{"id":4757,"title":"Synapse: Personal Recollections","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/personal-recollections","version":"1df3ffcd002f9be75caf7120cb1d7a4d491d3098836db994d8ebb2b286e9918a","modified":"2026-09-13T21:52:08.1981878+00:00","credits":[{"role":"Author","name":"Robert Edgar"}],"authorKeys":["Edgar, Robert"],"subjects":["Groups"],"metadata":[{"label":"Contributors","value":"Edgar,Robert","url":null},{"label":"Date","value":"2004","url":null},{"label":"Group dates","value":"1970 - 1981","url":null},{"label":"Group location","value":"Syracuse, New York","url":null},{"label":"Group","value":"Synapse","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022Personal Recollections.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/personal-recollections.","publication":"Edgar, Robert. Personal Recollections. 2004.","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/4757.ris"},"links":[],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":1875},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":777}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"Thought I\u0027d add a couple of notes to your excellent piece on Synapse (if you\u0027re still accepting content). Between 1973 and 1976 I taught two classes each semester at Synapse--not through the Newhouse journalism school as the present article suggests, but through the College of Visual and Performing Arts. One was the visiting artist program, where the students worked to produce and then post-produce visiting artists\u0027 work. The visiting artists included Nam June Paik, Dennis Oppenheim, Juan Downey, Jaime Davidovich, Tom DeWitt and Dimitri Devyatkin. We had about one visiting artist per month during the school year. The other class was a production class in video aesthetics. During the summer before the 1974 school year, all of us involved with Synapse pulled the University\u0027s first cable system into being--through the manholes and crawlspaces throughout the University. We\u0027d hang big monitors in the university buildings where it appeared that people could congregate and watch them, and the professors whose offices opened onto those spaces would routinely turn them off. There was a push to create an alternative to commercial television, one that probably wasn\u0027t realized until the coming of the web. Overall, Synapse had more a creative orientation than a documentary one, and so differed a bit from more community-focused groups like Videofreex and Raindance. Synapse\u0027s social consciousness was probably most widely publicized when Wavy Gravy dropped in with a 16mm version of Deep Throat, which was inadvertently cablecast into the geriatric building associated with the university housing. We were covered on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. What is hard to imagine today is that without the visiting artist program most New York artists would not have had access to broadcast. After all, that\u0027s why they came. Contributed by email 8/04 Robert Edgar","offset":0,"nextOffset":null,"totalCharacters":1875,"complete":true},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}