Surveying the First Decade: Volume 2

Calligrams is one of the Vasulkas' earliest experiments with altering the analog video image. An image is rescanned from the monitor "to capture and preserve the violated state of the standard…

Skip Sweeney was an early and proficient experimenter with video feedback. A feedback loop is produced by pointing a camera at the monitor to which it is cabled. Infinite patterns and variations of…

Inspired by the analogy between weaving (vertical warp threads traversed by horizontal weft threads) and the construction of the television image (vertical and horizontal scans of an electron gun),…

In 1973, Dan Sandin designed and built a comprehensive video instrument for artists, the Image Processor (IP), a modular, patch programmable, analog computer optimized for the manipulation of gray…

In this elegant demonstration, Sandin explains the mistake of using common language concepts and spatial relations to describe what actually can happen on the video screen. The images generated in…

Gusella's title creates a pun on the term video "tape" by using a split screen in which one half is the electronic negative of the other. Gusella set up a glass sheet and suspended it from light…

The "exquisite corpse" named in the title of this piece refers to a favorite game of the Surrealists, played by passing a folded sheet of paper among a group; each person draws one section of a body…

Eric Siegel, a child prodigy in electronics, built his first TV set out of scrap parts at the age of 14. He developed his first video synthesizer, the Processing Chrominance Synthesizer, in 1968-69;…

A response to the inability of his local General Motors dealer to fix Morton's 1974 Chevy van to his satisfaction, this tape blends experimental image-processing techniques with documentation of the…

Merce by Merce by Paik is a two-part tribute to choreographer Merce Cunningham and artist Marcel Duchamp. The first section, “Blue Studio: Five Segments,” is an innovative work of video-dance…

Crossings and Meetings explores the image and sound of a walking man, expanding a simple image into increasingly complex permutations and arriving at what Emshwiller calls a "visual fugue" in time…

Produced without camera input, this intense electronic landscape transports the viewer into a world that is an abstract study in machine-generated imagery. Produced at the Experimental Television…

Composed in 22 movements that introduce a series of silent, haunting, other-worldly landscapes, Pictures of the Lost hovers between figuration and abstraction, and reveals Buckner's sustained…

"Homage to Eadweard Muybridge. A historical Muybridge photo grid is put into an electronic video signal space. Working with collected postcards, in this case, the durational photo series by the 19th…

In Music on Triggering Surfaces, Bode constructs an interface between audio and video systems. The luminance information (voltage) from the visual images traversed by the black dot is routed to an…

In C-Trend, one of Woody Vasulka's "dialogues with tools," the video raster, or monitor screen, is controlled by the Rutt-Etra Scan Processor, a scan deflection tool designed by Steve Rutt and Bill…

Switch! Monitor! Drift! is one of a series of "machine visions" constructed by Steina in the '70s. In this documentation of a studio landscape, two cameras' signals are combined through a luminance…

Shot over one day, this program records the events and protests in Washington DC on May Day, 1971. This was the day when one of the most disruptive actions of the Vietnam War era occurred in…

Contains excerpts from: Women's Liberation March NYC, Gay Pride March NYC, Young Lords Occupy Manhattan Church, Native American Action at Plymouth RockPeople's Video Theater (PVT) wrote that "the…

Shortly after they arrived in the United States from Prague in 1965, Steina and Woody Vasulka began documenting New York City's underground theater and music scenes with a portapak. Steina has…

This video documents the first cablecast of Austin Community Television (ACTV) in which George Stoney and a group of University of Texas students assembled playback equipment on a hilltop at the…

This tape features Kathryn Windham, a noted children's author and librarian from Selma, Alabama, relating a ghost story about "The Jumbo Light" at the 1974 Jonesboro Storytelling Festival. This…

The setting for The Politics of Intimacy recalls the widespread consciousness-raising (CR) groups in the late '60s and early '70s inspired by the emerging feminist movement. CR groups provided a…

Portable Channel, a community documentary group in Rochester, New York, was one of the first small format video centers to have an ongoing relationship with a PBS affiliate (WXXI). Portapakers…

Two years after the riots and deaths at Attica, New York, a community day was organized at Greenhaven, a federal prison in Connecticut. Think Tank, a prisoners' group, coordinated efforts with…

The personal odyssey recorded in The Laughing Alligator combines methods of anthropological research with diaristic essay, mixing objective and subjective vision. Recorded while Downey and his family…

Irreverent yet poignant, The Eternal Frame is a re-enactment of the assassination of John F. Kennedy as seen in the famous Zapruder film. This home movie was immediately confiscated by the FBI, yet…

Television Delivers People is a seminal work in the now well-established critique of popular media as an instrument of social control that asserts itself subtly on the populace through “…

Showcasing local documentaries made on 1/2" equipment, Changing Channels was a weekly alternative video magazine produced by University Community Video (UCV) and aired on public television station…

As one of the early media collectives, Raindance Corporation celebrated an eclectic use of the portapak by taping everything from man-in-the-street interviews to concerts and demonstrations. Intended…

Anthony Ramos' astute deconstruction of television news focuses on his part in the media coverage of President Jimmy Carter's 1977 declaration of amnesty for Vietnam draft evaders. Ramos, who had…

Fifty Wonderful Years provides a behind-the-scenes look at the 1973 Miss California Pageant. In the early '70s beauty pageants across the country came under fire from feminists who targeted them as…

A stutter-step progression of "extended moments" unmasks the technological "miracle" of Wonder Woman's transformation, playing psychological transformation off of television product. Birnbaum…

A classic exposé on the disparity of health care services for the rich and poor in America, this incisive investigative report exemplifies the advocacy journalism of the Downtown Community Television…

The Ruling Classroom documents a social studies experiment played out by seventh graders in Mill Valley, California. The students reorganized their classroom as an imaginary country until the…

TVTV's inside view of the 1972 Republican National Convention made broadcast history. While network cameras focused on the orchestrated renomination of Richard Nixon, TVTV's rag-tag army of guerrilla…