ETC History 2005 - 2006

History 2005-2006

The Residency Program offers self-directed creative time to mediamakers from throughout the country. Since 1971 we have assisted over 1400 artists in the creation of works using new electronic video, sonic and digital technologies. Each year about 40 artists are invited to work in the studio, offering in a retreat-like workshop environment, access to an image processing system, intensive individualized instruction and time for exploration and personal creative growth. The system is a hybrid tool set, encouraging artists to create interactive relationships between older historically important analog instruments and new digital technologies, and to explore boundaries and intersections within narrative, documentary and experimental forms. With assistance from mediaThe foundation, we have been able to significantly advance the digital components of the imaging system, incorporating a quad G5 along with 2 G4s, other sonic and control modules by Doepfer, interactive software including Max/MSP, Jitter and Pluggo as well as DVD authoring and editing software.
 
This year's 53 artists represent 8 states, as well as Israel and Germany. About 35% are artists from outside New York State. Applicants this year included Mara Alper (NY); Benton Bainbridge and Stephan Moore (NY); Ann Bennett (NY); Caitlin Berrigan (NY); Debora Brown (AZ); Torsten Burns and Kari Catske (MA); Evangelos Courpas (NY): Terry Cuddy (NY); Eleanor Dubinsky (NY); Maria Dumlao (NY); Renate Ferro (NY); Scott Fitzgerald (NY); Brendan Ford (MA); Madeleine Gallagher and David Barker (NY); Raymond Ghirardo and Megan Roberts (NY); Pamela Hawkins (NY); Nadia Hironaki (PA); Sara Hornbacher (GA); Thomas Hufford (MA); Richard Kostelanetz and Matt Underwood (NY); Bosung Kim (NJ); Zohar Kfir (Israel); David Kwan (CA); Annie Langan (KY); Jason Livingston (NY); Cynthia Lovett (NY); Craig Marsden (NY); Darrin Martin (CA); Jeffrey Martin (NY); Christina McPhee (CA); Marianne Petit (NY); John Phillips (PA); Magaly Ponce (MA); Ron Rocco (NY); Bernard Roddy (IL); Mike Rosenthal (NY); Paul Rowley (NY); Luciana Sanz and Amoeba Technology (NY); Caspar Stracke (NY); Fereshteh Toosi (PA); Paris Treantafeles and Robert Martinez (NY); Dan Vatsky (NY); Bryan Wolf (Germany); Roger Wyatt (NY); Tarmara Yadao (NY); Neil Zusman (NY).
 
Tapes produced at the Center were again included in exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe and on the Web. Recent exhibition venues have included Eyebeam, Tonic, Art in General, The Robert Beck Memorial Cinema, the Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Tank, Anthology Film Archives and Carnegie Art Center and in festivals including the New York Underground Film Festival, International Digital Arts Festival (Australia), Resolutions at Hallwalls (Buffalo), Loop Festival (Spain), the VideoEx Festival (Zurich), Biennial of Moving Images (Switzerland), Viper (Basel) and the 9th Annual Dumbo Festival (Brooklyn). Tapes are distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, Filmmakers Coop, Drift Distribution, Facets, Microcinema International, Women Make Movies and many others. Artists working at the Center this year have received awards and recognition from State Arts Councils, the National Endowment for the Arts and private foundations and have received numerous awards and citations in festivals around the world.
 
In keeping with our educational objectives, we hosted the 11th Annual International Summer Workshop, a 10 day intensive residency available for graduate and undergraduate academic credit to 18 media makers. The workshop is co-taught by Pamela Susan Hawkins and Hank Rudolph. Since 1996, ETC and the Institute for Electronic Arts (IEA) have sponsored the International Summer Workshop (ISW), a collaborative video and sonic arts opportunity. A primary goal of ETCISW is the exploration of video as a contemporary electronic arts medium and the promotion of collaborative art practice. The ETC studio is an immersive environment where artists interact with the Center's hybrid toolset and collaboration is encouraged by the very nature of the open architecture of the system. Please visit http://www.etcisw.com to see the works which are created during this workshop.
We also participate in online salons hosted by NAMAC, empyre and other arts, information and advocacy groups. Through the Media Arts Technical Assistance Program we work with organizations from all regions of New York State to develop the media arts field. We helped organize convenings including a CNYPG meeting hosted by Colgate University and a Hudson Valley regional meeting in Woodstock, and assisted organizations to attend the several conferences and festivals including the 17th annual NAMAC conference, the Flaherty Film Seminar, the Orphan Film Festival, the Association of Moving Image Preservationists and others.
 
The Center serves as a sponsoring organization for artists' projects in the electronic and film arts, providing support services, assistance with development and fiscal and administrative management services. We sponsor about 20 projects each year. Since 2001, with requests totaling over one million dollars, artists have received almost $400,000.
 
Completed projects have seen worldwide exhibition and distribution, and have been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the NYS Council on the Arts, the McCarthy Foundation, Funding Exchange, the Rockefeller Foundation, ITVS, Astraea Foundation, Soros Documentary Fund, Chase Manhattan and many others.
 
Recent participants include Irit Batsry, winner of the prestigious Bucksbaum Award for Neither There Nor Here, with a world premiere at the International Film Festival, Rotterdam and inclusion in the Whitney Biennial 2002; Alan Berliner for The Sweetest Sound, featured on POV and for Wide Awake; Abigail Child for By Desire; Slawomir Grunberg for the Emmy-award winning documentary School Prayer: A Community Divided; Barbara Hammer for Culture Doctor, The Female Closet, and her new work Resisting Paradise; Ken Jacobs for NY Ghetto Fishmarket, 1903; and Kristin Lucas for Supervision. Projects have been supported by the New York State Council on the Arts, Funding Exchange, NVR and the Distribution Fund, Creative Capital, New York Foundation for the Arts, The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Jerome Foundation, and National Geographic.
 
For 2005-06 the following artists have received awards from the New York State Council on the Arts. Benton Bainbridge and Stephen Moore for Video Quilt, a collection of silent video compositions for flexible displays and custom software for the making cinematic patchworks; LoVid - Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus - for Cross Current Resonance Transducer, a system for monitoring, manipulating, and interpreting natural signals including electromagnetic radiation, tidal patterns, ambient temperature gradients; Igor Vamos for Chilling Effects which follows Steven Kurtz, an artist and co-founder of the Critical Art Ensemble, who is being put on trial by federal prosecutors in a precedent-setting attack on freedom of research and expression. Other sources of support for sponsored projects currently in production has come from ETC Finishing Funds, mediaThe foundation and private sources.
 
Since 1989 the Film and Electronic Arts Grants Program, has awarded one million dollars to individual artists and arts organizations in the State.
 
Finishing Funds 2006 supported 28 new media, film and sonic art, web projects, performances, site-specific installations and interactive projects. This year's requests totaled almost $300,000. Finishing Funds is supported in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and by mediaThe foundation. For 17 years, the program has provided funds directly to New York State artists to assist with the completion of diverse and innovative projects which challenge the traditional boundaries of the media.
 
Four awards for new media and intermedia performance supported by mediaThe foundation were made to Benton Bainbridge and Stephen Moore Scopikeen, Cynthia Lovett East Whist and Starry Noes, Tim Portlock Super Spectacular 2.0 and Chiaki Watanabe mux.
 
The other recipients are Andrew Berends When Adnan Comes Home , Mary Billyou Dark Mirror, Steve Bull Cellphonia, Jung Hee Choi Rice, Brian Doyle Launch, team - Lamprecht and Moderegger International Airport Montello, David Galbraith IgOpre, Raymond Ghirardo and Megan Roberts Image Stream, Andy Graydon Monster Manual, Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty Artificial Paradise, Grundik Kasyansky Deja vu, Vanessa Lauria Hungry Mother, Marie Losier Tony Conrad: DreaMinimalist, Tara Mateik Putting the Balls Away, Megan Michalak The Great American Whitewash, Branda Miller My Days are Numbered, JP Olsen The Narcotics Farm, Joanna Raczynska Good Faith Effort: Free Elections, Esther Robinson The Danny Williams Story, David Rosenbloom Eye, Michael Schumacher Five Sound Installation, Joe Stillman An ex-Marine Reclaims his Soul...The Jimmy Massey Story, Jason Varone Landscape of Telecommunicated Sounds, and Maria Venuto Gravidity.
 
This year's awards recognize work which is very diverse, encompassing web projects, animation, computed systems, site-specific installations, public art and interactive performances, and includes experimental, documentary and narrative cinema and the sonic arts. The works concern an array of subjects including Iraq's criminal justice system, LaMonte Young, fairy tales, imaginary landscape, miracles, faith and illusion, Hurricane Katrina and democracy.
 
The works in progress have received recognition and support from other organizations including the New York State Council on the Art, CEC Artslink, Jerome Foundation, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Creative Sources, The Greenwall Foundation and the NEA. This year's peer review panel was composed of independent film artist and educator Jason Livingston and Galen Joseph-Hunter, co-Director of free103point9 and a long-time staff member at Electronic Arts Intermix.
 
Presentation Funds provides support to New York State organizations for in-person appearances by film and media artists. The program brings innovative cinema programming, including independent film and media art, as well as audio installation works to new audiences and to underserved communities in all regions of the State. In addition, the program assists organizations which serve special constituencies and encourages the development of new presentation venues throughout the State.
 
In 2005-06 we provided assistance to 58 sponsoring organizations in 22 counties across New York State, assisting with appearances reaching audiences of over 150,000 people; cable and web audiences are conservatively estimated at an additional 150,000. These organizations contributed almost $600,000 toward these media exhibition projects.
 
This year's recipients included Alfred University Institute for Electronic Arts, Apexart, Arts & Culture for Oswego County, Bard College, Bowrey Arts and Sciences, Broome County Arts Council, Burchfield-Penny Art Center, Buskwick Art Project, Carnegie Art Center, Children's Media Project, Cornell Cinema, Crandall Public Library, Cue Art Foundation, Dansology Inc., Dumbo Arts Center, Electronic Arts Intermix, Evolutionary Girls Club, Experimental Intermedia Foundation, Eyebeam Atelier, Filmmakers Cooperative, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival at Ithaca College, Flux Factory, free103point9, George Eastman House, Gertrude Stein Repertory Theater, Hallwalls, Hamilton College, Harvestworks, Here Arts Center, Image Out, Issue Project Room, Ithaca College, Little Theater, Loisaida Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Margaret Mead Film Festival, Millennium Film Workshop, MIX, Movement Research, New Dance Alliance, New York Latvian Concert Choir, Not Still Art, Ocularis, Performa Inc., Pratt Institute, Roulette, PS 1, Rochester Contemporary, Rockland Center for the Arts, Roulette, Rural Route Films, Sephardic House, Socrates Sculpture Park, Squeaky Wheel, Summer School for the Arts, Syracuse University, The Tank, Ti-Ahwaga Community Players and Visual Studies Workshop.
 
Founded in 1999 The Media Arts Technical Assistance Fund is designed to help non-profit media arts programs in New York State stabilize, strengthen or restructure their media arts organizational capacity, services and activities. The mission is to help organizations to address systemic issues within institutions and within the field. Through direct assistance the program supports organizational and professional development, and the building of critical skills which will assure the vitality and longevity of the organization. Another important component of the Technical Assistance Program encourages the media arts community to convene and discuss issues which have bearing on the field's vitality and longevity. Media Arts Breakfast Meetings and other gatherings Upstate are held on a regular basis to share visions and concerns.
 
This year we three breakfast meeting in New York, sponsored by Art in General and Bloomberg LP, Location 1, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council featuring the Gulf Coast Residency Program Studios. We also helped convene a meeting of the Central New York Programmers Group hosted by Colgate University, and the Spring 2006 Media Arts Breakfast in Woodstock in order to explore the use of the Central NY Programmers Group as a model for film and media arts exhibition programming in the Hudson Valley region. We continue to collaborate with American Documentary/POV on Issues of Identity: Mapping the Media Arts in New York State, a comprehensive and interactive portal website for media arts in the State.
 
In addition to direct support, Technical Assistance helps organizations to attend professional conferences, seminars and festivals including the 52nd Annual Flaherty Film Seminar Creative Demolition: Reconstructing Culture through Innovations in Film and Video at Vassar College, the Association of Moving Image Archivists Annual 2005 Conference, the 17th NAMAC Conference Freedom, Creativity and Risk in the Media Arts, the Orphan Film Festival, Refresh - a conference on the history of media and technology, Frameline Persistent Vision conference, Society of American Archivists conference, and the Foundation Center's Steps/Next Steps Program.
 
This year's total request to Technical Assistancewas $ 104,000. The program provided about $ 62,800 in support of requests from 51 organizations in 9 counties including the African Film Festival, Anthology Film Archive, Art in General, Art Mission, Asian Cinevision, Association of Hispanic Arts, Cornell Cinema, Electronic Arts Intermix, Fales Library at NYU, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival at Ithaca College, free103point9, George Eastman House, Global Action Project, Hallwalls, Harvestworks, Hip Hop Association, Hudson Valley Programmers Group, Independent Media Arts Preservation, Ithaca College, Light in Winter, Location 1, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Manhattan Neighborhood Network, Media Rights / Arts Engine, Millennium Film Workshop, MIX, Museum of Modern Art, National Black Programming Consortium, National Museum of the American Indian, NY Women in Film and Television, Paper Tiger TV, POV/ American Documentary, Rhizome, Renssalear Polytechnic Institute, Saratoga Film Forum, Squeaky Wheel, Standby Program, Staten Island Film Festival, Termite TV, Third World Newsreel, Tribeca Film Festival, Visual Studies Workshop and Women Make Movies.
 
The Center is committed to the early history and preservation of media art. Housed at the Center is a collection of over 1000 videotapes which chronicle work produced here over the last 30 years. We are a founding member of Independent Media Arts Preservation. We are past participants of the Regional Cataloging Initiative and the National Moving Image Database project of the American Film Institute.
 
Begun in 1994, the Video History Project is an online research initiative which reflects the complex evolution of the media arts field, the multiple and interrelated histories of the media arts field, and encourages a collective voice in the crafting of our histories.
 
The goals of the Video History Project are: To provide a dynamic vehicle for the creation and dissemination of an inclusive media history, crafted by those who are shaping it; To further the critical discourse among scholars and historians engaged with the study of the origins of media art; To contribute to the continued enrichment of knowledge within the media arts community globally; To capture the cultural environment, technological visions of individuals, and the modes of institutional support present during the early developmental years of media; To document and interrelate information about individuals, organizations, instruments, creative artworks, and events; To raise cultural awareness of the origins of media art; To increase public awareness of and appreciation for media history throughout the State and internationally. Goals are realized in an interrelated set of activities combining research and scholarship, through the enrichment of History Web content, and as collaborative projects supporting issues in electronic moving image preservation through the hosting of conferences and seminars.
 
The first conference, Video History: Making Connections, (1998) brought together over 250 pioneering practitioners and contemporary artists working in new media and interactive technologies. In June 2002, the Center invited over 60 media arts professionals, conservators, technical experts, and artists to gather at the historic firehouse home of Downtown Community TV Center in New York for Looking Back/Looking Forward, a two-day working symposium on moving image preservation. The symposium was organized by the Experimental Television Center, in association with Independent Media Arts Preservation (IMAP) and Bay Area Video Coalition. Focused on the physical preservation of independent electronic media works and related issues concerning tools and ephemera, Looking Back/Looking Forward facilitated an honest and sometimes disturbing evaluation of our progress as a field and informed discussion about necessary and realistic initiatives and partnerships. The edited proceedings and reports are posted on the Experimental Television Center's Video History site.
 
Research and scholarship is an important aspect of our program. We contributed to Playback: Preserving Analog Video, a DVD produced by BAVC (2003) with major support from the National Endowment for the Arts. We provided research into the early commercial video recorders relying on original manuscripts, technical data, and product literature, as well as photo and video documentation of the early equipment.
 
The Preservation area of the Video History website contains two commissioned texts. Video Preservation: The Basics (2000, 2002)by Sherry Miller Hocking and Mona Jimenez, and Reel to Real: A Case Study of BAVC's Remastering Facility (2002) written by Luke Hones, and edited by Sherry Miller Hocking and Mona Jimenez. The Preservation resource area also contains a selection of historically important texts concerning early efforts at media preservation.
 
In 2003 we produced a CD Early Media Instruments featuring a database of significant imaging devices which played a critical role in the historical development of independent media art. The database contains photographs of the devices, examples of product literature, as well as texts and manuscripts describing the tools. The devices include video, audio and computer-based tools, both commercially available and designed by artists and engineers. The CD was featured in a three month long exhibition "Origins" at ArtsInteractive Gallery, curated by Mary Ann Kearns for the Cyberfest in Boston, along with representative tools from the era of the early 1970s.
 
The focus since 2000 has been on the continued enrichment of content on the Video History Web and the development and implementation of collaborative strategies for advancement of electronic moving image preservation resources and tools. Formally launched in 2000, the Video History Web functions as a both a dynamic and interactive on-going research collection and dissemination vehicle for media professionals, educators, and media programmers as well as the general public. Resources include critical essays, manuscripts, interviews, biographies, an extensive bibliography with nearly 3000 entries and information on collections, distribution, tools, preservation, organizations, and individuals. Visitors can generate a timeline of events in media arts history, or view the events within a defined range. Visitors are encouraged to contributed information and texts concerning the evolution of media art and community television.
 
The fully searchable site structure serves information contained in 12 databases holding over 6000 records. Results are reported topically, organized by resource area. The search function allows visitors to search all of the records, encouraging the visitor to discover broad interconnections among people, places and events. The site had over 3.5 million accesses in 2005. Over 28 billion bytes were provided.
 
The site last year had over 183,000 visitors. It is a resource used by researchers, historians, artists, archives and video enthusiasts. We routinely respond to queries from researchers, scholars, educators and home enthusiast. The site has been an important tool for a range of activities - including original research for writing of books, catalogs and monographs; a method for locating primary source materials; a way for people to locate others they have lost contact with over the years; a source for preservation information.
 
In 2004-2005 the Daniel Langlois Foundation for the Arts assisted with the continued development of the Video History Website. The Foundation supported eight organizations that encourage the meeting of art and science in the field of technologies. The Foundation received 168 submissions in response to its call for proposals within this program, of which eight were selected: four from Canada, two from the United States, one from India and one from Peru. With the assistance of the Langlois Foundation, as well as of the New York State Council on the Arts, we are focused presently on early video/media instruments - those tools designed individually or by artists and technologists working collaboratively, as well as innovative commercial devices. This research links associated texts, documentation, technical data, maker biographies and interviews, and tapes produced on these systems. Content derives from our tool and paper archives. We are also photographing the devices, and scanning associated texts, documentation, and ephemera related to events which include posters, exhibition program notes, exhibition catalogs; and audio and video interviews. The data is being published on the History Project Website.
 
We are collaborating with Kathy High of Rensselaer Polytech and Mona Jimenez of New York University on a companion print/DVD and web publication to be published in association with Felix: A Journal of Media Art and Communication. This project has received support from the NEA. The intent is to draw into the discussion new makers who have a relationship with analog devices either as part of their art practice or as an essential element of their conceptual base, and new media artists whose conceptual approaches are similar to those of early media practitioners. A Festival is planned for 2007 at EMPAC on the RPI campus, curated by Kathleen Forde, to focus on the research, and bring historical and new works to arts audiences, serving as a bridge between "old" and "new" media, in the same way that the History Conference was conceived.
 
The National Television and Video Preservation Foundation provided in-kind support in 2004-05 to preserve and remaster 10 hours of very early videotapes from the Center's collection; the works were produced in the 1970s and showcase early analog and digital video imaging tools. The project focused on those instruments - tools individually designed by artists and the collaboration of artists and engineers/technologists, modifications to existing technology, and innovative applications of commercial technology - and the collaborative relationships between artists and engineers, and the interdisciplinary nature of early media arts practice. The tapes feature important early video devices designed in the early to mid 1970s, including those created by Nam June Paik (wobbulator or scan processor, and the construction of the Paik/Abe Video Synthesizer and its use with the TV Bed, exhibited at the Everson Museum in 1972), David Jones, Bill Hearn, Steve Rutt and Bill Etra, Dr. Don McArthur, the Vasulkas and Dan Sandin. We have informational materials, technical information, ephemera including early posters and programs, and photographs related to the tools.
 
We are digitizing and transcribing about 30 hours of audiotaped interviews with significant artist/technologists including Woody Vasulka, Steve Rutt, Dan Sandin, Ralph Hocking, David Jones, Walter Wright and others who were actively engaged in the first generation of tool creation.
 
We received an Artist in Residence Award from the Institute for Electronic Arts (2005-06) for the creation of series of DVDs which document the operation of artists' designed instruments, including the Paik/Abe Video Synthesizer, Paik Raster Manipulation Unit, Rutt/Etra, Sandin Image Processor, Jones Colorizer, Frame Buffer, Keyer and Sequencer.
 
We provided an original text for A Closer Look: Hidden Histories, edited by Kathy High and Helen De Michiel, and published by NAMAC (2005), focusing on the history of ETC and tool creation.
 
The Center's programs are supported by the Electronic Media and Film Program at the New York State, Council on the Arts, Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology, Media Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts, mediaThe foundation, NYS Challenge Grant Program, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Media Action Grant Program of Media Alliance, Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University, Everson Museum of Art, IMAP, BAVC, VidiPax, and by corporate support from Dave Jones Design, Black Hammer Productions , the contributions of many individual artists