a television mural designed to engage and Integrate the viewer's the vision "Image" at three separate points In time and five exchanging points in space... The Intent of this overloading (something like a play within a play within a play) Is to escape the automatic "Information" experience of commercial television without totally divesting it of Os usual content.24 Wipe Cycle remains a complex and intriguing work. As critic Richard Kostelanetz wrote, "The spectator feels caught in an intelligent, watchful, oblivious system whose incessant and variable observations remain compelling and mysterious even after their operation is explained .25 Another outstanding work in the exhibition was Paik's TV Bra for Living Sculpture, an ongoing performance by avant-garde cellist Charlotte Moorman. Wise had followed the work of Moorman and Paik for several years. When the duo was arrested in 1967 at the Film-Maker's Cinematheque during a performance of Paik's Opera Sextronique,26 Wise allowed Moorman to conduct a press conference in his gallery, providing her with the respectable background of the 57th St. art establishment as she stated her case. In "TV as a Creative Medium" Paik premiered both Participation TV, and TV Bra (Moorman still performs the latter). "We were all surprised by the response to that piece," she says, "it is so popular." 27 in TV Bra, Moorman wears two small TV sets on her breasts while playing the cello. As she plays, her music alters the imagery on the monitors. Participation TV is an interactive piece with images of viewers generated in different colors on several monitors. Many of the works in "TV as a Creative Medium" involved restructuring television sets. In John Serry's TV Time Capsule a TV set was cast in clear plastic so that its insides were made visible. The set played continuously, burning itself out twice during the show. Wrote Seery, "When the TV stops functioning the work is complete." 28 In Three Experiments within the TV Tube, Earl Reiback, a light sculpture prot6g6 of Wilfred, whose background was nuclear engineering, painted the wall of a television tube with color phosphors. Viewers of his Electron Beam could manipulate an external magnet to effect the phosphors' movements. In Suspension and Thrust this technique was applied to broadcast television. Other works dealt with the potential to incorporate art into commercial television and the consumer environment. AC / TV (Audio-Controlled Television), by Joe Weintraub, was a device which translated "music into a complex kinetic image on the screen of any color TV." 29 Tadlock's Archetron pre sented a large console consisting of three monitors and an elaborate system of mirrors and filters to create kaleidoscopic imagery from broadcast TV. "it is not possible for this artist, (or any other using the Archetron)," wrote Wise in the exhibition brochure, "in effect to create simultaneously works of art on TV screens in countless homes." Boutourline's Telediscretion contained four television sets lined up on a wall, controlled by a switch which -->> next page |