Televisionturns the Cameras on Itself

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Televisionturns the Cameras on Itself Television Turns the Cameras on Itself On May 11, the Television Lab- days, Silver was joined by News- New York City station, enabling oratory at Channel 13 aired a nine- week critic John Leonard (alias viewers and panelists to keep tabs ty-minute live program entitled The Cyclops), Nam June Paik, "the on the alternate programming . Television Show. The program was father of video art," award-winning In addition to the live spots, The billed as "a video consciousness- filmmaker Ed Emshwiller, and Television Show integrated pre- raising event" and was a pilot for a public access specialist George taped material into its format possible series intended to cover the Stoney of the Alternate Media covering many of the diverse as- medium from cathode to cable. The Center in New York City. pects of the medium. Highlights of program was telecast live from As an added dimension to the this material were : 10:30 until midnight out of the live spots, a bank of phones was Some vintage Ernie Kovacs kine- Lab's own Studio 46, where the use installed in the studio and Silver scopes provided especially for the of two synthesizers and other often invited viewers to phone re- telecast by Edie Adams ; a report on specialized equipment gave the sponses to questions posed through- the Star Trek phenomenon filmed program a unique look. out the show such as "What's your at the 1973 Start Trek Convention The Television Show was con- favorite TV memory?" and "Does in New York ; samplings of the ceived and hosted by David Silver, a television have too much power or work of Top Value Television young Briton known particularly to too little?" (TVTV), a group of independent Boston audiences for his controver- Also, in keeping with the total producers who use 1/2" tape as their sial series "What's Happening, Mr. television feeling, the set consisted primary recording mode ; a segment Silver?" In a live panel format primarily of a wall of television o f E d E mshwiller's highly-ac- reminiscent of television's earlier monitors, each tuned to a different claimed art piece "Scapernates" which illustrates the applications of computers to television ; a glimpse at "Global Groove," Nam June Paik's latest undertaking as a leader in the avant-garde ; a parody of television's new fall season by sat- irist Marshall Efron ; a look at tele- vision at its most intimate - in the hands of the public via public ac- cess and cable stations, which cover everything from a mother's plea for the return of her lost son to the Ku Klux Klan broadcasting its own message ; and a profile of Andy Pahoben, the Parker Towers super- intendent who turned a closed circuit security system into the building complex's own television station, with himself the host of Parker Towers' late night talk show . The Television Show was made possible by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, and was produced by David Loxton David Silver, backed by monitors, takes an on-air call from a viewer . and directed by Fred BarzykAA Filmgoing/Videogoing : Making Distinctions By Douglas Davis described, between film and paint- cable television, half-inch video- ing. A small screen, lit from within, tape, and videocassettes, all of Thinking about the differences be- its moving images paradoxically which provide specialized pro- tween video and film - which is built, as E. H. Gombrich points out, gramming choices . Our attitude nothing less than thinking about on the physical limitation in our toward the screen - of which this the essences of each - must begin vision : our eyes cannot keep up essay is a part - is becoming more in the experience of seeing. What with the luminous dot that sweeps self-conscious . Even so, it is clear we see depends on how we see, and continually across the inner face of that video's affinity with other where, and when. There is the that tube. We do not go out to see media, and particularly with film, is experience of going out to see a video. We -turn it on without any conditional . How we see it, physic- film, an experience that begins sense of occasion ; often, indeed, we ally and psychically, is the major early in our lives, with the approach turn it on unconsciously and leave condition . Film performers, seen on of the theater marquee, the press of it there, the images moving across the street, carry an aura; they can the crowds, the seat found in the the screen, the sounds emerging overpower us, in real life . Video darkness, and then the huge, over- from their tiny speakers without performers remind their public - powering screen, larger than any our knowing. The focusing, as in when seen in the street - of next- imaginable life, images as big as a painting and drawing and sculpture, door neighbors ; we reach out to child imagines a building to be. is inward, onto something. While shake their hands instinctively . Later the act of perception takes If I seem to be describing , a place in, a dwindled space, brought medium that is less iconic in its on by reaching adulthood, and by nature than film, remember that I the change in taste. The screen may am doing so from a basis in percep- be smaller, the noises around us less tion. If we are going to capture exuberant, but still we have gone to video as a medium for high, diffi- this space, gone out to sit in the cult, and intense art, we will only dark before large moving images. do so by utilizing it for its own We go "out" to see a painting or a sake. Artist, critic, and public must drawing, too, to a public place, to a act on the certain basis of how museum or a gallery, or a cathedral. video is seen. The painter does not Since the nineteenth century, how- need to think this issue through; he ever, since the growth of an aud- knows (without knowing) the per- ience that could purchase works of Talk Out! 1972 by Douglas Davis ceptual system into which his work art and hang them in private spaces will fit. So does the filmmaker. (instead of an audience limited to watching a film, the eye looks up From the earliest age he is engaged princes and cathedrals), we have and out; the mind is drawn help- in that perceptual system. We are seen these museums or galleries lessly away from itself, into a all moviegoers first, even those of works intended for small, private larger-than-life existence.) We give us who weaned on video. For tele- spaces, for city apartments and video our attention, not the reverse ; vision has not yet been defined. suburban homes. We see them even even in moments of absorption the From its inception, it has been in the public museum in environ- screen is left without compunction, controlled by men and women ments grown increasingly intimate; for a drink, a phone call, an errand. forced to pay for its existence by we focus in upon these images in There is no one around me, usually, reaching an impossibly wide aud- light directed so as to draw us that I do not know. Often I am ience. We have not seen video yet. further inside them; we focus, alone before the screen, as I might Television until now has been made stand, and then move on, noise- choose to be alone before a paint- by sensibilities conditioned in pop- lessly, from one work to another, in ing. Yet there is a felt link to some ular fiction, film, and theater. I control of our own time. The scale larger consensus. The viewer is cannot think of a completely equiv- of man to image is equalized, par- alone but he knows, subcon- alent case in the history of the arts. ticularly in this century, when the sciously, that he is part of an It is the case of an enormously rich epic or public painting has only audience, whose remaining mem- and potential medium coming to lately begun to appear again. And bers he can neither see nor hear. birth in the hands of people for- then there is the experience of The video experience is not, I am bidden (by economics) to discover seein& video. trying to suggest, a simple exper- its essence. Think about this act, this totality ience. It has affinities with film, This is precisely why artists un- of perception. It falls somewhere painting, and theater, but there are trained in either television, film, or between the experiences I have just as many contradictions . Even the the theater are beginning to show experience we know, difficult us more about video than we have enough to understand, is changing. yet dreamt of. This awakening has Reprinted with Permission from The American Film Institute Reports : "The Movie Going Television screens are growing nothing to do with the technology Experience," Vol. 4 No. 2, May 1973. Copy- larger; audiences are becolhing lone- of half-inch videotape except inso- right© by The American Film Institute. lier, more individuated, thanks to (Contlnued on Page 7) An Interview With: Lab Director David Loxton The Television Laboratory began in February of 1972 under grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts . Subsequently in January 1973, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded the Lab the largest grant in the history of experimental tele- vision . In the following excerpt from an interview conducted by Jonathan Price, David Loxton talks about the Lab and its role in the world of video.
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