Part Five: Television as a Creative Medium

   In this incredibly lengthy chapter I was reminded about the creative potential of television and frankly of the time period in which this text was written (1970’s). Television had a huge potential to be revolutionary but only if used correctly, stated the author. In this time period, and current day, the main drive behind television is one that was fueled by an economic society. 

Once again I was reminded that this book was written in the 1970’s when it started to discuss the Videosphere, which is a conceptual tool that indicated the influence of television on a global scale. The chapter compares the videosphere to the central nervous system, how the influence branches out from a central location. He predicted by 1980, 90% of American homes will be wired for CATV (cable television). The author also saw the potential that television had in forming global unity. He predicts within the next decade, and what was interesting in this chapter was seeing how much further we’ve progressed even beyond his predictions.

   In the 1970’s, the author also predicted the revolutionary potential that videotape cassettes had. At the time as technology was coming more available, personal expression through video continued to grow. This form of expression created a whole new era of video environment. 

This next section of the chapter entitled “Cathode Ray Tube Videotronics” and explained the process of how videos and their collection of data works. This process is also known as video synthesizing which uses all of the possibilities of electronic medium in the creation of electronic synthetics. The process begins at the image, which is captured by the video camera. The video camera collects coded electronic signal information and then erases them to make room for more information. When the information begins the process of reaching the TV screen, it must travel through a TV reader which contains four camera tubes where cathode guns* scan phosphor screen* “mixing” the pattern which then distributes hues across the TV screen. Like cinematography a video must be matted which was also known as keying. The purpose of keying is to insert an image into another image to make the background blend and created a smoothness in the video. This helps with keeping the colors of the image at the same level and creating a unification between images coming from different cameras. Some things like feedback interrupt or damage the quality of the signal from time to time. (Video of feedback below)

 Before raw footage can make its way to the TV it has to go through a process of mixing, switching and editing. The author calls this stage an expensive optical benchmark. At this point in time, technology was far from the capabilities of modern day technology, so doing a quality job at any of these aspects was extremely costful and cumbersome. Videographers interpreted this as limitations to their creativity. At the time video hardware was designed around the literary narrative that cinema imitates, this lack of creativity and experiment was built around the limitations that videographers built around their potential. What was essential, and expensive, in this time of video editing and processing was the computer. For many years the closest video came to editing was through videotape editing such as the Ampex Editc system or the EECO system. But these methods involved the digital timing of the videotape cue down to the frames. This made it extremely difficult to pre-edit a videotape through a dial or animation.

   Although there were many benefits to video tapes, especially when it came to editing, the author states and reinstates again and again that video tapes are not TV. He felt very strongly that television is a source not like projections. The author supports this point in a quote by Loren Sears,"The two-dimensionality of the movie screen as simply 

a surface for reflecting a shadow is quite obviously incident light. 

Television doesn't have that two-dimensional quality at all; it doesn't 

strike you as a surface on which something is being projected, but 

as a source. It comes as light through a thing."

This inspirational view of television is what inspired the KQED Experiment Project which challenged artists to work with the TV medium. They felt the philosophy of television still had a long way to go and felt called to challenge it. Their mantra was the technology would not change the philosophy but only a shift in attitude would. Artists who partook in the experiment included a composer, Richard Feliciano; a poet, Joanne Kyger; a novelist, William Brown; a painter-sculptor, William Allen; and a filmmaker, Loren Sears. Their experiments proved that any artist can work with television. I’m providing a link to an interview of Robert Zagone, who was a part of the experiement and created a segment called West Pole http://ncet.torusgallery.com/zagone/zagone.html. 

Fred Barzyk explained that a large reason they were experimenting "is that 

a large portion of the public is really ahead of television. They can 

accept more images and ideas at once. They're watching 

underground films; they're commercial buffs who are fascinated by 

how many cuts there are in a Pepsi-Cola ad. These are the people 

who could easily be turned on to educational television if it had the 

proper ingredients."

The rest of the chapter goes into different forms of experimentation with television. It’s an interesting read, and interesting how the artists use television as their medium.

Definitions- 

*Cathode ray tube guns -- a valve in which a beam of high-energy electrons is focused onto a fluorescent screen to give a visible spot of light. The device, with appropriate deflection equipment, is used in television receivers, visual display units, oscilloscopes, etc.

*Phosphor screen- Positioned at the back of the intensifier tube, the green phosphor screen renders a visible night vision image. The human eye is most sensitive to green contrasts.