Community Video Report (Spring 1974)

ee 4:arts/training Video/improv: ‘live’ is the word by Gerardine Wurzburg The relation of video to performance media has long been that of documenting events (dance, theatre, ete.). The documents ar records from an “all-seeing’’ perspective, aesthetic renderings that selectively place your vision on a certain area. In these relations, the camera and the raw material (the videotape) are used outside of the event, much like film. : When video is placed within the realm of planned or improvised movement, the synthesis takes the camera from the outside, and the dance from the outside of the camera, and iniegrates them, with both dancers and the videomaker conscious of the other. When this form is done alive, with a portable camera used in the improvisation, the dance/camera lady is integrated as a performer-with-aspecial-attribute (the third eye), and the camera is feeding into a live monitor. Live is the word to be with. To retain these images in a recorded form, is not the object. To record would mean that someone at a later date will watch the tape in an inactive position. To see and work only with live images, knowing there is no retentive power, reasserts the ‘one time only’ quality. For the May 23rd Thursday night Video Screening Jack Halstead, who teaches improvisation, and Gerardine Wurzburg, a member of the WCVC staff, collaborated on a ‘video/improv-improv/video’ night. An input tape was made prior to the pet formance. It had 11 scenes of varying lengths. Aside from Jack and Gerry, the six other people in the improvisation had never seen the input tape, and the only instruction was that they could not ignore the input. In the design of the space, a live studio camera was located on one side, connected to a monitor. This camera was providing an overall perspective. In the center of the space was a large monitor, into which alternately the handheld camera was feeding, and the input tape was showing. The input tape was turned on by the people involved, whenever any of them felt they needed more input. When the vignette was over, the live dancing camera would feed back on to this large monitor. The moments when this input was played provided an interesting occasion when the attention of both performers and audience was focused on the input tape. MEMBERS OF THE improvisational dance troupe blend with the audience in the mirror image, while everybody watches an ‘‘input’’ videotape in a monitor above the mirror. A live image displayed on another monitor to the right of this scene was fed from a roving portable camera. -! The show—put together by WCVC staffer Gerri Wurzburg, dancer Jack Halstead & jriends—was their first video/improv/improv/video. A much expanded live video event is scheduled for June 8 in the afternoon in Grace Church, Georgetown, in connection with the “For Free" Arts Festival. The public is welcome. Video at ‘For Free’ show, June 8 The WCVC, with support from our friends, : is constructing an open video environment in conjunction with the ‘For Free’ Arts Festival June 8. Working with the element of time, through video loops, the environment is being designed so that people can come into for Gay video workshop packet available Last’ November 30 through December 2 some thirty-five gay men and women gathered in Binghamton, N.Y., for a major Gay Video Workshop. Under the banner “We must direct our technology, or it will be used to destroy us,”’ a variety of workshops, tape viewings, discussions and social events was held. A list of conference participants, a partial list of available tapes on gay subjects, and other materials are available from conference organizer David Sasser, 70 8th Avenue, Apt. 2B, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217. Sasser and other N.Y.based gay video people are planning a more comprehensive update on gay video activity. If you'd like to add to or receive, please contact David. play-exploration of some of the most fundamental qualities of video: playback, both simultaneous and delayed. Two arcs with monitors and playback units will proviae time-delays of different lengths. One arc will carry only the feed off one camera, and the other arc will be mixed through the SEG from the two cameras facing into the arc, and the camera at the end of this ‘tunnel,’ providing a real-time overview. Two box interconnected with cameras and monitor and sound, also fed into an SEG, will allow people to play with the varying elements of split screens carrying different parts of the body, and other interchanges. An isolation booth, not connected to anything outside, will have a camera and monitor in it, so that people can go in and see themselves on TV, alone. After this environment has been going for several hours, it will be turned out, and become part of a performance of video/improvisation. Again a live camera will be part of the group. The element worked with for this will be that of time: present, and time delayed (past), as seen through monitors hanging in the area. WCVC Summer video training workshops By Vicky Costello In every past issue of the Community Video Report there have appeared a few lines mentioning ways people and groups within our community could use our neighborhood video facility and services. For some, involvements with WCVC take the form of using the free video theater space here at our storefront on Thurs. nights for group workshops and meetings or taking of one of our video training courses which are offered regularly. The various levels of involvement between WCVC and Adams-Morgan share a basic goal to bring about better neighborhood dialogue about the news, issues and events of concern to those living and working in the community. Our efforts at developing community news and video distribution are detailed elsewhere. In order to truly reflect the concerns of our area with all of its diverse peoples we hope that more neighborhood residents will become aware of the ways video can be used within the community and possibly plug into some of the programming production. This is not to say that everyone in Adams-Morgan should become a video technician and/or producer. That would be an impractical notion. The goal we see is much simpler: for video to facilitate more community interaction. We want to show more people how to use our ‘2” portable video technology to report, docu: ment and express our news and feelings to each other. In order for this to develop, a few things must happen, at the same time. More people need to become aware of the existence of Community Video; some can become involved in the production of community videotapes, but the more general need is for the media, and our Community Video process specifically, to be demystified for us all. This is mostly a matter of learning the rudiments of what the technology involved is (even if only to recognize it when one sees it), and most important, of gaining an awareness of the possibility for autonomous production and control of our own information; that is, self-expression. What it comes down to is realizing that no one is just going to come in and report about what’s happening here without community involvement in that news process. In fact, the goal is for community groups themselves to be actively involved in these productions, by either reporting of the relevant information to those making the tapes or by more actively producing the tape, themselves, or with our assistance. Training Now in Process In order to help more community people learn how to produce tapes we're also encouraging more neighborhood residents to take advantage of the basic video skills courses we are offering again this summer. Weare presently running two courses, one on Sat. mornings and the other on Tues. evenings. A new series of training workshops will begin this month at the Center. They are open to all members of the community, especially to residents of Adams-Morgan and members of community organizations. The next Saturday morning class will begin June 22. The Tuesday evening class will start July 9. Additional times for the rest of the summer are listed on the sign-up form below. The rate for participation in these classes is $50 per person for the 6-week class as a minimum rate, unless severe financial need can be shown. A rate of $75 per course will be charged to anyone capable of paying, and particularly to those who can have their organization pay it. The reason for this sliding scale is that many people from outside Adams-Morgan who have greater than moderate income have enrolled for our workshops. We feel they should pay according to their ability. One of the workshops now being conducted is composed entirely of women. An intermediate women’s class will be offered beginning July 15 at 6:30. Nobody will be able to start these workshops without filling out the Registration Form on page sixteen. Center gets grant to produce tapes about DC artists The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded a $10,000 grant to WCVC, to produce a series of video portraits on Washington-area artists. The video tapes will emphasize the process by which they use their particular medium and -the environment in which they develop their works. Gerardine Wurzburg is the project director. The tapes will concentrate upon the artists’ actual working milieu by following them from conceptualization of a work through completion (or change in direction)—all with the intent of demystifying to laymen audiences the act of creativity. Different artists—both individuals and groups—and different media, will be explored in this series. Distribution will focus on a package (possibly “The Washington Arts Community’) to cable systems, museums, universities, and other interested groups. They will be distributed in %”’ cassette, and 2” reel-to-reel. Work on the series has begun, and is scheduled for completion July 1975. If interested please contact: Gerardine Wurzburg at the WCVC. Complete the form on p. 16 (WCVC Arts Questionnaire) if you would like to be kept posted on the project. Arts Endowment media grants set The National Endowment of the Arts announced that 109 grants totaling $1,285,581, have been awarded for fiscal year 1974 by the Public Media Program. Many of these grants have already been made, many are recent. They fall into five categories: programming in the arts, media studies, regional development, general programs, and pilot programs. They cover cable television, broadcast television and radio, film, university and other institutional activity. Among the grants recipients: —Rudi Stern of Global Village for “continuing research and development of multipleimage processing with direct video synthesis”’ ($10,000). —Cable Arts Foundation, N.Y., to “tassemble, produce and distribute nationally for cable television a ten-program series on the independent film’’ ($44,788). —Council of Southern Mountains ‘‘for production of three films on Mountain artists by Appalshop, Whitesburg, Ky. ($23,270). —Open Channel, N.Y., “further development of cultural programming produced within the NY prison system for distribution on cable television’’ ($10,000). —The New Classroom, Washington, to produce Black Box, cassette-based audio poetry magazine. —Antioch College, Baltimore for workshops on aspects of half-inch video technology ($9,800). —National Association of Media Educators, in Washington, for a conference last December about summer institutes for film teachers ($10,000) and general support ($50,000). —Michael Hall, Ipswich, N.H., for research on secondary school media education in New England ($3,000). —Electronic Arts Intermix, New York for “partial support of a survey which will determine the potential scope and economic feasibility of distributing the work of video artists and subsequently, establishing a pilot operation based on the survey ($10,000), and a conference last January at the Museum of Modern Art ($10,000). —Global Village, N.Y., for an interdisciplinary arts program in the Soho area of NY ($10,000). —People’s Communications Network, NY “for production of videotape series for cassette and CATV distribution exploring black culture in Harlem.” —TP VideospaceTroup, for a throughout Midwest ($15,000). —Alternate Media Center’s pilot apprenticeship program with CATV _ systems ($101,105). This list isn’t exhaustive, but illustrates some of the video-related activities supported by the Endowment this year. Their address: National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D.C. 20506. tour