From: <http://www.ma-radio.gold.ac.uk/videoart.htm>

Nam june Paik was one of the first artists to experiment with the technological processes of Video.

1963- prepared TV's with electromagnets to distort TV signal.

1969- sound of Charlotte Moorman's cello modulated the picture on her TV bra.

Also, wave-form generators, amplifiers, and tape recorders.

Simultaneus use of many monitors to point out McLuhan;s point of "mosaic" of TV experience: many seperate threads of perception are simultaneously perceived.

1970- invention of video synthesizer with engineer Shuya Abe. Artist in residence in WNET-TV Laboratory in New York and WGBH-TV in Boston: access to full range of technical capabilities allowed application.

Paik has written in 1970 re: TV synthesizer:

"In the long-ranged future, such a versatile color synthesizer will become a standard equipment like today's Hammond organ, or Moog synthesizer in the Musical field...

1) TV tranquilizer....the tranquilizing "groovy" TV will be an important function of future TV, like today's mood music...

2) Enormous enrichment of background scenery of music programs or talkshows, combined with sharp reduction in the production cost....Traditional psychedelic light show cannot compete with electronic color synthesizer....

3) This will provide valuable experiments for EVR [Electronic Video Recording], which would be aimed for more sophistocated or educational layer of consumer.

Paik drew up a report dealing with the explanation of education possible in a global university. Video records to capture presence of great thinkers, and video recording of performances with one instrument or voice omitted so student can later on substitute him/herself to simulate experience of playing or singing with full orchestra.

From <http://davidsonsfiles.org/>

Early Video art

Introduction
Welcome to the Early Video Project Web Site!

The purpose of the site is to support the community of people interested in early video with information about early video and early video art, and current activities connected with that topic.

In addition, we hope to announce news about seminars, conferences, and archival programs, as brought to our attention. Also we intend to publish on this site interviews, articles, and reviews from a variety of sources.

We want to build into this site a collection of source material about early video. This material will include lists of early publications, lists of tapes, lists of exhibitions, lists of early video art citations in periodicals; all subject to revision and updating as information is made available.

For us, and perhaps for others, those early videotapes represent a unique window on some origins of our present culture. In their often shocking intimacy, their imaginative improvisations, and floating human eye and ear representation of the world around them, the tapes that the proto-video artists of the late sixties and early seventies produced threw a privileged light on both the countercultural and artistic world of that time. They also influenced commercial media, of course. And it is, if you like, where "reality TV" begins.

Early video often involved a strong element of prediction and some of it consciously relied for its ultimate rationale upon the future. For some it represented the first unrealized vision of a connected world, a world where information flowed freely, where everyone had access and no individual or institution had ultimate control.

Media seem familiar in the present, but are always conditional. For some artists the 'post-modern moment' began with the realization that the conditions of life and art are always fluid.

For some, perhaps, it is a stretch to see continuity between a portapak introduced in New York in 1965 and a personal computer used for worldwide visual and audible communication in 2000 CE. But not for us.

A new generation of scholars is interested in this subject now. Scholars are only as good as their sources. We may not always be able provide definitive information in this site, but if we can help direct interested people to where it can be found then this site will realize some of its purpose.

It's early days, of course, and this site is not complete. It never will be, as we intend to change it and update it regularly. If you have a suggestion as to how it can be improved, please let us know.

Davidson

The Website is generously sponsored by: Emily Harvey of the Emily Harvey Gallery, New York; and Francesco Conz, Editions Francesco Conz, Verona, Italy. We thank them.

for all matters relating to this website, contact: davidson@davidsonsfiles.org  

© Davidson Gigliotti, 2000CE