The Electronic Canvas
Media Space @ DeCordova/Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport Gallery
March 25 – April 30, 2000
The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park is proud to be presenting both the television program and the exhibition The Electronic Canvas. The exhibition will be on view from March 25 – April 30, 2000 and the television program will air during the month of April on local ‘GBH/PBS stations. The air dates are: Sunday, April 2 at 4 pm on Channel 2, April 2 at 6 pm on Channel 44, and Thursday, April 6 at midnight on Channel 44. The Electronic Canvas focuses on Boston as a major center in global movement where artists in the 1960s were drawn to the growing power of television and media. Viewers will learn how these artists responded to the initial challenge of not being able to become creatively involved with television. The Electronic Canvas looks at how cultural institutions and organizations responded to this challenge and what happened when the doors were opened to artists’ desires to probe this unexplored territory.
From these early efforts and experiments, the program follows the rapid growth, diversification, and sophistication of video and media art from single channel works to complex pieces involving computer programs, museum video installations, and in the Internet.
Designed to accompany a new WGBH television show being presented by DeCordova, the exhibition examines the rich history of media art as it has developed over the past 30 years in Boston and New England. Both the television and exhibition versions of The Electronic Canvas present pioneers, such as Nam June Paik, Peter Campus, and William Wegman and their early work with broadcast television equipment at the New Television Workshop. The Electronic Canvas explores the future of art being designed today at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Media Lab.
The Museum exhibition will focus on the consistent weaving of artistic creativity with technological innovation that marks so much of the history of New England media arts. Many of the works exhibited, which will be excerpted for the television show, will be presented at DeCordova in their entirety. Co- Executive Producers of The Electronic Canvas are George Fifield, DeCordova’s Curator for Media Arts, and Fred Barzyk of Creative Television Associates, and Olivia Tappan is the producer.
The Electronic Canvas is funded by The Island Fund of the New York Community Trust and the WGBH Educational Foundation.
Visit www.wgbh.org/wgbh/ntw/ for more information about the New Television Workshop. The site includes 90 minutes of streaming clips from selected NTW programs and a guide with program summaries.
