Series: Rockefeller Artists in Television
Program: Video Commune (Beatles from Beginning to End)
Date: 1970-01-01
Subject: Japan; Television; Beatles, The
Copyright Holder: Copyright holder is unidentified.

Clip Description
In Nam June Paik's historic "Video Commune" selections from The Beatles' recorded music are accompanied by imagery enhanced by the Paik-Abe videosynthesizer. At various intervals throughout the show, which is approximately four hours in length, a narrator explains the nature of this experimental broadcast. "This is participation TV," he says, urging the audience to play with the dials of their television set, adjusting brightness and color. Viewers limited to black-and-white sets are encouraged to "distort [their] picture with a strong magnet." All audiences are pushed to "do your own thing and treat it like electronic wallpaper."

Occasionally, The Beatles' music and the accompanying imagery are interrupted by segments of a Japanese television program from Osaka, showing performances of hit songs from Japan. This juxtaposition of Eastern and Western popular culture icons illustrates Paik's theory of a "Global TV." In part, the title of the work, "Video Commune," refers to this union. The imagery from the WGBH studio, where the videosynthesizer work took place, shows contributing artists Russell Connor, David Silver, and Anne Tolbert, as well as WGBH personalities John Folsom, Chas Norton, Jock Gill, Nat Johnson, Fred Barzyk, Olivia Tappan, and others. Images shot live in the studio are distorted, saturated with color, and overlaid with designs and patterns. Some previously recorded footage is played back and manipulated in a similar manner. Highlights from the three reels that comprise the show are as follow:

Reel 1: The work is introduced for the first time. Abstract images alternate with scenes from Japanese television. Highlights include a performance by the "seven-year-old wonder" Osamu Minagawa and a commercial featuring a lineup of "mod squad" style gun molls. Scenes of individuals hamming it up for the camera culminate with a brief image of Nam June Paik directing activities.

Reel 2: A still photo of George Harrison is superimposed on the faces of studio participants and slowly rotates, creating a mandala effect. Lit candles and an inhabited goldfish bowl are filmed. Fred Barzyk and Olivia Tappan appear, in what may be recycled footage from the "9/23" experiment. Footage of a newscaster is included.

Reel 3: Scenes from trailers for The Beatles' films "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help" appear. Footage of Charlotte Moorman performing is recycled. Moorman alternates between playing the cello and playing a man's back (Paik's?) as if it were a cello.

"Video Commune" was created while Nam June Paik was a Rockefeller Artist-in-Residence. Portions of this work were reedited to create "Nam June Paik on the Beatles." An earlier experiment with the videosynthesizer, "9/23," served in some ways as a study for this work, and some of that footage appears to have been recycled in "Video Commune."

The "Rockefeller Artists-in-Television" materials were created before the creation of the New Television Workshop. They were processed as part of this Collection because of their relationship to video art and experimental work.

The "Rockefeller Artists-in-Television" residency program was created to support artists working in television. Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation from 1967 through 1970, it was replaced by "The WGBH Project for New Television."

Program Description
In Nam June Paik's historic "Video Commune" selections from The Beatles' recorded music are accompanied by imagery enhanced by the Paik-Abe videosynthesizer. At various intervals throughout the show, which is approximately four hours in length, a narrator explains the nature of this experimental broadcast. "This is participation TV," he says, urging the audience to play with the dials of their television set, adjusting brightness and color. Viewers limited to black-and-white sets are encouraged to "distort [their] picture with a strong magnet." All audiences are pushed to "do your own thing and treat it like electronic wallpaper."

Occasionally, The Beatles' music and the accompanying imagery are interrupted by segments of a Japanese television program from Osaka, showing performances of hit songs from Japan. This juxtaposition of Eastern and Western popular culture icons illustrates Paik's theory of a "Global TV." In part, the title of the work, "Video Commune," refers to this union. The imagery from the WGBH studio, where the videosynthesizer work took place, shows contributing artists Russell Connor, David Silver, and Anne Tolbert, as well as WGBH personalities John Folsom, Chas Norton, Jock Gill, Nat Johnson, Fred Barzyk, Olivia Tappan, and others. Images shot live in the studio are distorted, saturated with color, and overlaid with designs and patterns. Some previously recorded footage is played back and manipulated in a similar manner. Highlights from the three reels that comprise the show are as follow:

Reel 1: The work is introduced for the first time. Abstract images alternate with scenes from Japanese television. Highlights include a performance by the "seven-year-old wonder" Osamu Minagawa and a commercial featuring a lineup of "mod squad" style gun molls. Scenes of individuals hamming it up for the camera culminate with a brief image of Nam June Paik directing activities.

Reel 2: A still photo of George Harrison is superimposed on the faces of studio participants and slowly rotates, creating a mandala effect. Lit candles and an inhabited goldfish bowl are filmed. Fred Barzyk and Olivia Tappan appear, in what may be recycled footage from the "9/23" experiment. Footage of a newscaster is included.

Reel 3: Scenes from trailers for The Beatles' films "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help" appear. Footage of Charlotte Moorman performing is recycled. Moorman alternates between playing the cello and playing a man's back (Paik's?) as if it were a cello.

"Video Commune" was created while Nam June Paik was a Rockefeller Artist-in-Residence. Portions of this work were reedited to create "Nam June Paik on the Beatles." An earlier experiment with the videosynthesizer, "9/23," served in some ways as a study for this work, and some of that footage appears to have been recycled in "Video Commune."

The "Rockefeller Artists-in-Television" materials were created before the creation of the New Television Workshop. They were processed as part of this Collection because of their relationship to video art and experimental work.

The "Rockefeller Artists-in-Television" residency program was created to support artists working in television. Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation from 1967 through 1970, it was replaced by "The WGBH Project for New Television."

Series Description
The New Television Workshop originated at WGBH, a public broadcasting station in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1974 to support the creation and development of experimental video art. This experimental programming included dance, drama, music, performance and visual arts on video and film. As early as 1968, WGBH was committed to the development of video art through residency programs, with artists such as Nam June Paik, and the "Rockefeller Artists-in-Television" project. Many of these early works (pre-1974) were broadcast both locally and nationally.

As an umbrella for arts related programming, the Workshop included "Artist's Showcase, " "Frames of Reference, " "Dance for Camera, " "Poetry Breaks," and "New Television," as well as acquired arts programming. Individual works were created for "Visions," a series produced by WNET (New York), and "Alive From Off Center," a series produced by KTCA (St. Paul - Minneapolis). The Contemporary Art Television (CAT) Fund was co-founded by the Workshop and Boston's Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) in the 1980's, to commission works by video artists. In 1993 the Workshop ceased production at WGBH.

See also: http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/NTW/FA/TITLES/Video347.HTML