I love the way this article draws parallels between cable Public Access of the 70s & 80s with the web and YouTube, it’s true! Featured here is artist Jaime Davidovich who I work with in the 70s. He was a lot of fun and a real pioneer. Great to see this little known chapter of tech & culture history get some ink.
Before the Web, It Was Public-Access
I was a founding member of a video group – Metropolis Video – that was among the first to shoot at CBGBs (1975). We were friends & colleagues working at Manhattan Cable Public Access. What made our effort special was 3 camera coverage, lights and board sound. Here is a sample.
This clip appears on a retrospective compilation for the Talking Heads call “Chronology.” Metropolis Video licensed these 1975 videos for this project, other MV nuggets include Blondie and Heartbreakers videos with Richard Hell. (Note we only license as film-makers, interested parties must secure all other clearances.)
http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2011/12/13/143581537/first-watch-talking-heads-chronology
This is where editing took place for the Synapse Visiting Artists Program. This was the corner in the Master Control Room of the TV studio at the S. I. Newhouse School of Communications at SU. The people at Newhouse took a dim view of the video freak rebels who made up Synapse (my tribe). So you can imagine what a coup it was when Synapse got the grant money that could pay the School for access to make art with visiting artists. The actual hands-on was still controlled by the engineering staff but the lunatics controlled the asylum 😉
To the right on the counter I see the lower-format machines like the the 1/2″ reel-to-reel and 3/4″ U-Matic decks that would have been the format that the indie folk shot on. Editing was done on the big broadcast machines – using 2″ tape on the Ampex 1200s. On the rack to the left would have been the all important CVS Digital Time Base Corrector. This box changed the whole game (circa early 70s) and made it possible for indies to shoot and make video that could air on television. The lower budget Sony machines had mechanisms that were too shaky to deliver the precise broadcast (timebase) spec. So the TBC magically took the shaky signal and usually could made it rock solid, ready to air. The first people I remember pioneering this path to television were TVTV (aka Top Value Television).
In talking about the Synapse Visiting Artists Program at Syracuse University, I’m aware there is not a lot on the web about it* – so I’ll try to fill in some here. I was involved with the program from 1974-76, on staff for 75/6. If WNET’s TV Lab was Hertz, I suppose we were Avis. Both organizations were funded by the New York State Council on the Arts. NYSCA was kind of the Mother of Video Art in the 70’s. I hope my colleagues and mentors from Synapse post a list of the artists that participated, because it was prolific. Here is a portion of a brochure, though after my time there gives the gist of what it was about. It mentions CMX editing, whereas in my time there it was strictly the more primitive Editec.
*Notable exceptions c/o experimentaltvcenter.org and http://www.vasulka.org
This was from a schedule published by an Access producer “the Wizard.” It give a flavor of what was on then, note programs by 2 groovy Access downtown denizens Anton Perich and Bob (& Nadia) Gruen. (Props too for Seamus Murphy of the Seamus Murphy Dance Company who made amazing videos a bit like the work of Alejandro Jodorowsky.) I hope to post a full and better looking version of this schedule. For now I feature this one page because of the kudo blurb at the bottom I was proud of “A gold star to Paul Dougherty at Sterling Manhattan, who without the aid of Barbara Perkins or Steve Lawrence, managed to keep P.A. afloat last week…” Thanks Wizard, hope to pay you back with a full version of your schedule and finding/posting your real name.
Along with my involvement with Synapse, the other pivotal encounter of my video life was meeting Red Burns in early 1974 at her Alternate Media Center office. I was looking for summer work and I was directed to Red by a colleague from my (past) summer video job at the NYC Dept of Cultural Affairs. Red saw past my technical name-dropping (or should I say jargon-dropping) and offered me a job as her porta-pak assistant for the August class she was teaching at NYU. But most importantly she sent me to intern for her protege-colleague Bobby Maraino who was running Manhattan Cable’s Public Access Dept. I luckily went from intern to staff in short order. That job and the friends I met there would change my life. Things would come full circle in the 90’s when my circle of younger friends from the original dot-com crowd were mostly products of her ITP-NYU graduate school. Red is the living bridge between the (analog) Radical Software era of the 70s and its digital fulfillment in the 90s. Thanks Red!
This bit for introduction from an NYU web page…
During the 1970’s, as head of NYU’s Alternate Media Center, she designed and directed a series of telecommunications projects including two-way television for and by senior citizens, telecommunications applications to serve the developmentally disabled, and one of the first Teletext field trials in the United States (at WETA in Washington, D.C.). This innovative research center set the stage for the creation of the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU in 1979.
“White Collar Funk” aka East 23rd street in the 70s. It was a time when the novelty of having a video camera would stir interest and create interaction. Here on 23rd St. bet Park & Lex, downtown side. Back then I screened a work in progress to a video artist I worked with named Juan Downey. He suggested taking the edit I had and playing it back on the street I made it about to interact with people, which I did. This is that section.
This event was my initiation into world of video art, with some of its best known names represented. I made this film as part student television project. Yes it’s pretty bad but I think the subject matter is important. Featured here is “T.V. Garden” and “Video Buddha” by Nam June Paik. Also works by Frank Gillette and Peter Campus. Sitting while making his presentation was long haired Willoughby Sharp. He seemed very formal at the time, a far cry from approachable, friendly fellow I knew before he passed away. I think I see Bill Viola in there who was based in Syracuse and involved with Synapse at the time. The YouTube blurb contains more information.
Just in case you did not know what Media Burn was.
Very cool tease about Juan Downey and his work. I was a video assistant for Juan, originally at the Visiting Artsist Program. Along with Ant Farm, and Julia Heyward, he was on my top three list. Besides his work in this trailer we see flashes of his widow Marilys who I count as a friend (she manages The Juan Downey Estate).
avideolife 