Vertical Roll is a 1972 video art piece by American video and performance artist Joan Jonas. It is a sequel to Jonas' first video work Organic Honey's Visual Telepathy. Jonas' interfacing with the material grammar of video was significant to the late 1960s and early 1970s experimentation with new video technology. Among others, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Nam June Paik and Peter Campus also contributed to the emergent material discourse of video art.

Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting. Video art can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast; installations viewed in galleries or museums; works either streamed online, or distributed as video tapes, or on DVDs; and performances which may incorporate one or more television sets, video monitors, and projections, displaying live or recorded images and sounds.