Social Broadcasting: An Unfinished Communications Revolution

In the framework of the exhibition »Radical Software. The Raindance Foundation, Media Ecology and Video Art« Randall Packer, Associate Professor of Networked Art and multimedia artist himself, holds a lecture on the history of social broadcasting and the experimental video movement that brought about a radical departure from traditional, hierarchical forms of mainstream media and television.

The concept of social broadcasting draws from a seminal history in which the first generation of video artists, whose work coincided with the availability of affordable cameras in the late 1960s, organized around socially-participatory and politically activist agendas.

These artists embraced video as a call-to-action against establishment media, forming independent, decentralized, and mobilized collectives to make their own media. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, alternative broadcast communities and artist-driven video networks in the US and across Europe emerged, including: »Videofreex«, »Ant Farm«, »T.R. Uthco«, »TVTV«, »Paper Tiger TV«, »Deep Dish TV«, »Video Free America«, »Optic Nerve«, and »Raindance«, etc, encouraged others to create their own broadcast media, rather than being passive consumers of centrally constructed television programming.

In the seminal video art journal »Radical Software«, Gene Youngblood proclaimed: »The videosphere will alter the minds of men and the architecture of our dwellings«, forecasting the transformative and politically revolutionary potential of emerging information networks.

Since the 1980s, multimedia artist, composer, writer, and educator Randall Packer has worked at the intersection of interactive media, live performance, and networked art. He holds an MFA and PhD in music composition, and has taught multimedia at the University of California Berkeley, Maryland Institute College of Art, American University, California Institute of the Arts, Johns Hopkins University, and most recently at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore.

Please note: The lecture will be held in English.