ELECTRONIC ZEN: The Alternate Video Generation By Jud Yalkut Copyright, 1984, Jud Yalkut. "The light-flower of heaven and earth fills all the thousand spaces. But also the light-flower of the individual body passes through heaven and covers the earth. Therefore, as soon as the light is circulating, heaven and earth, mountains and rivers, are all circulating with it at the same time. To concentrate the seed-flower of the human body above in the eyes, that is the great key of the human body." - THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. "Zen Meditation is purely a subjective experience completed by a concentration which holds the inner mind calm, pure and serene. And yet Zen meditation produces a special psychological state based on the changes in the electroencephalogram. Therefore, Zen meditation influences not only the psychic life but also the physiology of the brain." - AKIRA KASAMATSU AND TOMIO HIRAI ("An Electroen- cephalographic Study on the Zen Meditation (Zazen)") in ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS (Charles Tart, editor). "We are not yet aware that telepathy is conveyed through the resonance factors of the mind... The electromagnetic vibration of the head might lead the way to Electronic Zen." - NAM JUNE PAIK. ELECTRONIC ZEN: THE ALTERNATE VIDEO GENERATION PREFACE Although the medium of television has existed in the American home since the post-war period, it has only been since the advent of portable video recorders in the late sixties that a meaningful dissemination of electronics communication technology has permitted the two-way interf low of information and vision exchange. This predominantly half-inch video technology engendered the emergence of alternate video innovators who have gradually mastered the parameters and circuitry of equipment woefully unstable as com pared to the hardware used daily by the vast television broadcasting networks. An alternate network of electronic experimenters, artists seeking an analog output for their creative flow, and radical communicators pointing their lenses and microphones at previously tabooed data, now freely exchange and exhibit videotapes of recorded and instructional data, sociological documents, inner visionings, and the conceptual processes of a new breed of logic merged with metaphysics. As P.D. Ouspensky has elucidated, the human being requires three external materials for survival: "the food he eats, the air he inhales and the impressions he receives." This latter vibratory food, as has become evident to any conscious being existing within society today, has become as polluted, in this paradoxically ecologically-minded half-century, as the air replete with noxious fumes and once fresh water now unfit for living sustenance. ELECTRONIC ZEN is an attempt to enumerate the probings of the first Cybernauts using the tools of new video technology. Leaving the trails of their progress across the face of countless miles of magnetic tape, these young pioneers have formulated the life styles and state of the art needs so powerfully that the communications superstructures that predominate can no longer disregard their inherent role in the survival of humanity. Preface Page Two New York City became from the beginning a magnetic center for many of the explorers in the new video realm. As an early practitioner of the electronic visual arts himself, the author seemed also to be one of the few concerned with periodically recording and publishing aspects of the history of this new medium and its adherents. Starting as early as 1967 and running continuously through 1973, these documents, either previously published, broadcast or heretofor unpublished in any form, are collected for the first time in ELECTRONIC ZEN. Through the devices of projective essay and direct discourse with a number of outstanding members of the first generation of cybernetic landing parties, ELECTRONIC ZEN',pLttempts"to.trace;the his torical, aesthetic, technical and conceptual interweavings which form the fabric of the new vibratory exoskeleton of a global commun- ity now pulsating with ever more resonant frequencies. By exploring the grassroots of video art and technology, the emergence of teledynamic environments, video as a meditation and encounter tool, the evolution of a new breed of visionary abstraction ist, and the development of a new cybernetic syntax concerned with hardware interfacing and software reticulation, ELECTRONIC ZEN is a record on the moving temporal tape of these attempts to "concentrate the seed-flower of the human body above in the eyes" (- THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER). ACKNOWLEGEMENTS Portions of ELECTRONIC ZEN: The Alternate Video Generation have previously appeared in print in sometimes altered form in the following publications: "Electronic Zen", THE WEST SIDE NEWS, N.Y., August 10, 1967. "Television As A Creative Medium", ARTS MAGAZINE, N.Y., September/ October 1969. "NAM JUNE PAIK, PART ONE: Cathode Ray Tube Will Replace Canvas" as "The Art And Technology of Nam June Paik", ARTS MAGAZINE, N.Y., April 1968. "NAM JUNE PAIK, PART TWO: We Are In Open Circuits" as "NAM JUNE PAIK", published only in Japanese translation, BIJITSU TECHO, Tokyo, Japan, May 1969. "The Archtetron of Thomas Tadlock", THE EAST VILLAGE OTHER, N.Y., July 2, 1969. "FRANK GILLETTE AND IRA SCHNEIDER: An Attempt to Reshuffle One's Temporal Experience" as "Rap With Ira Schneider And Frank Gillette" in two parts in THE EAST VILLAGE OTHER, N.Y., July 30, 1969 and August 6, 1969, and in its entirety in RADICAL SOFTWARE, Volume One, Number One, N.Y., Summer 1970. "ERIC SIEGEL: Television Is The Last Communication Link We Have To Change This Country" as "Interview With Eric Siegel", RADICAL SOFTWARE, Volume One, Number One, N.Y., 1970. "STAN VANDERBEEK: The Violence Sonata", THE EAST VILLAGE OTHER, N.Y., February 18, 1970. "DAVID CORT: The Video Body Easel Mach I", OHIO MEDIA, Volume One, Double Number Two And Three, Dayton, Ohio, December 1977 and January 1978. "ERIC SIEGEL: The Electronic Video Synthesizer" and "Dan Sandin's Image Processor'!',OHIO MEDIA, Volume One, Double Number Two And Three, Dayton, Ohio, December 1977 and January 1978. "CYBERNETIC SERENDIPITY: The Hippie And The Computer", THE EAST VILLAGE OTHER, N.Y., August 20, 1969. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Page Two The author wishes to acknowledge with gratitude the willing participation of the many pioneering practitioners of the video medium who shared with him their histories and insights in so many of the pieces in ELECTRONIC ZEN. As friends and colleagues in an emerging field of incalculable possibilities, they spurred on the never-ending sense of adventure and constant discovery. Time and energy permitted the completion of only a relatively limited number of such exchanges for this book, and the author here also wishes to acknowledge the presence and work of many other in dividuals and groups who contributed greatly to the consolidation of video as a vital and viable medium. Mention should also be made of the large group of so-called "gallery video artists" who produced much influential work which was covered extensively by writers for art magazines and journals, at a time when other video practitioners existed without an adequate body of coverage and criticism. ELECTRONIC ZEN is an attempt to fill this gap. Many video practitioners not covered in length are referred to within the body of these exchanges. I wish to express my gratitude to the Experimental Television Center in Owego, New York for many things, including its establishment of a unique laboratory for the generation of electronic images in which I continue to take great joy in the sharing of, and to Peer Bode and Hank Rudolph who help maintain those facilities, and David Jones who created parts of it. I am indebted to Ralph Hocking and Sherry Miller, who administrate the many successes of the Experimental Television Center, and under whose auspices a grant for Writing in Media was obtained from the New York State Council On The Arts, which assisted immeasurably in the completion of this manuscript. Thanks also to Arthur Tsuchiya and John Giancola of the Media Program of the New York State Council On The Arts, and to the Ohio Arts Council for an Irdividual Artist Fellowship in video, permitting the completion of new personal video works simultaneous with the complet ion of this project. Gratitude also to Gerd Stern and the other for- mer members of the USCO group, and to Nam June Paik, Charlotte Moor- man and Frank Pileggi for many shared collaborations over the years, and for her undying support and patience during the completion of this project, and many other things, to Peg Lovas, to whom I wish to dedicate this completed work. CONTENTS PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS PART ONE: ELECTRONIC ZEN: The Grassroots of Video Art 1. Electronic Zen 2. Television As A Creative Medium: A Seminal Exhibition 3. THOMAS TADLOCK: The Archetron 4. FRANK GILLETTE AND IRA SCHNEIDER: An Attempt to Reshuffle One's Temporal Experience. 5. NAM JUNE PAIK, PART ONE: Cathode Ray Tube Will Replace Canvas. 6. NAM JUNE PAIK, PART TWO: We Are In Open Circuits. 7. THE MEDIUM IS THE MEDIUM: The First Video Art Broadcast. 8. ERIC SIEGEL: Television Is The Last Communication Link We Have To Change This Country. PART TWO: PARTICIPATION VIDEO: Teledynamic Interplay and Social Interaction 1. SUSAN BUIRGE AND SERGE BOUTOURLINE: The Human Use of Television. 2. STAN VANDERBEEK: The Violence Sonata 3. TOP VALUE TELEVISION (TVTV): Prime Time 4. THE VIDEOFREEX: Maple Tree Farm 5. WOODSTOCK COMMUNITY VIDEO: Video Villages 6. DOUG DAVIS: Open A Channel For Every Mind. 7. SHIRLEY CLARKE: The Video Teepee 8. DAVID CORT: Video Body Easel PART THREE: OPEN CIRCUITS: The New Video Abstractionists 1. THE KITCHEN: An Image and Sound Laboratory. 2. WOODY AND STEINA VASULKA: The Vocabulary of Electronic Image 3. SHRIDHAR BAPAT: Set Karma Level Before Pushing Edit Button. 4. DMITRI DEVYATKIN: Video And Information Theory 5.