tapes to the public. After the invention of the DVD in 1997 and Blu-ray Disc in 2006, sales of videotape and tape equipment plummeted.

Later advances in computer technology allowed computers to capture, store, edit and transmit video clips.

Art is a term that describes a diverse range of human activities and the products of those activities, but is most often understood to refer to painting, film, photography, sculpture, and other visual media. Music, theatre, dance, literature, and interactive media are included in a broader definition of art or the arts. Until the 17th century, art referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts or sciences, but in modern usage the fine arts are distinguished from acquired skills in general.

Many definitions of art have been proposed by philosophers and others who have characterized art in terms of mimesis, expression, communication of emotion, or other values. During the Romantic period, art came to be seen as "a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and science".

The nature of art, and related concepts such as creativity and interpretation, are explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics.

The Encyclopædia Britannica Online defines art as "the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others". By this definition of the word, artistic works have existed for almost as long as humankind: from early pre-historic art to contemporary art; however, some theories restrict the concept to modern Western societies. The first and broadest sense of art is the one that has remained closest to the older Latin meaning, which roughly translates to "skill" or "craft." A few examples where this meaning proves very broad include artifact, artificial, artifice, medical arts, and military arts. However, there are many other colloquial uses of the word, all with some relation to its etymology.