Portable Channel
- Date
- 1972
Cite this record
"Portable Channel." Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2011. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/portable-channel-0.
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Last modified 16 May 2011
Related records
- Portable Channel: Chronology (1998) Groups
Chronology compiled by Pamela Susan Hawkins and Sherry Miller Hocking (1997–1998) documents the history of Portable Channel and its predecessor Media Equipment Pool in Rochester, NY. Portable Channel operated from 1971 through Fall 1987; activities included lending 1/2" portable production equipment, offering workshops and visiting-artist residencies, maintaining a community videotape library, publishing Feedback/Feedforward and producing Homemade TV for WXXI. Initial funding came from the New York State Council via the Rochester Museum and Science Center; later funding cuts from NYSCA and the NEA preceded its closure and transfer of equipment and collection to Visual Studies Workshop.
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Videofreex proposed the Mediabus to the New York State Council on the Arts to travel the state introducing people to video; the Council expanded the idea into regional equipment pools and in June 1971 awarded a grant, with the Rochester Museum and Science Center sponsoring the Mediabus and providing a house's first floor for a Rochester Media Equipment Pool. The Equipment Pool acquired hardware and people who could use and teach it (software), ran workshops and short-term loans for documentation, instruction, drama and abstract electronic feedback. The group articulated an ethic of television emphasizing producer control, consent and immediate playback, and assigned legal liability for cable programming to individual producers to guard against broadcast-style censorship.
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Funded by NYSCA, the Media Equipment Pool at the Rochester Museum and Science Center provided portable video equipment to local artists and community organizations and was separated from the museum by 1972 to become a program of the Portable Channel. Coordinator Bonnie Klein reported loaning equipment to over 50 groups and acquiring Sony 1/2" Porta Paks and editing support systems; the Pool lobbied for community access cable, sought a tape distribution system and began a library of edited tape; statement dated October 14, 1971 to Ralph Hocking.
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An Introduction to Portable Video Systems. Contents: Body, General Considerations, Tape, Camera, Deck, Power, Receiver, Assembly (Confirm and Connect), Operation (Recording, Testing, and Viewing), Selected Bibliography, and Organizations in New York State with Video Programs.
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Paul Ryan (Cybernetic Guerilla Warfare); People's Video Theater (Alternatives for Alternate Media II); Global Village; Raomdance; Videofreex (Media Bus). Articles by Eric Siegel; Frank Gilette; Ira Schneider; Raindance; Liz Phillips; Gene Youngblood. Index of people. Distribution system for tapes. I…