Experimental Public Participation Video Event Documentation

1976

Photo collage on board

19 x 10 inches (image)

20 x 15 inches (sheet)

Excellent condition

Provenance: Long Beach Museum of Art; private collection

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These collages were made from photo documentation of a 1976 public participation video event at the Long Beach Museum of Art. Visitors to the event were invited to perform themselves in a two-way video environment that allowed them to communicate with others and watch themselves doing it. Many of the participants were artists and children, the two categories of people who were not intimidated by the cutting edge technology and instinctively knew how to play in it. The populist on-screen conversation is one of the first of its kind. It foreshadows by decades the rise of social media.

The history of this work needs further research but here is what is known. Pioneering curator David Ross was the Long Beach Museum of Art's deputy director and curator of video at the time. He was in the process of turning the museum from a provincial backwater into an institution with the leading video program on the west coast. This project bears the stamp of his curatorial vision.

The design was created by Mits Kataoka, a fascinating young theorist in the The UCLA Dickson Art Center Video Laboratory. Kataoka (1938-2013) championed the use of cutting edge communication technologies by non-experts throughout his career and is now celebrated as a new media visionary and entrepreneur. The two-way video environment he created for the Irvine School District is the first known populist environment of its kind. This event at Long Beach is either a forerunner of that program, or an outgrowth of it, as the Irvine Unified School District is credited with having recruited the participants. Kataoka and Greg Lynch, an artist and filmmaker working at the museum, are credited with having worked with the performers. It is unknown who at the museum photographed the television sets while the event was taking place, and who designed and assembled the collages. They are made from horizontal strips of photos of the tv sets arranged vertically in rows. They are marked Long Beach Museum of Art, a phone number and Greg Lynch as the contact.