Sunstone Ed Emshwiller 2:57 - 1979 - Color & Monochrome.

Ed Emshwiller drew on his experience in science fiction illustration, filmmaking and painting to produce this ethereal and spiritual sci-fi video gem. Working with a team of early digital effects artists, he created visuals that seem to breathe on screen. Sunstone is a landmark work of electronic art, lovingly created over a period of 8 months in a video lab at the New York Institute of Technology. Emshwiller, who died in 1990, was a major figure in the history of video art as an artist and a teacher. In his work he investigated the expressive capabilities of video synthesizers and computer systems, while demonstrating the humanistic potential and transformative properties of the medium.

Probably America's Smallest TV Station Videofreex 5:25 - 1973-76/2004 - Color and B & W

Formed in 1969, Videofreex was a pioneering collective of artists and community activists who embraced portable video technology in its earliest days. In 1971 they built the country's smallest TV station in upstate New York, Lanesville TV, and broadcast hundreds of quirky, homemade programs until 1980. Excerpted here are Lanesville TV News Buggy (1976) and An Oriental Magic Show with a man in a box and a barbarian (1973) in a Lanesville TV "live" broadcast with guest host Russell Connor (1975). Additional production: DCTV (Jon Alpert, Yoko Maruyama, Keiko Tsuno).

In the context of the Alternate Culture movement of the 1960s and '70s, these artists were redefining television as a medium for individuals and communities as opposed to mainstream corporate and commercial interests. According to the Freex: "The better tapes are just for fun." Videofreex members included David Cort, Curtis Ratcliff, Parry Teasdale, Davidson Gigliotti, Nancy Cain, Chuck Kennedy, Skip Blumberg, Carol Vontobel, Bart Friedman and Ann Woodward.

Global Groove (re-edit) Nam June Paik & John Godfrey 19:55 - 1973/2003 - Wild, intense color.

Nam June Paik is the pre-eminent video artist in the United States and worldwide. Born in Korea, and trained as a classical musician, Paik came to the U.S. in 1964. He brought with him wide ranging interests in music, art and technology, an irreverent sensibility, and a love of collaborating with well-known as well as younger cutting-edge artists. All of his work shares these characteristics.

Global Groove, designed as a pilot TV program, is an exuberant montage produced with collaborator John Godfrey, the technical wizard behind hundreds of early art videos. Jud Yalkut, Jackie Cassen, Karheinz Stockhausen, Percival Borde, and Bob Breer also contributed fragments of films and videos. Paik weaves performances by art-world luminaries John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Allan Ginsberg, Charlotte Moorman, The Living Theater, traditional Korean folk dancers, and American tap dancers, with electronic processing and global communications theories to create a totally new vision of multicultural TV. Narrator: Russell Connor. Producer: David Loxton. Edited in 2003 from 28:30 video.

JGLNG Skip Blumberg 5:20 - 1976 - Dazzling B & W

Fourth generation circus performer Mario Droguett, in his Sarasota, Florida backyard, is the subject of this high-contrast analysis of the art of juggling. The multi-layered video creates special effects in the viewer's eye and impossible tricks on screen! JGLNG (pronounced "juggling") represents Blumberg's early experiments in seeking out the abstract in the real world.

Skip Blumberg was part of the first wave of video artists as a member and collaborator of Videofreex, Ant Farm, TVTV and other production groups. In addition to video installations and events, he has produced several hundred cultural documentaries and performance videos. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, the Pompidou Center, Paris, the Everson Museum of Art, the Museum of TV and Radio. He has also curated several video exhibitions, including U.S. EXPRESS.

First International Whistling Show Jules Backus & Skip Blumberg 19:00 - 1978 - B & W

This entertaining collaboration between Skip Blumberg and Jules Backus showcases award-winning whistling performances at the First International Whistling Festival in Carson City, Nevada. The small video cameras and informal style of the makers brings the viewer up close to these eccentric but virtuoso musicians. Jules Backus was an extraordinary photographer and videomaker who died in 1996. In 1970, he co-founded Optic Nerve, a video collective in San Francisco. He also collaborated with Chip Lord, Doug Hall, Branda Miller, Antonio Muntadas, Joan Jonas, Kathy High and others.

The Laughing Alligator: Cameraman's stand-off Juan Downey 3:30 - 1976-77/1979 - Color and B & W

The Laughing Alligator is a seminal 27-minute anthropological art tape from his Trans America series; it documents the several months he spent living with the primitive Yanomami Indians in Venezuela. In the excerpt, Downey finds himself trapped by two armed hunters in the forest. His video camera is his only weapon. In this '70s precursor to reality television, it's hard to tell if this was the Indians' joke on a foreigner or a serious challenge.

Juan Downey, born in Chile in 1940, came to New York in 1965. As a South American of European heritage living in the U.S., he produced illuminating, poetic works in which he sought to define the self, and to discover his own cultural identity. He merged his interests in autobiography and anthropology, in western art and culture, and in Latin American rituals. Downey died in 1993. He created a body of work that includes videotapes, installations, drawings and paintings of international renown.

Media Burn Ant Farm 23:15 - 1975 - Color and B & W

Ant Farm was an innovative San Francisco-based collective of artists and architects, working together from 1968 to 1978, on the fringe of architecture, performance, media, public art, and graphic design. In Media Burn, they organized a huge crew and cast for a spectacular performance art video and media event, in which a customized Cadillac convertible crashed into a wall of burning TV sets. The tape both parodies and critiques television news coverage, while it exploits TV's enormous power to interpret and define reality for viewers. It has become a video art classic. Ant Farm members included Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez, Doug Michels and Curtis Schreier.