Tools: Analogs and Intersections: Video and Media Art Histories - Research

Tools: Analogs and Intersections: Video and Media Art Histories is a book project that will document and make accessible the history of a set of electronic art-making tools developed in the US from the 1960s and 1980s. The project goals are to: build awareness of and contextualize historical information; broaden the dialogue about early experimental media custom-made tools from multiple cultural perspectives; and explore relationships between “old” and “new” media artists engaged in this art practice. The resulting book, DVDs and web site will create a resource for educators, students, researchers and curators to teach and write about the history of early analog and digital media art modified tools. The organizers are drawing extensively upon the archival and object collections of the Experimental Television Center (ETC) and its founders, which includes machines, technical documents, photos, correspondence, event publicity, audio/video interviews, and art works from the 1970s and 1980s. In addition, numerous contemporary interviews with tool designers, builders and users have been produced, along with detailed text descriptions, photographs, and bibliographies.

This project was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Editors:

• Kathy High, Head of the Arts Department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• Sherry Miller Hocking, Executive Director, Experimental Television Center
• Mona Jimenez, Assistant Professor, Tish School of the Arts - New York University