Experimental Television Center
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Experimental Television Center is a
501(c)(3) A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, Trust (business), trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of ...
nonprofit electronic and media art center.


History

The Experimental Television Center (ETC) was founded in 1971 by Ralph Hocking. The center was the result of the expansion of a media access program that Ralph Hocking established as professor of video and computer art at
Binghamton University The State University of New York at Binghamton (Binghamton University or SUNY Binghamton) is a public university, public research university in Binghamton metropolitan area, Greater Binghamton, New York, United States. It is one of the four uni ...
in 1969. In July 1979, the center moved from Binghamton to
Owego, New York Owego is a Administrative divisions of New York#Town, town in Tioga County, New York, Tioga County, New York (state), New York, United States. The population was 18,728 at the 2020 census. The name is derived from the Iroquoian languages, Iro ...
. The ETC, directed by Ralph Hocking and Sherry Miller Hocking, is devoted to the exploration and development of potential uses of new technology in video and media art. Artists, organizations, and interested individuals were provided access to custom, innovative image processing tools. Complete use of the equipment and studio facilities was provided at no charge. The Center for more than 40 years offered a residency program, that emphasized the aesthetic experimentation of electronic and media art though new technologies. Artists and students from around the world worked with rare and unique analog and digital devices for creating video artworks and had access to the media art library of the center, largely consisting of video works created by prior participants. For Ralph Hocking, the center was "a learning place .. where artists and engineers worked in tandem". In addition, the center organized exhibitions, workshops, cultural events, conferences and provided grand programs to support artists and non-profit media art programs. In 2011, the Residency and Grants Program of the center was paused to focus on preservation efforts. The center’s media arts collection has since been archived and housed at the
Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art The Cornell University Library is the library system of Cornell University. As of 2014, it holds over eight million printed volumes and over a million ebooks. More than 90 percent of its current 120,000 periodical titles are available onl ...
through
Cornell University Library The Cornell University Library is the library system of Cornell University. As of 2014, it holds over eight million printed volumes and over a million ebooks. More than 90 percent of its current 120,000 Periodical literature, periodical ti ...
’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. The center's Video History Project, an ongoing research initiative, offers a wealth of often unpublished documents related to the early historical development of
video art Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting. V ...
and community television, with a particular focus on
upstate New York Upstate New York is a geographic region of New York (state), New York that lies north and northwest of the New York metropolitan area, New York City metropolitan area of downstate New York. Upstate includes the middle and upper Hudson Valley, ...
during the period 1968–1980. In 2021, ETC announced its relocation to
Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...
.


Artists

Some of the artists that have been active in the Experimental Television Center include:


Tools

One of the early projects at the center (1972), a research program aiming to develop a more flexible set of imaging tools for artists, involved the construction of the "Paik/Abe video synthesizer". This video synthesizer was designed by Shuya Abe and
Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a South Korean artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super highway" ...
and built at the center by David Jones and Robert Diamond, for the TV Lab at WNET-TV. The project was funded by the New York State Council on the Arts. In the early 1970s, the center was the home to many innovative tools that artists in residency took advantage of to make complex and technologically progressive artworks. The "Abe colorizer" for example, "an image processing device, was the precursor of many of special effects that nowadays are taken for granted", as
Bill T. Jones William Tass Jones, known as Bill T. Jones (born February 15, 1952), is an American Choreography, choreographer, director, author and dancer. He is the co-founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. The company's home in Manhattan. J ...
pointed out. In addition, the "Rutt/Etra scan processor" was part of the ETC studio and invented by Steve Rutt and Bill Etra in the early 1970s.
Gary Hill Gary Hill (born April 4, 1951) is an American artist who lives and works in Seattle, Washington. Often viewed as one of the foundational artists of new media art, based on the single-channel work and video- and sound-based installations of the 1 ...
, artist-in-residence at the Experimental Television Center from 1975 to 1977, explained that this scan processor "allowed one to manipulate the video image, providing an enormous amount of flexibility in altering a video input or in generating new images by using other inputs like waveforms". In 1973, the center started a long-term collaboration with the artist and engineer Dave Jones, who was repairing, modifying and building video equipment for the center. After becoming the ETC’s full-time technician, Jones designed a series of tools for video image processing to be used at the Center by a number of video artists. Some of the tools available in the ETC studio included the "Jones colorizer" (1974, 1975), the "Jones 8-input sequencer" (1984, 1985), the "Jones keyer" (1985), the "Jones buffer" (1986), the "Voltage control", and the "Raster manipulation unit–wobbulator". In mid-1970s, the center started to research the interface of an "LSI-11 computer" with a video processing system with the collaboration of
Steina and Woody Vasulka Steina Vasulka (born Steinunn Briem Bjarnadottir in 1940)
Soros Center for Contemporary Arts Budapest
and Woody Vasulka ...
and the support of
National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the feder ...
(NEA). by
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...
on 27 March 2015.
Its purpose was to make a digital imaging system more user-friendly to the artists. In the late of 1970s and the beginning of 1980s, the ETC’s research programs shifted from the hardware building to artist-oriented software development and to completing new and old tools and systems. by
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...
on 9 December 2013.
In the 1980s, the center embraced the
Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...
computer. In the 1990s, the available image processing system was enriched by commercially available tools. According to Ralph and Sherry Miller Hocking, the image processing system became through the years “a hybrid tool set, permitting the artist to create interactive relationships between older historically analog instruments and new digital technologies”.


References


Further reading

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External links


Experimental Television Center website

Experimental Television Center Archives

Video History Project:BibliographyToolsCollection

Experimental Television Center
at the
Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art The Cornell University Library is the library system of Cornell University. As of 2014, it holds over eight million printed volumes and over a million ebooks. More than 90 percent of its current 120,000 periodical titles are available onl ...
,
Cornell University Library The Cornell University Library is the library system of Cornell University. As of 2014, it holds over eight million printed volumes and over a million ebooks. More than 90 percent of its current 120,000 Periodical literature, periodical ti ...
.
Experimental Television Center video
at
Vimeo Vimeo ( ) is an American Online video platform, video hosting, sharing, and services provider founded in 2004 and headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices and operates on a ...

Vasulka Archives
{{DEFAULTSORT:Experimental Television Center Art museums and galleries in New York (state) Contemporary art galleries in the United States American public access television Experimental film Video art Computer art Digital art Internet art New media art Non-profit organizations based in New York (state) Binghamton University Cornell University Upstate New York Art museums and galleries established in 1969 Art museums and galleries disestablished in 2011 1969 establishments in New York (state) Film archives in the United States