{"id":4664,"title":"Electronic Zen: The Alternative Video Generation Jud Yalkut Interviews Eric Siegel Television Is The Last Communication Link We Have To Change This Country","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/electronic-zen-alternative-video-generation-jud-yalkut-interviews-eric-siegel-television-last-commun","version":"2babd1fa72833effb01adb4bbffb2057a44e68d3cf005c1d565a623b7e3dd638","modified":"2026-09-13T21:52:00.9248039+00:00","credits":[{"role":"Author","name":"Jud Yalkut"}],"authorKeys":["Yalkut, Jud"],"subjects":["Interviews"],"metadata":[{"label":"ETC archive","value":"ETC1022","url":null},{"label":"Interviewee","value":"Eric Siegel","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022Electronic Zen: The Alternative Video Generation Jud Yalkut Interviews Eric Siegel Television Is The Last Communication Link We Have To Change This Country.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/electronic-zen-alternative-video-generation-jud-yalkut-interviews-eric-siegel-television-last-commun.","publication":"Jud Yalkut. Electronic Zen: The Alternative Video Generation Jud Yalkut Interviews Eric Siegel Television Is The Last Communication Link We Have To Change This Country. 1984.","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/4664.ris"},"links":[],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":17338},{"name":"abstract","source":"recorded publication abstract","generated":false,"characters":78},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":733},{"name":"archive_summary","source":"existing ETC archive summaries: ETC1022","generated":false,"characters":78}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"(The original conversation between Eric Siegel and Jud Yalkut was conducted in 1970.) One of the youngest proponents of the video revolution, Eric Siegel, born in 1944, won Second Prize in the New York City Science Fair at the age of fifteen for his home-made closed circuit TV. The next year he won an Honorable Award in the same competition for \uFF93Color through Black and White TV.\uFF94 After high school, he was employed by several concerns in closed circuit television, and in 1966, worked in the Educational TV Department of the University of London. In 1968, Siegel produced the PSYCHEDELEVISION videotape program for the closed circuit TV theatre, Channel One, and designed and built the special effects TV components for Serge Boutourlin and Susan Buirge\uFF92s TELEVANILLA at the Martinique Theatre, all in New York City. He exhibited his PSYCHEDELEVISION IN COLOR in the Howard Wise Gallery\uFF92s TELEVISION AS A CREATIVE MEDIUM, and his BODY, MIND AND VIDEO at Brandeis University\uFF92s VISION AND TELEVISION in 1970. JUD: You entered television at fifteen? ERIC: At 15 I did the first outward thing with television, building my first TV camera, and it continued from then on, building more and more equipment. JUD: What had you been doing before that time? ERIC: Electronics. Pure electronics. JUD: So you entered into television through an interest in electronics quite directly- no other art form? ERIC: Yes, it was electronics, and then I \uFF91 got turned on to TV through electronics by getting hold of TV equipment, and playing with it. And since I built the first camera I\uFF92ve continuously been interested in it, and still am. JUD: When did you actually first get to work with videotape? ERIC: About two years ago (NOTE: The date of this interview is 1970.) somebody gave me an old videotape recorder in pieces. JUD: A Sony tape deck? ERIC: No, a big two inch Ampex helical scan. And they said, if you can make it work, you can have it. Then I spent six months making it work. After which, I took the camera I had built and I started to make some tapes which you\uFF92ve seen at Howard Wise. JUD: That was a color machine? ERIC: No, it was black and white. The Howard Wise tapes were black and white and I made them into color with another electronic circuit. JUD: Which you built yourself? ERIC: Yes, the first circuit was built inside of the color set, but now it\uFF92s been expanded so that it\uFF92s a separate thing which connects to the back of a color monitor, and it should be out on the market soon. I don\uFF92t know who\uFF92s going to market it, yet. JUD: When did you first show your videotapes? ERIC: The first showing was just one day at the Channel One Theater a preview, and the second showing was continuously at Howard Wise\uFF92s. JUD: How did you get involved in the Wise show? ERIC: Tom Tadlock told me about the show, and Howard Wise called up and said that he\u0027d heard about me through Tadlock, came up and saw the tapes, and said please be in the show. JUD: Did you know the work of other people in the field, like Nam June Paik, at that time? ERIC: I saw some of Paik\uFF92s work at MOMA\uFF92s MACHINE show, and it turned me on- I liked it. I\uFF92d already had some of my tapes completed then, but I didn\uFF92t meet Paik until the Wise show, didn\uFF92t even know what he looked like, until someone said \uFF93that\uFF92s Paik.\uFF94 JUD: Would you say anything influenced your approach to TV- anything from people working in the field to McLuhan? ERIC: No, I was doing the work before I read or even knew of McLuhan. I found out afterwards. No, I wouldn\uFF92t say there were really any external influences. It was just watching TV itself, what the stations were doing, saying \uFF93Oh, forget it,\uFF94 and just trying to do completely different things. Basically, I was making videotapes that I enjoyed watching myself, and my friends enjoyed watching, and at the same time trying to make the tapes so I was expressing myself through them, on a certain level. And that\uFF92s what I\uFF92m going to continue to try and do. JUD: Were the Channel One tapes the same as the Howard Wise material? ERIC: No, the Wise tapes were different material. The Channel One tapes were meant to be paid to see, and portions of the tape were straight video- you know, a camera pointed at a person talking and performing, and you have to have this straight kind of video if you\uFF92re expecting regular people to pay, because they\uFF92re not going to pay to watch abstract patterns for an hour- you have to give them something else. But things are changing, and there are ways of making TV programs now where reality and abstraction can be intermixed in the right proportions so that you can hold the attention span, and keep a rhythm going so that just when you feel like you\uFF92re getting bored, it changes, and the change comes just at the right time, if you feel it out as you go. But the Wise tapes were all abstraction\uFF94 music and abstraction. JUD: What was the music on that again? There was a section reminiscent of \uFF93200l.\uFF94 ERIC: THE SYMPHONY OF THE PLANETS, the last piece, had music vaguely similar to \uFF932001\uFF94, but I must stress that I made the tape before seeing \uFF932001\uFF94 It must have been in the air, or something. The Wise tapes were edited so that the EINSTEIN section came first, then the Beatles section, TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS, and the SYMPHONY OF THE PLANETS. (ERIC: Naturally, I had started experimenting in making a number of tapes, but it has all been filtered down now. Of all those tapes that I was making, it has filtered down to EINSTEIN, TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS, and SYMPHONY OF THE PLANETS as one tape- all those three things have been put onto one tape. Then there\uFF92s another tape called WAR TRIP which not too many people have seen, and so an hour has been distilled out of all those two hours of two-inch experiments I was doing at that time. And actually that was the first time that I was actually doing video- making tapes and so forth. So a very low ratio of things were kept, to much taping was being done. Now, in 1/2\uFF94 work, the ratio is a little bit more even. JUD: All the early tapes originally constituted part of the PSYCHEDELEVISION show at Channel One. ERIC: Yes. That was one showing. In other words, it was the first and only- just one. JUD: You showed the major tapes again at the Kitchen, together with a live piece. (NOTE: A showing in 1973.) ERIC: Right. At the Kitchen, what I did was- I got hold of one of the better copies of EINSTEIN that was still on two inch helical scan and made a redub of it. So that the people who have just seen it recently at the Kitchen, not only have they seen it in better quality than the last time, whenever they saw it the last time, but they saw it through this new colorizer that I\uFF92m now marketing in New York.) JUD: How would you characterize your basic orientation to videotape? ERIC: It\uFF92s a way I express myself as an individual. JUD: What of its relationship to other people? ERIC: Well, that\uFF92s not with the videotapes- only vaguely, but not really- that\uFF92s with the other experiments that I do, like the Brandeis piece. Rather than a direct expression of myself, that\uFF92s more an expression of how people should perceive themselves, so in that piece they see themselves in color, delayed, and there\uFF92s music playing. The music is supposed to trigger them off to move, to dance- and they\uFF92re supposed to watch themselves moving and dancing. Usually, this is a mind-blowing experience, if they\uFF92ve never seen it happen before- watching themselves delayed a few seconds. But this is another kind of statement. I\uFF92m not saying anything about myself- not giving anything of myself in this kind of thing. It\uFF92s really like letting people get high on themselves, you know, get all involved with themselves, because that\uFF92s what they want to do anyway. JUD: It\uFF92s a feedback situation. ERIC: Right. The videotape is myself into tape. Right now, I\uFF92m getting ready to design a video synthesizer, which will enable me to do live video- like in the old days there would be a concert with a piano, now there\uFF92ll be a concert with a video synthesizer. And this is something that Paik is into also. And it\uFF92s the next step of video. They\uFF92re making new video devices, or getting ready to, in Japan, with large displays in color, possibly flat non-projected. JUD: Flat tube. ERIC: Yes, that you hang up on the wall. So that, everyone knows that TV is going to change into something new--into an expanded medium, and a few people are getting ready for it, by making the hardware that will enable the new kind of programming, the new kind of video communications that\uFF92s going to happen. JUD: Do you think flat tube will make TV Projection obsolete? ERIC: Oh yes, if they perfect it. JUD: What about holographic television? ERIC: That\uFF92s so far away, so I\uFF92m not tied up in that right now. As far as I know, you won\uFF92t be able to get three-dimensions out of the flat screen thing, so if people get more turned on to three-dimensions than a large flat picture, then holograms will become popular in TV. But I\uFF92m more tied up in what will be a possibility in the next year. JUD: In Truffaut\uFF92s film FAHRENHEIT 451, people have wallsize color television in their homes, during an era of bookburning. ERIC: Well, video will become like books with the advent of cassettes, so if they\uFF92d be burning books, they\uFF92d be burning videocassettes. JUD: You don\uFF92t think there would be Instamatic video cameras? ERIC: Yes, it\uFF92s getting close to it already. Video will become like 8mm film is now. They\uFF92ll have miniature plumbicon tubes inside miniature video cameras, with videocassettes you just throw in. However, I don\uFF92t think the film industry should worry yet, because video quality is still lacking. But that\uFF92s the fault of the equipment manufacturers- they\uFF92re only interested in making money, not in making something right. So perhaps one company will make some equipment right, and when that happens, people will find out, and the other companies will have to follow or go down. Right now, they\uFF92re all making crap. JUD: Do you think the better equipment will be made by the Japanese? ERIC: Possibly. But they\uFF92ll have to get feedback from us. We have to write the Japanese companies, telling them what kind of equipment we want them to manufacture, instead of just taking what\uFF92s given us. We have to tell them what is needed on the American market, what kind of new technology is needed, because the American technology is just not going to keep up with it. The Japanese are giving us all our media, supplying us with the media tools, so we have to let them know what we want in the future. JUD: How did you find the video situation in Sweden when you were there? ERIC: Video is state controlled there- state controlled television. They have some experimental programming, however it was quite boring--what I would call low-key. I don\uFF92t know if they plan it or not, but it\uFF92s meant to keep the people tranquilized. They don\uFF92t want to excite \uFF91the people for some reason. So all TV is lowkeyed- it\uFF92s boring. JUD: More boring than American television? ERIC: In general, Swedish TV is boring, but it\uFF92s more informative than American television. American television is just insane. The first priority with American television is that the commercials must go. Commercial television must end. JUD: Do you think pay TV or cable is the answer? ERIC: Some kind of alternate system where you don\uFF92t have to be bombarded, buy this, buy that, every fifteen minutes. This whole consumer crap must go. JUD: That first step is pretty far-reaching. ERIC: At least let\uFF92s get people talking about it. First let\uFF92s just say, advertising must be stopped- let\uFF92s get it around. Then, once it gets around, the momentum will carry through to the end. But a lot of people aren\uFF92t even thinking about it. JUD: Do you think a show like Brandeis or Howard Wise\uFF92s can help change people\uFF92s consciousness about the concept of television? ERIC: It does have an effect, but not much of an effect, because not that many people come. A very small minority of people are getting exposed to what\uFF92s going on","offset":0,"nextOffset":12000,"totalCharacters":17338,"complete":false},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}