- Description:
- 1/2 in., VHS, NTSC.   viewing copy.   1 videocassette of 1.
color and b/w.  
fullscreen.   sound.  
- Notes:
- Produced by Video Data Bank. Includes: CALLIGRAMS [EXCERPT] (Woody and Steina Vasulka, 1970, 4 min.); ILLUMINATIN’ SWEENEY [excerpt] (Skip Sweeney, 1975, 5 min.); VIDEO WEAVINGS [excerpt] (Stephen Beck, 1976, 4 min.); 5 MINUTE ROMP THROUGH THE IP (Dan Sandin, 1973, 6.5 min.); TRIANGLE IN FRONT OF SQUARE IN FRONT OF CIRCLE IN FRONT OF TRIANGLE (Sandin, 1973, 2 min.); VIDEO -TAPING (Ernest Gusella, 1974, 3 min., silent); EXQUISITE CORPSE (Gusella, 1978, 8 min., silent); EINSTINE (Eric Siegel, 1968, 5 min.); GENERAL MOTORS [excerpt] (Phil Morton, 1976, 10 min.); MERCE BY MERCE BY PAIK (Nam June Paik, 1978, 28 min.); CROSSINGS AND MEETINGS [excerpt] (Ed Emshwiller, 1974, 4 min.); COMPLEX WAVE FORMS [excerpt] (Ralph Hocking, 1977, 4 min.); PICTURES OF THE LOST [excerpt] (Barbara Buckner, 1978, silent, 8 min.); VIDEO LOCOMOTION (Peer Bode, 1978, silent, 5 min.); MUSIC ON TRIGGERING SURFACES (Bode, 1978, 3 min.); C - TREND [excerpt] (Woody Vasulka, 1974, 7 min.); SWITCH! MONITOR! DRIFT! (Steina Vasulka, 1976, 4 min.). Study Guide available.
Titles
+ Calligrams [Excerpt]
- Director:
- Vasulka, Woody; Vasulka, Steina
- Running Time:
- Short.   4 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1970
- Language:
- English
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Video Production, Female Directors
- Notes:
- Original duration 12 min. An image is rescanned from the monitor "to capture and preserve the violated state of the standard television signal."
+ Illuminatin’ Sweeney [Excerpt]
- Director:
- Sweeney, Skip
- Running Time:
- Short.   5 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1975
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Video Production
- Notes:
- Original duration 28 min 38 sec. Produced for WNET New York’s Video and Television review. Feedback processed through a combination of a Moog audio synthesizer and the Vidium colorizing synthesizer. Recorded off the monitor with a black and white camera, the images were later colorized. Sweeney produced this feedback during a "video jam session" at Video Free America.
+ Video Weavings [Excerpt]
- Director:
- Beck, Stephen
- Running Time:
- Short.   4 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1976
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Video Production
- Notes:
- Original duration 28 min. Inspired by the analogy between weaving (vertical warp threads traversed by horizontal weft threads) and the construction of the television image (vertical and horizontal scans of an electron gun), the patterns in this tape are based on sequences of colors in dynamic mathematical progressions, inspired by non-representational Islamic art.
+ 5 Minute Romp Through The IP
- Alternate Title:
- Five - Minute Romp Through the IP
- Director:
- Sandin, Dan
- Running Time:
- Short.   7 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- color and b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1973
- Language:
- English
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Video Production, Educational
- Notes:
- Sandin demonstrates the routing of the camera signal through several basic modules of the IP (Image Processor: a modular, patch programmable, analog computer optimized for the manipulation of gray level information of multiple video inputs), producing a "primitive" vocabulary of the effects specific to video.
+ Triangle in Front of Square In Front of Circle in Front of Triangle
- Director:
- Sandin, Dan
- Running Time:
- Short.   7 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1973
- Language:
- English
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Video Production
- Notes:
- Produced at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Sandin explains the mistake of using common language concepts and spatial relations to describe what actually can happen on the video screen.
+ Video-Taping
- Director:
- Gusella, Ernest
- Running Time:
- Short.   3 minutes
- Sound:
- silent - no soundtrack
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1978
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Video Production, Silent Cinema
- Notes:
- Gusella set up a glass sheet and suspended it from light poles. The glass was covered with black or white tape. As he slowly removes the obscuring tape from one half of the screen, his ghostly negative image emerges,
+ Exquisite Corpse
- Director:
- Gusella, Ernest
- Running Time:
- Short.   8 minutes
- Sound:
- silent - no soundtrack
- Color:
- color and b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1978
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Video Production, Silent Cinema
- Notes:
- Utilizing quick, voltage-controlled live switching between two cameras, Gusella approximates composite images.
+ Einstine
- Director:
- Siegel, Eric
- Running Time:
- Short.   5 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1968
- Language:
- English
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Video Production
- Notes:
- The tape uses colorized video feedback to generate its psychedelic effects, as a picture of Albert Einstein dissolves into a shimmering play of light.
+ General Motors [Excerpt]
- Director:
- Morton, Phil
- Running Time:
- Short.   10 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1976
- Language:
- English
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Video Production
- Notes:
- Original duration 60 min. Produced at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A response to the inability of his local General Motors dealer to fix Morton's 1974 Chevy van to his satisfaction, this tape blends experimental image-processing techniques with documentation of the faulty vehicle.
+ Merce by Merce by Paik
- Director:
- Paik, Nam June
- Running Time:
- Short.   28 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1978
- Language:
- English
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Video Production
- Notes:
- Ruminations on what is, or might be, or probably is not dance. Includes a “video dance” by Merce Cunningham and rare interview footage of Marcel Duchamp.
+ Crossings And Meetings [Excerpt]
- Director:
- Emshwiller, Ed
- Running Time:
- Short.   4 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1974
- Language:
- English
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Video Production
- Notes:
- Original duration 27 min 33 sec. Produced at the TV Lab at WNET, New York. CROSSINGS AND MEETINGS explores the image and sound of a walking couple, expanding a simple image into increasingly complex permutations and arriving at what Emshwiller calls a "visual fugue" in time and space.
+ Complex Wave Forms [Excerpt]
- Director:
- Hocking, Ralph
- Running Time:
- Short.   4 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1977
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Video Production
- Notes:
- Original duration 5 min. Produced at the Experimental Television Center. Produced without camera input, this is an abstract study in machine-generated imagery.
+ Pictures of the Lost [Excerpt]
- Director:
- Buckner, Barbara
- Running Time:
- Short.   8 minutes
- Sound:
- silent - no soundtrack
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1978
- Language:
- English intertitles
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Video Production, Silent Cinema, Female Directors
- Notes:
- Original duration 23 min. Produced at the Experimental Television Center. Composed of 22 movements that introduce a series of silent, other-worldly landscapes that hover between figuration and abstraction.
+ Video Locomotion (man performing forward hand leap)
- Director:
- Bode, Peer
- Running Time:
- Short.   5 minutes
- Sound:
- silent - no soundtrack
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1978
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Video Production, Silent Cinema
- Notes:
- Produced at the Experimental Television Center. Borrowing images from Muybridge's serial photographic studies in the perception of motion, Bode produces a crude persistence of vision system, creating his own type of "para-cinematic shutter."
+ Music on Triggering Surfaces
- Director:
- Bode, Peer
- Running Time:
- Short.   3 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1978
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Video Production
- Notes:
- Produced at the Experimental Television Center. The luminance information (voltage) from the visual images traversed by the black dot is routed to an oscillator to produce the audio signal, which varies according to the changing luminance. The video image itself then triggers the audio.
+ C-Trend [Excerpt]
- Director:
- Vasulka, Woody
- Running Time:
- Short.   7 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1974
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Video Production
- Notes:
- Original duration 9 min. Footage of traffic is rendered unrecognizable by visualization of the voltage, luminance, and scan-rate, instead of the image these components usually form.
+ Switch! Monitor! Drift!
- Director:
- Vasulka, Steina
- Running Time:
- Short.   4 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- USA
- Year:
- 1976
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Video Production, Female Directors
- Notes:
- A “machine vision”: two cameras' signals are combined through a luminance keyer; one camera is mounted on a turntable; the second camera is pointed at the first.