Every so often, you’ll see a portrait-of-the-artist documentary that’s so beautifully made, about a figure of such unique fascination, whose art is so perfectly showcased by the documentary format, that when it’s over you can’t believe the film hadn’t existed until now.
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 23, 7:30PM Ralph Hocking: Selected Works
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 28, 7:30PM Ralph Hocking: In Conversation with Peer Bode and Kathy High Replay: YouTube
Ralph Hocking has been a leader in the field of electronic media art since the 1960s, founding one of the first campus-based media access programs in the country at Binghamton University, where he served as Professor of Video and Computer Art and Chair of the Cinema Department until his retirement in 1998.
In 1971, Hocking established the independent nonprofit Experimental Television Center, with a residency and research program for artists, equipment access and training programs for the community, and regional and national exhibition programs.
He has served as consultant, advisor and panelist with such organizations as the New York State Council on the Arts, the University Wide Arts Committee, the Society for Photographic Education, the Massachusetts Arts Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and many museums and galleries. His personal creative work has been exhibited widely worldwide. He has received support for his work from the NEA’s Visual Arts Fellowship Program and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Peer Bode created an extensive body of work that investigates electronic media events, active perception systems and culture in a career spanning over 4 decades as a video artist. A graduate of Binghamton University’s Cinema Department, Bode studied with Ken Jacobs, Larry Gottheim, Nicholas Ray and Peter Kubelka, and later with Woody and Steina Vasulka, Paul Sharits, Tony Conrad and Hollis Frampton at SUNY Buffalo’s Media Study Program. Bode worked at the Experimental Television Center (ETC) which his lifelong mentor and friend Ralph Hocking established in Binghamton in 1970. At ETC, Bode made his seminal early works while assisting and collaborating with the video artist and engineer David Jones, whose “Jones Frame Buffer” became a signature processor within Bode’s oeuvre. His work has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including MoMA, Anthology Film Archives, the Whitney Biennial, the European Media Art Festival (Germany), Impakt Film and Video Art Festival (the Netherlands), Viper Festival (Switzerland), among many others. A key figure of the Owego and Alfred schools of video arts, Bode headed the Video Arts Program at the School of Art and Design, NYSCC at Alfred University, where he co-founded the Institute for Electronic Arts (IEA).
Kathy High is an interdisciplinary artist working with technology, art and biology. She collaborates with scientists and artists, and considers living systems, empathy, animal sentience, and the social, political and ethical dilemmas of biotechnology and surrounding industries. She has received awards including the Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and National Endowment for Arts. Her art works have been shown at documenta 13 (Germany), Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Lincoln Center and Exit Art (NYC), UCLA (Los Angeles), Science Gallery (Dublin), NGBK (Berlin), Festival Transitio_MX (Mexico), MASS MoCA (North Adams), Para-site Gellery (Hong Kong) and Esther Klein Gellery, Science Center (Philadelphia). High is Professor in Arts, and a lab at the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy.
Sponsored by the Binghamton University Cinema Department & Harpur College Dean’s Speakers Series.
ETC has some exciting news about our future. Ralph and I have stepped back, and ETC is moving to Atlanta, Georgia under the direction of Erik Gavriluk.
Ralph and Erik have been working together since 2019, discussing our past programs, the research into early video history, and the historic analog instruments which were used by artists in the studio for over 40 years. They reimagined ways to incorporate and nurture those legacies, while enfolding new initiatives.
Erik is an excellent guide for ETC’s next stage. He brings experience in restoring and promoting electronic machines across research, commercial and philanthropic environments, plus innovative ideas and new people.
The ETC studio and hundreds of video and audio tools and systems are now in a large space in Atlanta suitable for residency and research projects. Restoration of historically important devices is underway. Ralph and I always wanted these old machines to live on, and we look forward to this reinvention.
But I will confirm that all the pillars of ETC are coming back: the residency program, finishing funds, and hardware development. Plus new programs around attribution, rights recovery, and distribution.
The first solo presentation of the artist’s work at a US museum in 25 years, this exhibition sheds light on how these sculptures – which draw parallels between nature, technology, and time – continue to resonate in today’s digitally interconnected world.
The three-year project will digitize 1,015 videotapes produced from 1967-1979 with the collections of six institutions from across the United States. They represent the “Guerrilla Television” movement, a period when artists, activists, and community organizers utilized the new technology of portable video to create experimental works outside the restricted structures of broadcast television.
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Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY September 9 – December 18, 2016
Signal to Code provides a special emphasis on the influential history of video art in the Central New York region. Sampling forty years of video art held in the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media in the Cornell Library, the exhibition features works created in the pioneering facilities of the Experimental Television Center in Binghamton and Owego, New York.
Founded by Ralph Hocking in 1971, ETC offered artist residencies to more than 1,600 international artists for work with the Center’s innovative electronic tools. Most American video artists received some form of support from ETC, whether through residencies or grants, thus positioning the Central New York region as pivotal to the history of video art.
The exhibition also includes artists screened in the country’s first video festival, the Ithaca Video Festival (1975–83), which was founded and curated by artist Philip Mallory Jones.
Beginning in the late 1960s, artists and technologists began to custom-create hardware and software for real-time manipulation of video signals through original designs or as hacks to devices common to television production. The artists and tool designers working together at ETC extended this work across analog and digital domains in an expanded media environment.
ETC was renowned for the experimental video processing tools developed by prominent artists and designers such as Ralph Hocking, Nam June Paik, Shuya Abe, David Jones, and Daniel Sandin. Dazzling play with electronic color and form captured the imagination of the original group of video artists, while blends of synthetic sound and radical experimentation in narrative style increasingly enveloped the imagery of more recent artists.
Eleven works will screen simultaneously:
Ralph Hocking, Transparent Body #3, 1974. Single-channel video projection (color, silent); 14:26 min.
David Blair, Wax or The Discovery of Television Among the Bees, 1991. Single-channel video on CRT monitor (color, sound); 1:25 min.
Andrew Deutsch, Magnetic North, 1996-2007. Single-channel video on CRT monitor (color, sound); 7:37 min.
Barbara Hammer and Paula Levine, Two Bad Daughters, 1988. Single-channel video on CRT monitor (color, sound); 12:30 min.
Gary Hill, Earth Pulse, 1975. Single-channel video on CRT monitor (color, sound); 5:47 min.
Sara Hornbacher, Writing Degree Z, 1985. Single-channel video on CRT monitor (color, sound); 5:21 min.
Philip Mallory Jones, First World Order, 1992–94. Single-channel video on CRT monitor (color, sound); 27 mins.
Rohesia Hamilton Metcalfe, La Blanchisseuse, 1993. Single-channel video on CRT monitor (B&W, sound); 10:50 min.
NNeng-M (Brian Moran, Nancy Meli Walker, Benton C Bainbridge, and Molly Kittle), Tears, 1999. Single-channel video on CRT monitor (color, sound); 4:58 min.
Lynne Sachs, Window Work, 2000. Single-channel video on CRT monitor (color, sound); 9:04 min.
Ann-Sargent Wooster, Dialectics of Romance, 1985. Single-channel video on CRT monitor (color, sound); 30:54 min.
March 17 – October 14, 2016 Hirshland Exhibition Gallery, Carl A. Kroch Library Cornell University
Signal to Code: 50 Years of Media Art in The Rose Goldsen Archive explores 50 years of electronic and digital artwork and ephemera held in the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art.
Photo: Sherry Hocking/ETC
The exhibition offers a unique opportunity to experience more than 60 original electronic and digital artworks in video, sound, portable media and the Internet, on 15 separate media display stations. The exhibition also features posters, pamphlets and other items documenting the work of international media artists and the granting agencies and cultural centers that have supported this work across artistic boundaries and geopolitical zones. “Signal to Code” provides a special emphasis on the influential histories of media art in Ithaca and the Central New York region, along with the Goldsen Archive’s extensive partnerships in Asia.
Paik/Abe Raster Manipulation Unit (1968). Photo: Sherry Hocking/ETC
The Goldsen Archive is the home of the ETC moving-image and ephemera collections. Many artists’ videotapes are included in this exhibition, as well as posters, letters and representative analog tools and systems.
This exhibition is funded through the generous support of the Stephen ’58 MBA ’59 and Evalyn Edwards ’60 Milman Exhibition Fund, and the Rose Goldsen Lecture Series.
Hunter College Art Galleries Presents: The Experimental Television Center: A History, Etc . . .
Opening Reception: September 24, 2015, 7–9 pm September 25–November 21, 2015 Gallery Hours: Wednesday–Saturday, 12–6 pm
205 Hudson Street Gallery Hunter College MFA Campus New York, New York
Organized by: Sarah Watson, Chief Curator of the Hunter College Art Galleries, Timothy Murray, Curator of the Rose Golden Archive of New Media Art, and Sherry Miller Hocking, Assistant Director of the Experimental Television Center.
The Exhibition
The Experimental Television Center (ETC) in Owego, New York, is one of North America’s preeminent organizations for video art, fostering a community for creativity and innovation through its residency and tool-building programs. The Experimental Television Center: A History, Etc…is the first academic survey of the Center’s prolific, yet under recognized role in the evolution of video art. Through works of art, ephemera, and video processing tools, this exhibition maps the ETC’s influence within the larger narrative of the history of video into the digital and internet age.
From its inception in 1971 over 1,600 artists participated in the ETC residency program, which functioned as a site for exploration, education, and practice for media artists. This exhibition spans works from the 1960s through the 2000s and also includes a collection of original analog instruments designed by artists/technologists, as well as two interactive installations featuring contemporary tools designed by David Jones, a long-time collaborator with ETC, and by Jason and Debora Bernagozzi, founders of the new media organization Signal Culture in Owego, New York.
Featured Artists
Benton C. Bainbridge, Perry Bard, Irit Batsry, Zoe Beloff, Kjell Bjørgeenen, Peer Bode, Nancy Buchanan, Barbara Buckner, Torsten Zenas Burns, Andrew Castrucci, Connie Coleman, Deana Crane, Renate Ferro, Raymond Ghirardo, Shalom Gorewitz, Alex Hahn, Barbara Hammer, Thomas Allen Harris, Liselot van der Heijden, Kathy High, Gary Hill, Ralph Hocking, Sherry Miller Hocking, Sara Hornbacher, Dave Jones, Philip Mallory Jones, John Knecht, Richard Kostelanetz, Shigeko Kubota, Hank Linhart, Jeanne Liotta, LoVid (Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus), Kristin Lucas, Darrin Martin, Charlotte Moorman, NNeng-M (Benton C Bainbridge, Molly Kittle, Brian Moran, Nancy Meli Walker), Marisa Olson, Nam June Paik, Alan Powell, Daniel Reeves, Megan Roberts, Peter Rose, Eric Ross, Mary Ross, Lynne Sachs, Matt Schlanger, Caspar Stracke, Mark Street, Aldo Tambellini, Steina Vasulka, Woody Vasulka, Reynold Weidenaar, Walter Wright, Virgil Wong, Jud Yalkut, Arnie Zane.
About the Experimental Television Center
In 1971 Ralph Hocking, a professor in the Cinema Department at Binghamton University founded the Experimental Television Center out of his media-access organization Student Experiments in Television. As the interest in video as an artistic medium gained momentum, the ETC provided access to and training in the use of this new technology to artists, interested citizens, and social, cultural, and educational organizations. Invested in pushing the boundaries of the video medium, the ETC developed a research program to create a more flexible set of processing tools for artists. Under the direction of artist Nam June Paik and video engineer Shuya Abe, a Paik/Abe Video Synthesizer was constructed for Center’s permanent use, which launched the ETC artist’s residency program.
The Center’s philosophy and ethos endures through an ongoing commitment to education, research, and the preservation of video as a medium. According to this mission, the ETC’s comprehensive archive is now housed in the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and is currently being digitized, preserved, and made available for research. The Experimental Television Center would like to thank some of our many funders over the past forty years: New York State Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology, the Andy Warhol Foundation, mediaThe foundation, and the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University.
The Experimental Television Center: A History, Etc… is made possible by the generous support of the Hunter Exhibition Fund; Arts Across the Curriculum Initiative, Hunter College; Ruth Stanton; the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art and the Digitization and Conservation Services, Cornell Library; Society for the Humanities, Cornell University; the Experimental Television Center; New York State Council for the Humanities; Electronic Arts Intermix, Dave Jones Design and Signal Culture.
About the Hunter College Art Galleries
The Hunter College Art Galleries, under the auspices of the Department of Art and Art History, have been a vital aspect of the New York cultural landscape since their inception over a quarter of a century ago. This exhibition builds on a long tradition of creative interchange between the disciplines of art history and studio art at Hunter.
Widely regarded as one of the leading art programs in the country, Hunter College’s Department of Art and Art History serves both undergraduate and graduate students, offering an undergraduate major in Art, a BFA and an MFA in Studio Art, and an MA in Art History. In its 2012 rankings of “America’s Best Graduate Schools,” U.S. News & World Report ranked Hunter’s Master of Fine Arts program thirteenth and the painting and drawing program seventh in the nation.
Book launch for The Emergence of Video Processing Tools: Television Becoming Unglued, edited by Kathy High, Sherry Miller Hocking and Mona Jimenez (Intellect Books, 2014). New Museum, NYC, July 13, 2014.
Beginning in the late 1960s, artists and technologists began to custom-create hardware and software for real-time manipulation of video signals through original designs or as hacks to devices common to television production. Contemporary artists and tool designers continue this work in analog and digital domains in an expanded media environment.
This program will bring focus to the social and artistic dimensions of custom tool development, and to the dual impulses to create new instruments and conserve and use older ones.
In conversation will be inventor Dave Jones, whose video instruments span forty years, artists-designers Kyle Lapidus and Tali Hinkis of LoVid, Rhizome conservator Dragan Espenschied, and Hank Rudolph of the artist space Signal Culture and the Experimental Television Center.
The book discusses such early video instruments including the Raster Manipulation Unit (aka the Wobbulator), the Paik/Abe Video Synthesizer, the Sandin Image Processor, the Rutt-Etra Video Synthesizer, the Digital Image Articulator, Pantomation, and the software HARPO, among others.
Panel organized by Rhizome and the New Museum’s Education Department with Experimental Television Center.
Video courtesy of Jason Bernagozzi and Debora Bernagozzi of Signal Culture.
Independent Media Arts Preservation (IMAP) celebrates the launch of its new web resource Archiving the Arts and the publication of The Emergence of Video Processing Tools : Television Becoming Unglued (eds., Kathy High, Sherry Miller Hocking and Mona Jimenez) with a symposium and public program on June 13, 2015 at Burchfield Penney Art Center (BPAC), SUNY Buffalo State.
Photo courtesy of Burchfield Penny Art Center
Target participants are professionals and students with some level of expertise in audiovisual preservation. Conveners and facilitators include Andrew Ingall, Executive Director of IMAP, Archivist and Time-Based Art Conservator Jeff Martin, and Carolyn Tennant, Director of Archives and Migrating Media at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center.
Speakers include Desiree Alexander, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art; Madeleine Casad, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art; Tom Colley, Collection Manager, Video Data Bank; Dianne Dietrich, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art; Athena Christa Holbrook, The Museum of Modern Art; Joan Logue, Artist; Bill Seery, Mercer Media; and Maria Elena Venuto, The Standby Program.
