[-empyre-] Thanks to Tim

Sun Oct 4 01:44:15 AEST 2015

Just a quick thanks to Tim Murray for spearheading this past month of
Video and Beyond.  While the Electronic Television Center for us has been
a gem not far from our neighborhood, its support logistically and
financially to over 1500 artists, many international, has created an
influential worldwide network.  That network has catalyzed video practices
and concepts.  I know that the mainstream art world is just now beginning
to uncover ETC’s contribution to the development of the medium from
experimental platform and political podium to having a major presence in
international art museums, fairs, and biennial events.  Many thanks to the
Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art for taking on the responsibility of
archivization.

Thanks to Sarah Watson, curator of the Hunter College galleries, and her
team to assistants not
only launched a thoughtfully inclusive exhibition of the over forty-year
history of the Electronic Television Center but organized the opening
venue and a program of workshops that have brought generations of video
makers together.  Many of these early makers were seminal in coalescing
the influences of early TV technology and broadcasting onto the early
development of video as an art medium.  A bit later younger artists have
influenced the transition of early analog technology into digital.

http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/communications/pressroom/news/hunter-college-art
-galleries-present-the-experimental-television-center-a-history-etc-.-.-1

http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/art/pressroom/events/the-experimental-television
-center-a-history-etc..

Thanks to Sherry Miller Hocking and Ralph Hocking for generously sharing
the Experimental Television Center with so many of us and more importantly
for having the focus and foresight to be such incredible historians

Just a quick anecdote to close.  During my Introduction to Digital Media I
have one student at the beginning of class give an overview of one of
their favorite media artists.  This past Wednesday I was pleased when one
of my first year nineteen-year old students chose to highlight Nam June
Paik’s experimental work with the Paik-Abe synthesizer. Spending well over
the
allotted presentation time, he had uncovered the experimental work that
Nam June had done at the Center without any cues from me. I must confess
to having a
wide grin but also a feeling of pleasant satisfaction in the fact that
there seems to be a new resurgence of young artists interested in raw
experimentation and pushing the boundaries.

Thanks to Sherry, Sarah and the rest of Tim’s guests for sharing with our
–empyre subscribers the rich heritage of the center.The month has been
archived at
http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2015-September/date.html

The Hunter Exhibition is up until early November.  Don’t miss it if you
are in the greater New York City area.
Best to all of you.
Renate

Renate Ferro
Visiting Associate Professor of Art
Cornell University
Department of Art
Tjaden Hall, Office 306
Ithaca, NY  14853
Email: rferro at cornell.edu
URL:  http://www.renateferro.net
          http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net
Lab:   http://www.tinkerfactory.net

Managing Moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/

On 9/30/15, 10:00 PM, "Timothy Conway Murray" <tcm1 at cornell.edu> wrote:

>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>Thanks so much Peer and Sarah for your informative posts of the past few
>days.  As throughout the month, we have been so energized by toggling
>between the pasts of video history and the presents of curating,
>archiving, and creating into the beyond.  Although it's been a challenge
>to moderate the month as we worked up preparations for the ETC exhibition
>here in the Goldsen Archive in Ithaca and at Ralph and Sherry's nearby,
>and then enjoyed last week's opening of the ETC exhibition at Hunter
>College, the effort has been well worth the while as Renate and I have
>reconnected with older art forms and past friends, many of who we enjoyed
>chatting with in New York as week.
>
>We want to thank all of this month's elegant participants from nearby
>Ithaca and afar (thinking, for instance, of John Conomos from Sydney), but
>most of all Sherry Miller Hocking who took time out for her thoughtful
>contributions as she was juggling so many last minute questions that Sarah
>and I were bombarding her with prior to the exhibition.
>
>-empyre-'s October discussion theme, "Designing Compulsion, will be
>introduced tomorrow by Patrick Keilty of the -empyre- moderating team.
>
>Thanks again, everyone, off and beyond video.
>
>Tim and Renate 
>
>
>
>On 9/30/15 8:31 PM, "Sarah Watson" <swat at hunter.cuny.edu> wrote:
>
>>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>Odd Sundays, what a wonderful name.
>>
>>Peer, thank you so much for sharing your insights and telling of the
>>ETC's history.  I've throughly enjoyed reading your posts over the last
>>couple days.  It is always exciting to learn more about the ETC, to
>>realize that in researching for the exhibition that I have only scratched
>>the surface of the complexity and importance of the Experimental
>>Television Center in the development of  the medium. This opportunity for
>>ongoing discovery is one of the things I enjoy most about working from
>>archives, especially contemporary archives.   Most of the works and
>>materials presented within the exhibition are culled from the
>>Experimental Television Center's vast collection.The stories that unfold
>>through the unpacking of the archive are complex and varied and involve
>>an expansive ecosystem of artists, technologists, organizations, tapes,
>>machines, and tools.  It has been tremendous meeting so many of these
>>artists/scholars/technologists.  Last Friday we were fortunate to have
>>Dave Jones, Debora Bernagozzi and Jason Bernagozzi give a workshop to
>>students on the wobbulator, Dave's interactive videosnyth modules and
>>about Signal Culture.  That afternoon Peer Bode gave an impromptu tour of
>>the exhibition to a graduate studio seminar lead by MFA professor Susan
>>Crile.  And when I saw Susan this morning, she was raving about how
>>spectacular Peer's tour was and how much the students responded to it.
>>This afternoon I had the chance to chat with Mona Jimenez, who brought
>>some of her students to see the show and with Alan Sondheim, Azure Carter
>>and Murat Nemet-Nejat.
>>
>>
>>
>>On Sep 30, 2015, at 6:14 PM, Timothy Conway Murray wrote:
>>
>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>>> The ETC move in 1979 was to a three story brick building downtown in
>>>>the
>>>> village of Owego, directly on the river. When we were not looking at
>>>> oscillator waves and camera based modulations in the studio we could
>>>>look
>>>> out the windows and see the Susquehanna River and in the winter the
>>>>ice
>>>> on it slow move towards the Chesapeake Bay.
>>>> 
>>>> Ralph and Sherry hosted an ³Odd Sundays ³gathering   at their home. It
>>>> met most every other Sundays. David Jones and Paul Davis were
>>>>regulars.
>>>> Paul had studied geology at Alfred University. He became involved in
>>>> microcomputers. Later in the 80¹s, as I understood it, he ran a
>>>>company
>>>> in Ithaca that manufactured a microcomputer that was sold in some
>>>>large
>>>> quantities in India. The ETC Odd Sunday afternoons were spent in
>>>>software
>>>> development and hardware building. Evenings were wonderful dinners and
>>>> libations with lively discussions and arguments about mathematics
>>>>versus
>>>> fingers as knowledge, machines for thinking, the sheer power and
>>>> intensity of image and sound experiences, the differences between
>>>>those
>>>> writers, film people, and video people, making art with electronics
>>>>and
>>>> art¹s electronic future. These were the kind of conversations that
>>>>were
>>>> also taking place at the ETC Owego studio on the river with and among
>>>>the
>>>> visiting artists.
>>>> 
>>>> I do not know all of what came out of those Odd Sunday gatherings. I
>>>>do
>>>> know that Ralph, David and Paul developed a computer interface box.
>>>>One
>>>> of them a 12 (?) channel in and out, with knobs for fingers, and
>>>>voltage
>>>> control in and out was built and then used at the ETC with the
>>>>Cromemco
>>>> Z80 micro computer, a hacker/designers computer at the time.  The
>>>>system
>>>> could grab video stills as well as grids of video images. Hotspot dots
>>>> could be put on the image, reading gray levels and sending the gray
>>>>level
>>>> info out as control voltages that could be connected to control
>>>> parameters on other video and sound processing tools.  Also Ralph,
>>>>David
>>>> and Paul worked on and David released a fantastic software product for
>>>> dot-matrix printers that used the Amiga computer. It was called Fine
>>>> Print. It controlled dot-matrix printers.  They used physical hammer
>>>>pins
>>>> to hit the  ribbon. If the ribbon was properly worn out, the printer
>>>>pin
>>>> hammers could be controlled to strike the ribbon anywhere from one to
>>>> sixteen times. The result was a digital print with continuous tones of
>>>>4
>>>> shades of grey. The digital prints you could make with it were
>>>>fabulous!
>>>> I made hundreds of prints with it. Ralph and Sherry made fantastic
>>>>work
>>>> with it.     
>>>> 
>>>> Harland Snodgrass at the School of Art and Design at the NYSCC at
>>>>Alfred
>>>> University was also working with David and Paul to get the Z80 there
>>>>to
>>>> output drawings and computer animations. He was part of the Odd Sunday
>>>> activity. I still have the cardboard box interface unit and Z-80 that
>>>> David and Paul built together with Harland. Harland and his painting
>>>> class also built a Dan Sandin Video Image Processor. David and Paul
>>>> helped to get it through the last stages of building. It is still used
>>>>in
>>>> the video program at Alfred and at the Institute for Electronic Arts.
>>>> Harland Snodgrass started the first, if not one of the very earliest
>>>> video arts programs in an art school in the United States. It would
>>>>make
>>>> sense that that would happen in a College of Ceramics, ie: materials,
>>>> materials.
>>>> 
>>>> In the early 1980¹s a number of we living in Owego at the time and in
>>>>the
>>>> near vicinity formed the ³Tuesday Afternoon Building Club². The goal
>>>>was
>>>> to build, under David Jones¹s guidance, new and more advanced video
>>>> processing prototypes that would become printed circuit boards. As
>>>> printed boards there could be multiples and we in the club would be
>>>>able
>>>> to have the systems for our personal studios and the ETC would be able
>>>>to
>>>> have a new generation of video systems in the studio. Mimi Martin was
>>>> building a colorizer, Barbara Buckner a computer interface, Neil
>>>>Zusman a
>>>> keyer, I was building a realtime video frame buffer. I maybe be
>>>> forgetting some. What were you building Matt Schlanger?  We got
>>>>together
>>>> on many Tuesdays, ate ice cream sandwiches and soldered electronic
>>>>parts
>>>> onto perforated boards. It was like jewelry making. David knew the
>>>> electronics. We were learning from him. We built our boxes.
>>>> 
>>>> As I remember Matt Schlanger and Richard Brewster worked with David at
>>>> the ETC to layout the printed boards for the new processing systems.
>>>>The
>>>> boards were printed and the new boxes were built for the ETC studio. I
>>>> built a second video buffer together with David that had printed
>>>>boards.
>>>> One of the printed digital video buffers, the FB-1, was installed and
>>>> used in the ETC studio.  The old hand wired video processing units
>>>>were
>>>> retired as they became buggy. The ETC had new systems by the mid 1980s
>>>> that were in use until the day the studio was unplugged in 2011. A
>>>>number
>>>> of the colorizers, keyers, oscillators and digital buffers that were
>>>> produced are presently in various artists¹and schools¹ studios. Also a
>>>> number of those systems have migrated to the Video Arts program and
>>>>the
>>>> Institute for Electronic Arts  (IEA) at the School of Art and Design,
>>>> NYSCC at Alfred University, Alfred NY.  Also a number of those printed
>>>> board video systems are in use and available at the recently emerged
>>>> Signal Culture video studio in Owego. Thank you Jason and Debora
>>>> Bernagozzi, Hank Rudolph and David Jones for the new Signal Culture
>>>>Owego
>>>> program and artist residencies. The IEA Alfred, founded in 1997 and
>>>>the
>>>> Signal Culture Owego founded in 2012 continue the rich history and
>>>> heritage of emerging electronic technology and artist collaborations
>>>>and
>>>> development.
>>>> 
>>>> More later.
>>>> 
>>>> The importance of the ETC artists exhibition video art opportunities,
>>>> communities of engagement,  state wise, nationally and
>>>>internationallyŠ
>>>> 
>>>> The critical writings of ETC artists work Š
>>>> 
>>>> The numerous significant supporters at the New York State Council of
>>>>the
>>>> Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Arts
>>>>Council,
>>>> and the Ohio Arts Council.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Bests,
>>>> Peer Bode
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> empyre forum
>>>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>>Sarah Watson
>>Chief Curator
>>Hunter College Art Galleries
>>695 Park Ave
>>New York, New York 10065
>>212-772-4991
>>swat at hunter.cuny.edu
>>
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
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>
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