Video History Project

Chronology

Synapse Video Center

Date
1970
Synapse Video Center (formerly University Community Union Video), Syracuse, New York, founded; Directors and others include Lance Wisniewski, Henry Baker, Carl Geiger. Video and post-production center
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"Synapse Video Center." Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2011. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/synapse-video-center.

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Last modified 16 May 2011

Related records

  • Synapse Video Center Chronology

    Synapse Video Center (formerly University Community Union Video), Syracuse, New York, closes

  • Synapse 1970-1977: A Personal History Groups

    Synapse was founded in 1970 as a campus cable system and television studio affiliated with Syracuse University and operated a Visiting Artist Program and a color studio; it offered broadcast-quality post-production (1", 2" and other formats), CMX/2" editing and engineer support. Funders included Syracuse University, the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts; Henry Baker served as director and Carl Geiger as production director. Synapse incorporated and moved off campus in 1981 and closed in November 1981; the videotape collection is held at Syracuse University Art/Media Studies Department and was reported to consist of over 500 titles.

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  • Synapse: Personal Recollections Groups

    Robert Edgar contributed an eyewitness account by email on 8/04; between 1973 and 1976 he taught two classes each semester at Synapse through the College of Visual and Performing Arts, a visiting-artist program and a production class in video aesthetics. Visiting artists included Nam June Paik, Dennis Oppenheim, Juan Downey, Jaime Davidovich, Tom DeWitt and Dimitri Devyatkin; Synapse averaged about one visiting artist per month. In the summer before 1974 participants installed the university's first cable system via manholes and crawlspaces, mounted monitors in campus buildings, promoted an alternative to commercial television and drew front-page Wall Street Journal coverage when Wavy Gravy inadvertently cablecast a 16mm Deep Throat into university geriatric housing.

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  • Carl Geiger People

    Carl Geiger is an artist, technologist and teacher working in video, photography and computers; he co-founded the Synapse Video Center at Syracuse University and Innervisions Media Systems and works for Enable adapting computers and other technology for people with special needs. In Lafayette, NY, he converted an industrial building called The Creamery into studios and living spaces for artists; his works include Vista Fuel, six half-hour TV shows broadcast in 1995, and Free Flow, a street-level Internet site installation in 1996. He received a Finishing Funds award from the Experimental Television Center, participated in The Pioneers of Digital Photography at Open Space Gallery in Allentown, and performed at the Video History: Making Connections conference at Syracuse University in October 1998.