News-Journal from Mansfield, Ohio • 60

News Journal, Mansfield, O. Sunday, November 2, 1980 6-D Video art bounded by no rules; but unlimited imagination on needed By Marilynn Preston Chicago Tribune Lovers and respecters of popular culture are always looking for the art in TV. Whole courses in video are devoted to picking apart classic TV series like "The Honeymooners" line by line, scene by scene, looking for the themes and images and insights into Americana that so many people in the country seemed to cherish and need and identify with in the '50s and '60s. Coming up, in the '80s and "90s, lovers and respecters of popular culture will be paying more attention to the art on TV. to the artists who have decided to use the relatively new medium of television to do what artists have always tried to do, release their themes and images and insights to as large an audience as possible.

The way people buy stereo records now is the way they may buy floppy disk performance of video art pieces in the future. At least that's what video art people look forward to. and so can we all. Even though computer -video art sounds elitist and foreboding like you should have at least college calculus before attempting to understand it's really no more than television shows, video programs and concepts designed and created by talented people who call themselves video artists and carried out. more often than not.

with the help of a computer. Video art can vary from short skit pieces that look like extensions of more complicated material to abstract, nonnarrative collages of moving forms. Video art ranges from the realist to the surrealist, from the camp to the abstract. Video art can be commercial or anticommercial, thoughtful or silly, and the only rules that govern it after 15 years or so of development is that there are no rules. There is only technology and the imagination, and both of those, for the moment, seem limitless.

At least those are some of the impressions Cindy Neal wanted to leave us with when she guest-curated Video Art The Electronic Medium show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in, Chicago. Neal is herself an artist with a lively mind and a vivid imagination, and she has spent a lot of time thinking about the revolutionizing link between the computer, the artist and the television. In the near future, she says, people will want to buy and own pieces of video art tor the same reason people want to buy and own paintings, photographs, prints or posters, because they like the images. because art stimulates their imagination, because art evokes some felt but undetinable response. Indeed.

she savs, video art is already beginning to spread. Some small, specialty video publishing houses are going into the business of selling and distributing vediotapes, and more and more video artists are making products for that developing market. And more and more people, Neal is happy to report, are buying them. Meanwhile. though, the best place to see the best video art is in a museum.

and some of the finest vedio art in the country. Neal says, on display now at the MCA, is coming out of Chicago. Chicago has earned a worldwide reputation as a video-computer art center. thanks, in large part to the talented artists and innovators who work at and around the Art Institute, the University of Illinois at Circle Campus, and the Chicago Editing Center. She singles out two Chicagoans for outstanding innovations in the video art field: Dan Sandin for developing the Image Processor 'an analog video synthesizer designed to give artists the capability of transtorming camera images into rich color experiences and Tom DeFanti for developing two computer languages.

GRASS and ZGRASS. that enabled artists to express their needs and desires to the computer more directly. in their own language: rather Ohio artist shows work at Willard WILLARD A special exhibition of works by Oberlin artist Harley Francis II will be presented by Prism magazine Nov. 9 through 29 at Teruko's StudioGallery in Willard. The exhibition is the first of several programs to be sponsored by the magazine under the title.

Prism Presents. The Francis exhibition was planned to celebrate the magazine's premiere issue, which was published in late October and in which the artist was featured. Prism is a quarterly magazine devoted to promoting the cultural arts of north central Ohio. "Prism Presents. will include programs relating to articles that appear in the magazine.

to serve the artists by giving them more exposure and the public by affording them exposure to different forms and giving readers a chance to meet in person the featured artist. Francis' works have been shown nationally as well as in Europe. In the Nov. 9 exhibition, he will display paintings, ceramics and examples of stamp art. The opening reception will be from 2 to 5 p.m.

Teruko's Studio-Gallery is located on Olive Rd. off Ohio 61. about five miles northeast of Willard or 10 miles south of Norwalk. Regular hours at Teruko's Studio are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Other visits may be made by appointment. For more informations, write to Prism, 1855 Olive RD 1, Willard, Ohio 44890, or call 935- 1820. than first having to learn some difficult mathematic-based language. The Museum of Contemporary Art exhibit is divided into two viewing spaces. One, the first dark room you come to on the second floor, is set up with pillows and chairs and several large and small TV screens, and this is where you can sit back and enjoy an hour's worth ot video art pieces, all I carefully chosen by Cindy Neal to keep you entertained and 50142 Easy-to-carry black-white TV Sears price $79 Sears SAVE aware of the broad range of video art possibilities.

(There are two different programs planned). I've seen the program of five tapes now playing and really enjoyed it. Some of the pieces are witty, some not: some are easily appreciated, some not: most take chances and, at least, are challenging. In the second room (and this will change after Oct. you can get even 2069 Powermate vacuum cleaner Sears price $89 $80 Big-screen tabletop color TV COLOR 4211 Reg.

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more involved. Copper Giloth and DeFanti, two Chicago computer designerartists, have modified a little computer game that invites you to create your own video design and develop it into something that can best be described as video wallpaper. You ride the joystick; you create the pattern; you instruct the computer about the look of the final product. It's called Interactive TV but instead of shooting down planes or Sale ends Nov. 8 avoiding asteroids, you begin to see and feel and sense the future of video art.

This second room also has a TV to display images, sounds, and little TV stories collected by Phil Morton and Jane Veeder. I liked it, and especially enjoyed hearing about CB TV. CB TV. Cindy Neal told me, is the logical extension of CB Radio, and in one little part of this tape collage she has chosen, you can watch amateur videophiles tune in to one another using their own camera-receiver-transmitter setups. It turns out there's a widespread underground of just plain folks who like to talk to each other via their TV cameras, a kind of Real People" gone underground.

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