Botánica

Despues del wintercamp09 (marzo) pase una noche por la casa de Raúl Marroquin. Como siempre, avalancha invaluable gracias a la energia inagotable de creacion artistica que a cada segundo reinventa todas las potencialidades de lo televisual (no me refiero unicamente a la television tal como el aparto sino a todas las tecnologias, tecnicas y artilujios que permiten observar, medir, mapear, controlar, afectar a traves de la distancia).

Hace un par dias atras, envia Raúl un texto que espero vaya apenas por la mitad. En la introducción nos dice que habria preferido no escribirlo en primera persona pero, debido a que muchos de los eventos registrados son experiencias personales pues no tiene otra mas que dejarse aparecer. Posteo aca, sin permiso de su autor, esta linea de tiempo que podra servir mas adelante para continuar escribiendo, para agregarle capas que nos ayuden a entender no solo como un artista colombiano que inicio su periplo por Europa y en mundo en los 70′tas puede marcar no solo un camino sino tambien el ritmo al que muchos hoy deberiamos estar atentos cuando nos aproximamos al uso de los mal llamados “nuevos” medios.

Para los 2 o 3 lectores de este abandonado blog aca va la version en ingles:

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The Very Early Years

And then one day … television was there, in my house in the mid 1950s.
A new piece of furniture? A new electric appliance; at almost 3000 meters up in the Andes, Bogota; my First encounter with television.
It was not something to display in the living room, that was too common, it rested discretely in the masters bedroom where family and staff got together to watch Mexican soups known as “Telenovelas” news and entertainment.
It looked like the films, the ones in Black and White, not Technicolor that was already projected as “Largometrajes” (feature films), television at times reruns of the same titles, and characters of the “matinales” and “matinees” for children in El Teatro San Bernardo, the cinema house of the local priest next to the church: “Cisco the Kid” and “The Long Ranger”

A decade latter when it became clear that art was my “call” and while struggling with drawing, graphics and collages, photography and film also became as part of the vocabulary (my father’s hobbies were photography and 8 & super 8 film)
During that period art magazines, art departments in the universities and some “cinematheques” began to present, describe and discuss: “experimental and conceptual film” things like “expanded cinema” with names like: Yoko Ono (1933) Norman MacLaren (1914 - 1987) and Michael Snow (1929) but also “experimental video” with legendary Wolf Vostell (1932 - 1998) Allan Kaprow (1927 - 2006) Nam June Paik (1932 - 2006) and several other.

Video? What was video for a young artist in Bogota Colombia in 1968? An unreachble dream. An illusion!
In the world of real of communications it was the new technology to store audiovisual information and replay it immediately as with the magnetic audio tape recordings; something as facinating, as the inmediacy of Andy Warhol Polaroids, but with motion as added value.
Technically speaking, up to the mid 1960’s television in Colombia (and almost everywhere else in the world) was based up on very high quality “optical transfers” of 16 mm and 35 mm film and when television was “live” it was really live.
The legendary shows of American comedian Ernie Kovacs (1919 - 1962) are proof of that, featured complex detailed sets, props and scale models that brought manual and mechanical animation to perfection because there was no “Second chance” in live television.
Before I was aware of video art, a Colombian actor playing a role in one of the local telenovelas “introduced” me to (t.v.) video for the very First time, he told me about this “new medium” that allowed actors to make mistakes, there was a Second chance.
He took me to One of the Two national television studios to witness the recordings of part of one episode of the telenovela and than I understood the potential of the “immediate” play back function of video.
Video, in that “professional 2 inch format” was unreachable for experimental artists, even if you thought you had the money to rent a studio; there were no TV studios to rent, studios belonged to the television networks that were run by the government.
Like television in the past, commercials were filmed and “optically transferred” to video by television studios.
In the art world in 1969 Garry Schum “videos” were mostly film registrations of artists events transfered into video by German national television.

The Industrial Formats
Not that manufacturers like Akai, Philips and Sony had already in 1966 -1967 slowly introduced the “First Industrial Video Systems” originally developed for corporate and industrial proposes like in - house training, but they were too expensive and became the monopoly of professionals that could afford them for their work: psychotherapists, marketing surveyors and artists that had access to them through academia.
Businessman and art collector Oscar Lombana bought one of the First sets to arrive in Colombia to be used for marketing surveys in Bogota; he was aware of my dreams and hope todo some video and made me a proposition: I could use his recycle tapes -in his office / from his office, off duty hours- and I would pay him with my drawings, collages and graphics.
This is the way in which “Observations from the Window” (1968 - 1971) my First video works were realized with a half inch Sony reel to reel video recorder and a Black and White video camera.
Later in 1970 Leland Northam an American Professor of La Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota mentioned the new “Close Circuit TV System” (the name given those days to surveillance video systems) of the university.
I began to work in a proposal for that institution to conduct an experiment with their new installations in December of 1970 that I never had the time to submit, in the Spring of the following I left Colombia, First to the U.S.A. and later to Europe.
In my perspective, my Colombian video works were nothing more than selfish attempts to be part of that discipline although it was not clear video art was in the frame work of my formalist backround as an artist from “La Escuela de Bellas Artes de La Universidad Nacional” I left Colombia I did not even bother to take those video tapes with me when I left to have an exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art of the O.A.S. (Organization of American States)in Washington August - September 1971 and later come to The Netherlands. It was not until 1989 when these tapes where found back accidently that the First optical transffers could be made with a Pal camcorder in Bogota. Later that year Video Heads in Paris did real electronic transfers.
My exhibition in Washington included never the less a series of “freeze frames” sequences, printed on photographic paper of some of the Colombian videos.

In New York early September that year I had the First opportunity to see a video exhibition of Vito Aconcci (1940) at Leo Castelli’s (1907 - 1999) gallery.

Europe, the Europeans and the European way to deal with video
In September of 1971 I arrived in The Netherlands to do a Three year postgraduate -a master- in the Jan van Eijk Akademie in Maastricht the only academy in the Netherlands (and the surroundings) with a video set, the same -CCIR European- version, that I had been using in Bogota years before (EIA the American Black and White video system -later NTSC- was cheaper to produce than CCIR the Black and White version of Pal and Secam so all models were produced First in the “American systems”).
Some artists in the Netherlands were exploring the possibilities since the mid 1960s: Livinus van der Bunt (1909 - 1979), Richard Hefti (1936 - 1993), Shinkichi Tajiri (1923 - 2009) and a few others.
On my arrival in the Netherlands artists like Stanley Brown, Jan Dibbets (1941), Ger van Elk (1941) and Laurence Weiner (1942) had produced video works and fellow students like Servie Janssen (1949) and Sef Peeters (1947) used video regularly.
Soon it became clear to me that video art in Europe was based in an entire different concept and aimed towards very diffrent goals than my own, they tried to distance itself from television as much as possible.
Gallery Art and Project in Amsterdam exhibited Gilbert (1943) and George (1942) with their work “Gordon Makes Us Drunk” (1972) that confirmed to me that European artists approached video from a different angle, it was the means to document events (actions. body art, performance) taking place in front of the camera.
Among Jan van Eijck students there were this sort of unspoken rules that excluded any form of o post production, little -and best if no- camera movements and the length of the work was the length of the tape.
Joseph Beuys (1921 - 1986) was obviously the most influential artist among my generation in my immediate surroundings and the documentation of his “actions” on video had nothing to do with television, the same goes for most of the other established European artists using video.
Although the works of Beuys, Gilbert and George and all of these artists had nothing to do with television, it still looked to me like television! Clearly the reasons why I was very interested in video were very different and very much related to television.
I could not shake the icons of Batman, Dick Tracy and other super heros, what impressed me from Beuys was his presence, his super hero appearance, not his discourse. When I saw his video for the First time in Documenta 1973 where he accumulated fat in the corner of a room I fascinated by the simplicity of the action , in the First place, but also by the audio that brought back the memories of the “canned sound” of detective series and sitcoms like “The Lucy Show” (1962 - 1968).
In spite of the cultural differences and approach to materials, it was very encouraging to live and work and share with fellow “video practitioners” and not isolated in an obscure exercise like I was in my native Bogota.

The Sony dealer in Geelen (Dutch Limburg) allowed the academy to run a few copies of students in Three ocassions but after that, it was over and reproduction of industrial video generated in the academy came to a stop, it was unpayable. It was during that time -end of 1971- that I was introduced to Wu Young Tchong a merchant living in Maastricht who’s hobby was film and video and had his own equipment. This changed things entirely situation for my fellow students of the experimental department and myself not only duplication became possible (although there was not too much need for copies, no one had video machines and for most presentations in galleries, museums and festivals we had to bring the academy’s equipment) and allow experimentation of multichannel displays.
Half a year later Colombian born artist Michel Cardena (1934) bought his own video set and later a complete editing suite.
During the opening exhibition of In Out Centre in Amsterdam in 1972, video was part of the show, works produced at the Jan van Eijck Akademie by Siggy Gudmundsson (1942, Raul Marroquin (1948), Pieter Laurens Mol (1946) and was used to record the performances of Michel Cardena, Ulises Carrion (1941 - 1989)

Amsterdam Color, multicameras set ups and network television
In 1974 I moved to Amsterdam and was introduced to VideoHeads by Nan Hoover (1931 - 2008). His founder American “video guru” Jack Moore (1940) had been working and experimenting with video since the early 1960 and had an extensive knowledge of the technology and very good contacts with Sony in Japan, they operated from Paris but had opened a new space in Amsterdam.
VideoHeads brought color, multicamera set ups, all main video formats: half inch / open reel, U-Matic and One and Two inch recorders as well systems: EIA, CCIR, PAL, NTSC and SECAM.
This allowed artists like Marina Abramovic (1946), Christiaan Bastiaans (1954) Daniel Brun (1944 - 1994) Claudio Goulart (1954 - 2005), David Garcia (1951), Nan Hoover, Jeffrey Shaw(1944), Ulay (1943) myself and many others to produce works in color and more important -simultaneously- in American and European video Systems that expedited distribution of our work in very important areas like the U.S.A. and Canada.
VideoHeads facilities gave many of those artists for the First time the possibility of duplicating their work at a very low cost and in that way enhance the possibilities of distribution: museums, galleries, art spaces and -very important- festivals.
Electronic transfers were not possible in video heads, there were no transcoders so in many cases (and thanks to the high quality of some of the professional cameras available that “high end” optical transfers were carried out from works of Marina Abramovic, Ulises Carrion, Nan Hoover, etc.

Thanks to VideoHeads and the generosity of colleague and fellow Colombian video artist Michel Cardena who allowed me to use his own equipment I was able to produce to produce my “first television series” with stage actor director Titus Muizelaar (1949) titled: “Superbman’s last Adventure” (1976 - 1978) it was a television series in name only, Muizelaar and I were sure that Superbman’s would never be broadcasted, little that we knew, less that a decade latter it was aired by PBS in Canada and the U.S.A. Germany 3, BBC 4, etc. There is a Second example that perfectly illustrates the changes in the relationship between national networks and (their perception of) video art and video artists.
On arrival at the Jan van Eijck Akademie in 1971 I began to publish Fandangos, an artists newspaper later turn magazine, next to artists contributions Fandangos published interviews recorded on video later transcribed, there were no specific plans with those recordings but as with Superbman’s Last Adventure, these interviews has been aired (and continue to be aired) by national networks and cable local and regional stations in Europe, the Americas, Japan, Australia, New Zeeland.
The Fandangos video interviews series (1971 - 1978) include: Laurie Anderson (1947), Joseph Beuys (his First video interview), John Cage (1912 - 1992), designer Pierre Cardin (1922), H. R. H. Carolina Princess of Monaco (1957), Robert Filliou (1926 - 1987), Greek film director Costa Gavrez (1933), Philip Glass (1937), Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987), Greek composer Xenakis (1922 - 2001) and others.
Already in Maastricht in 1973, some of the video works (and fragments of the works) produced by the Jan van Eijck students: Servie Janssen (1950), Raul Marroquin, Richard Menken (1947), Sef Peeters (1947) myself and local artist Ries LInnartz had been broadcasted by Germany 3, thanks to Wolfgang Beker director of Neu Galerie in Aachen, and by Dutch National Television in a cutural program thanks to Dutch artist J. C. J Vanderheyden (1928), the head of the experimental department of the academy.

Right after the completion of Hollandsche Week (The Dutch Week) organized by De Appel in 1976 founder director Wies Smals (1940 - 1983) understood that for some of the video artists television was the following, consequent step and that there was something in common on the approach of these artists and the work of experimental television makers like Dutch artists Willem de Ridder and Wim T. Schippers (1942) who was producing very advanced, controversial, irreverent television for the V.P.R.O. national network in the Netherlands.
De Appel embarked in the production of Three television programs: “Test Tube” General Idea (1979), “Somos Libres” by Michel Cardena (1981) and a Third and lastone my own production “Alienation” that was never completed as part of the Trilogy because of the tragic death of Wies Smals and Josine van Droffelaar in Switzerland in an airplane accident (1983).
Alienation was finally produced for “Artists Talking Back to the Media” in 1995.

In 1979 before going to De Appel, while still a curator of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Josine van Droffelaar organized a series af radio and television programs for the Wallonian network of Belgium television with works by Marina Abramovic, Daniel Brun, Raul Marroquin, Willem de Ridder and Michel Waisvisz (1949 - 2008).

Cable there. Cable here.
By the late 1970s cable was fully operational in most the U.S.A. and with cable came public access. American artists, experimental film and television makers and activists made the most of it. Manhattan cable plays a mayor role with programming put together by artists like Ira Schneider (1939) with his”Artists Television” series for Channel 10 Manhattan Cable and Jaime Davidovich’s (1936) “Soho Television” for the same station.
From a European and Dutch perspective if one wanted to be part of television, the best option was to tour the U.S.A. and Canada lecturing in universities and conducting workshops that included production for the local cable television stations as often as possible.
Titus Muizelaar accompanied me in my First tour, the fall of 1978 where productions were realized in Toronto’s Art Metropole invited by General Idea and my First live television program for San Francisco Public Access organized by La Mamelle’s director Carl Loeffler (1946 -2001) with a special on the assassination of Pope John Paul I, later that year Muizelaar did his first live appearance in the Lob the cable network of a neighborhood in Amsterdam, the First cable network in the Netherlands with a performance part of the Superbman’s Last Adventure Series, another initiative of Wies Smals from De Appel.
I continued to conduct workshops throughout the late 1970s and the early 1980s that included Buffalo Sate College, Iowa University, The School of Art of The Chicago Art Institute, N.Y.U. / Manhattan Cable etc.

Amsterdam and The Netherlands
By 1980 KTA (Amsterdam cable operator) was transmitting Dutch national programing Nederland 1 & Nederland 2 and it became the platform for a diversity of pirates that cablecasted after regular programming. Television pirates included: squaters and other activists, artists, experimental film and television makers but also “regular pirates” in the Dutch tradition of (pirate) radio stations operating from ships in extra territorial waters: Radio Veronica, Radio Noord Zee. With the same permissinevess and pragmatism that “coffeeshops” can retail personal dosis of soft drugs like hashish and marihuana, the local authorities in Amsterdam turned a blind eye to the local television pirates that included PTVA (Porno Television Amsterdam) that cablecasted hardcore porno on Thursdays and that broke all previous records in local television ratings.
Artists Peter Klaashorst (1957) and the brothers Maarten (1958 - 2004) and Rogier Ploeg (1956) had PKP TV (Ploeg Klaashorst Ploeg) their own pirate program in the cable.
Piracy was tolerated until a First administrative institution was created to deal with local public access: “Radio Stad Amsterdam” with retired radio and television maker Leo Jacobs as coordinator.

David Garcia and Annie Wright (1952) were among the First artists to generate programming for Radio Stad Amsterdam with “Underpass” (1983) a series produced with Jan van Eijck graduates Lous America (1954) and Henk Wijnen (1953) from an underpass in one of Amsterdam’s main traffic intersections. The recordings were “bicycled”at the end of each day to the local network to be cablecasted later in the evening.
There were other interdiciplinary local television initiatives during the same period namely Sataats TV / Rabotnik (1981 - 1990) that included artists, musicians, journalists and activists like Menno Grootveld (1955) Gerard van der Kaap (1959), Rob Scholte (1958), etc.

Shortly after the Underpass David Garcia produced a very interested series of programn under the title “Students on Cable” for Amsterdam’s cable, based in the work generated by students during workshops he conducted in the U.K. Continental Europe and the U.S.A.
In the 1990s artist Lennaart van Oldenborgh and Thomas Peutz (with David Garcia) produced a technically updated “Students on Cable” under the title “Almanac” as a cable series for Salto in Amsterdam.
During that same period in an unpresedented event the complete works of Daniel Brun were broadcasted by French national television.

By 1980s the communications industry (not the television networks) in the Netherlands began show interest in artists’ experimentation with industrial video formats and television.
In 1982 I was invited to produce a work for (KTA) live from the Philips television studio at Firato (Amsterdam communications fair in the 19970s and early 1980s). I presented “Airport 83″ a narrative for Three television cameras, that was produced and performed in front of a live studio audience while been cablecasted live.
This experiment was part o a series that included several Dutch and foreign artists until the end of Firato in 1992.

In 1984 Salto (Foundation Local Television Amsterdam) was created as the only organization with a licence to cablecast radio and television for Amsterdam’s metropolitan cable network that centralized and encouraged local -and multicultural / special intrest- programming.
In 1985 David Garcia and myself organized with Time Based Arts, De Appel, Montevideo and other organizations; an interdisciplinary week event: “Artists Talking Back to the Media” in which cable played a mayor role, next to performances, installations, lectures and workshops Artists Talking Back to the Media also included a series of television productions that were cablecasted by Salto on a daily basis: Barbara Bloom (1951), Dara Birnbaun (1946), Eric Bogosian (1953), General Idea, David Garcia, Lydia Schouten (1947) and myself (with “my old” Alienation piece that had never been produced as part of De Appel’s “Television Trilogy” previously mentioned) there was also a final marathon transmission cablecasted live for the closing event.

Next to the existing contributors to local programming like Staats TV Rabotnik, other initiatives began to surface. not as one time event but permanent programming.
In the late 1970s Wies Smals saw the need to create an independent organization that represented the intrest of the many young video artists graduating from the Dutch Art Academies: Jan van Eijck, Rietveld in Amsterdam, Aki in Enschede, etc. and foreign artists coming to live in Amsterdam and the Netherlands. By 1983 the Association of Dutch Video Artists was operating with its own exhibition space: Time Based Arts.
In January 1986 French video artist Daniel Brun realized a series of television programs from Marina Abramovic. Ulises Carrion, David Garcia, nan Hoover, Madelon Hooykaas, Raul Marroquin, Jeffrey Shaw, Annie Wright and others cablecasted by Salto
Latter that same year after evaluating Artists Talking Back to the Media and The Box a group of the artist members of the Dutch Video Association decided to develop a television program that featured works of the association members; a pilot program was put together in 1987 and in the Fall of the following year the First series of Time Based Arts Television was cablecasted on a monthly basis (1988 - 1989).
By Second Half of 1989 it became clear that the Two -formerly Video and now- Media art Organizations: Montevideo and Time Based Arts had to merge and one of the in projects was the new season of Time Based Arts Television. There was a split among the members of the program’s editorial board and Time Based Arts Television became Two different programs: Kanal Zero a formalist informative program with David Garcia, the late Brazilian artist Claudio Goulart and myself as the editorial board, and “Park TV” one of the most radically innovative experimental television experiences (and “new media”) in resent years on a world wide basis that cablecasted works especially produced for the program in a daily basis.

De Hoeksteen Live! Television
In early 1990 Titus Muizelaar (by then artistic director of Toneel Groep Amsterdam, one of Two most prestigious theater companies in the Netherlands) called me asking if they could buy some of our “air time” in Salto to cablecast recordings of their plays and to produce a play of actor, playwright, director Gertjan Reijnders “De Hoeksteen” (Corner Stone) that was cancelled as a television production for the V.P.R.O. network because of the use of strong language.
I suggested that instead of buying time from Kanaal Zero we should start our own program and 3 months latter The First edition of De Hoeksteen was cablecasted; with in less than a year, the program had evolved into a twelve hour long live political and economic program. This is mainly because of the effort of the late Otto Valkman (1942 - 1998), a theater manager and political activist turned Hoeksteen anchorman. De Hoeksteen is still cablecasted 19 years later once a month, the last Saturday of the month in a shorter 4 hour version.

Artists use and experimentation with cable television in the Netherlands was not limited to Amsteram. In 1983 Theo van der Aa (1945) from Agora Studio in Maastricht organized a series of neighborhood interactive programs with French artist Herve Fischer for Heeg T.V. in one of Maastricht’s residential areas, the first -analogue- interactive television system in The Netherlands. Another example is KKW TV a program of MauzZ (1964), Alfred Broer (1968), Rob Linders (1960) Roderik Rodenburg (1963) and other students from the Aki academy in Enschede “pirated” in the regional network of the Dutch province of Twente and bordering Germany from 1990 until 1996.
The accessibility of the Open Kanaal(s) gave space for a wide range of activities outside public access. In 1990 Heiner Holtappels curated: “en passant / off Holland” with works by: Peter Baren, Cas de Marez, Adraain Nette, Horst Rickels, Michal Shabtay and myself. One of the Three works I presented was “Latest News” a projection in the Rembrants Plein in Amsterdam that displayed the KTA’s (Amsterdam cable operator) information channel “Info Kanaal” with the latest news (text) in the center window of their menu display, normally used for technical information. A one day special permit was required from Salto for these event.

The Next 5 Minutes a tactical media event conceived and organized by David Garcia (1993 - 2003) is probably the next evolutionary step in terms of media experimentation, in the 1993 edition of the N5M tactical media and the camcorder revolution was the main subject and it generated a lot of special local television programing with extensive -camcorder- contributions of participants and attendants as well well as the general public. There were two programs “N5M Television” directed by Nina Meiloff and “Hoeksteen Special coverage of The Next Five Minutes” for Salto television.
Future editions N5M brought digital communications into local programming, primitive and -later- more advanced forms of videoconferencing, remote contributions like video items send as attachments and some of the First video streams in the last Two editions of the event

Interactivity from the very early days
Amsterdam had flirted with interactive communications since the mid 1970s.
In 1977 De Appel and VideoHeads organized a slow - scan (Black an White) still frame, telephone exchange between the Two institutes, with works and interventions by: Daniel Brun, Ulises Carrion, Mick Gibbs (1949), Nan Hoover and Raul Marroquin.
Simillar experiments with this analogue technology in the following years conducted in Agora Studio and the Jan van Eijck Akademie in Maastricht with artists like Rod Summers (1944) and Montevideo en Amsterdam with Amercan designer Tom Kliokowstein.
The introduction of Sony’s Face to Face (Black and White) View Phone, an improved version of Slow Scan brought a series of interesting / important experiments that created the fundations for future interacative initiatives.
In 1988 I conductued a workshop organized by Rene Cohelo and Montevideo linking up with an improved version of “Face to Face View Phones” students of the Aki Academy in Enschede, Minerva in Groningen and Rietveld in Amsterdam, the event was cablecasted live by Amsterdam cable television.

In the First edition of N5M (1993) De Hoeksteen organized a series of discussions and interventions with universities in the U.S.A. and Canada via CU - SeeMe a less static version of the freeze frames of Slow Scan and Face to Face View Phones, developed by Cornell University as part of Hoeksteen programming for the event.

The First recorded interactive -art experiment- in The Netherlands dates back to the Summer of 1971 during Sonsbeek buiten de perken” in Arnhem where Artist Jeffrey Shaw and Joe Patiniott presented “Event Research Group” a rudimentary video studio and a conference room that included a telex connected to other locations like the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht , Haarlem, The Hague, that the public was encouraged to use to exchange text messages.
In 1986 Roy Ascott organized: “Art Technology and Computer Science” for the Biennale di Venezia, where artists participated with short -text only- contributions send from main frames (used for banking and corporate data exchanges) all over the world that were ported in a BBS (Bulletin Board Service) the precursor of the chat rooms.

The first interactive experiments in De Hoeksteen Live! were fax messages sent to the program by viewers during the program, they were displayed real time on the lower part of the television screen, faxes were combined with unscreened phone ins in the late hours of the program.
In 1991 Kees Aafjes, MauzZ and Shaun O’Neil incorporated a dedicated Bulletin Board Service Hoeksteen Live! programming that was superimposed on the video feed of the program and that engaged viewers in a Third platform next to phone ins and faxes.
This BBS was also used by viewers / participants to contribute with Ascii graphics.
Hoeksteen BBS was a permanent feature until finally replaced by “Hksteen Chat Room” in a different final composite that also incorporated tickertape.

Initiatives like the DDS (The Digital City ) transformed the entire media landscape; in Amsterdam 1994 they introduced virtual spaces / chat rooms that generated written discussion and debate while becoming the stage for a new generation of Ascii artists, special Ascii events were organized several times.
But the First user -analogue phone- text exchange was introduced by French Telecom in the mid 1980’s under the name of Viditel (also known as the phone for the deaf) like the fax, the Viditel shared the line with the voice telephone but allowed subscribers to exchange written messages real time by means of a small unit the consisted of a small screen and a key board.
In a long run Viditel never took off and was mainly used for exchanges among members of Paris homosexual community.
In 1986 a series of works were produced from VideoHeads in Paris by Daniel Brun, Claudio Goulart, Raul Marroquin and Jack Moore based on written text exchanges with other telephone subscribers.
Hoeksteen today supports IRC, SMS and the newly introduced Twitter text oriented system.

All attempts to generate computer graphics -rudimentary narratives- with main frames was always a failure, it was too expensive, too complicated. My Two attempts First with the computer department of RTL in Luxembourg in 1982 organized by Theo van der Aa (Agora Studio) and R.O.Z. the regional radio network of the South of -Dutch- Limburg to conduct tests and try outs with their very new and state of the arts Quantel Paintbox never came to anything substantial; the Second time was carried in 1983 with the television newspaper “Parool Kabelkrant ” (the First electronic version of a daily in the Netherlands, for cable television) for Amsterdam cable television, facilitated by De Appel never went beyond the preproduction stages.
Even the Indigo graphic models of Silycon Graphics, and their software were still too expensive for the artist / user; only a few brave daring young artists like Micha Klein and Danielle Kwaaaitaal had the courage to invest in such facilities, and produce incredibly good work, the investment payed.

It was not until the appearance of Amiga Commodore computers in the market in 1986 that artists and other users could begin to work in computer graphics and computer animations.
Computers with a graphic interphase like the Amiga Commodore series also began to replace very expensive analogue postproduction / special effects video equipment: mixers, character and special effects generators; this was followed by a Second Amiga generation that allowed digital generated imagery and digital visual processing, Montevideo was among the First to aqcuire Amiga Commodore computers in the late 1980s and by 1990 the institution had a state of the arts “Amiga Lab” operated by Marc Burkett and Shaun O’Niel that transformed video art production and postproduction.
Most of the postproduction of local programs like: Kanaal Zero, Park TV and their predecessor Time Based Arts Television and De Hoksteen took place at the Montevideo facilities.

Digitally Generated television
The possibility of generating computer graphics and animations as well as digitizing gave birth to a new language, a new audio visual vocabulary that radically transformed the media art world and local television in Amsterdam and many other places.
In 1992 I produced with Kees Aafjes, a young artist that had recently graduated from the AKI a pilot series of 10 television programs: “Black Hole Television” for the center window -now with a graphic interphace- of KTA’s information channel, again with dispensation from Salto, entirely processed and generated from Montevideo’s Amiga Lab.
The following year Aafjes and I teamed up with Aki graduate Hans Kerkhof to developed advanced versions of Black Hole in: Television SDt.v. (Strictly Digital Television) for Open Kanaal, Salto’s public access television channel (1993 - 1995).
My Digi(tal) Anchors, considered by some the predecessors of todays avatars, that appeared in De Hoeksteen for more that 15 years were also generated wit Amiga Commodore computers.

Web TV and Parallel Programming
By the mid 1990s internet television was a reality, Bloomberg Financial Network (owned by New York city’s current mayor) was among the First to webcast their programming in 1995 followed by national networks and local stations all over the word the technology was cheap, efficient and user friendly.
In 1996 video stream was operational in the DDS, MauzZ was working there in research and development; I was invited by programming director Lizbeth v. d. Kaar to produce and internet version of De Hoeksteen Live! Television for their stream, With MauzZ theere, it was the perfect opportunity to explore the possibilities of parallel programing, Two simultaneous shows: one for Amsterdam cable microwaved from the DDS and a Second -international- version, from the other corner of the space for internet.
In the meanwhile Park TV had left Salto to concentrate in streams, internet television became a part of Amsterdam local media landscape while entering the newly formed internet communities of the late 1990s.
By the year 2000 streaming has become the main vehicle for television distribution among artists media activists and experimental television makers, “Internet Television” or “Web TV” was the new “user television” In the mean while the major networks were developing their own streaming media divisions.
Like Park TV in The Netherlands a lot of media artists, television makers / activists and pirates in Germany, Italy and Spain have left air waves, cable and digital terrestrial television to concentrate in Web Television

Video Conferencing, Local Media and Many Changes.
Video conferencing began to play a very important role in cable and internet programming from the very early stages, although IRC (Internet Related Chat) remained as an integral part this new “multimedia / multi-platform” programming and later content providing, the video image transformed -once again- the situation.
After the First experiments carried out by De Appel - Video Heads and Montevideo of the mid 1970s in Amsterdam and the following tests conducted with Cu - See Me and Sony’s Face to Face in the 1980s, some more exchanges keep occurring as part of exhibitions, festivals, congresses, etc.
In 1994 ISDN (Integrated Systems Digital Network) the First dual telephone / internet line was introduced in the Netherlnads,The same year Tandberg donated to De Hoeksteen Live! Two ISDN video conferencing units (code named among the Hoeksteen team as the “Beam Me Up Scottie” in reference to teletransportation in the Star wars television series)
The Tandbergs only communicated among themselves so one of the Two units had to be post somewhere to create live - real time video conferencing situations for the program.
In 1994 in a coproduction between De Hoeksteen and Pizza TV (Rotterdam) the Tandbergs were used to transmit live from the congress of the PvdA (Dutch Social Democratic Party) in Rotterdam to Salto in Amsterdam with a short interview with then Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Early 1995 newly elected liberal MP Oussama Cherribi was the First member of parliament in the Low Lands to have internet in his office at the Second Chamber in The Hague. One of the Beam Me Up Scotties was brought there and The Hague Political Desk was created with live reports, interviews and debates during live programming.

The very efficient and innovative Tandberg Beam Me Up Scotties were short in the lime light, new technologies began surface, by the end of the same year KPN Nederland came up with a marketing test of the new ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) and SnelNet (Fast Network) of NOS television, it allowed subscribers to receive television streams from national television, European Broadcasters and American networks, it also offered a fast and clear video conferencing signal.
KPN and NOS television offered 2500 computers with SnelNet and the same amount of ADSL lines to users for a Six month trail period. Hoeksteen Live Television, friends and associates received 22 of these computers plus ADSL connections; one went to parliament in The Hague, Two to Maastricht, Three to Enschede, etc. A Hoeksteen multipoint video conferencing network was finally working.
In 1996 the first (Windows Media) videoconferencing with New York took place in De Hoeksteen when artist Jed Rosenzweig send a live, real time account on “Wild Feed TV” his interventions on the satellite feeds of American television networks from his Manhattan studio.
SnelNet was soon replaced by Microsoft Windows Media (video) and in January 1997 Actor Bart Oomen bought his desktop Apple Mac “Classic” that had not only become the best (affordable) system for graphics and image processing replacing with improving the role played by Amiga half a Decade earlier, but the best video conferencing system, the following year the First version of iChat that at that moment was the state of the arts simple friendly video conferencing tool. Most Hoeksteen contributors and participants in my own video conferencing projects worked with Apple Mac.
It also became an educational tool at the turn of the millennium. David Garcia conducted numerous one to one and group tutorials
with his PHD students in Portsmouth University I also gave presentations and workshops for the same group during that period.
The introduction of wireless widens possibilities in terms of local and digital media, contributing and content providing became something more regular and even more important- more flexible.

Form iChat to Skype
In one of my workshops with the Portsmouth students in 2003 it became clear that iChat was limiting the possibilities to Mac users and at times was not relaible, The newly introduced Skype was already used in De Hoeksteen so I suggested to the same with Portsmouth. It was forbidden by the technicians of the university because of security reasons so I decided to invite the students (and their laptops) for coffee in places with wireless so that the workshops could be carried out via the more friendly Skype system.
This event opened the door to a new more mobile way to deal with video conferencing that transformed, academic activities, my on work as an artist: exhibitions, conferences, festivals, art fairs, and television programming, working with contributions from all sorts of different locations; -Skype- live video conferencing / reporting from location has been a permanent feature of De Hoeksteen Live! Telelvision since then: financial and political reports & analysis as well as performances, readings, recitals, etc. from: Berlin, Bogota, Brussels, Cape Town, The Hague, Iowa City, Maastricht, Medellin, New York, Seattle, Strastbourg, Washington, etc.
In March 2009 NOS (Dutch National Telelvision) New York corespondent Willem Lust filed “his monthly report” for De Hoeksteen while driving from Brooklyn to Manhattan by Skyping from his satellite phone.
Skype will continue to be the main video conferencing tool in local t.v. programming and it wont be long before it also becomes part of regular television programming for live news gathering operations, like satellite video phones are a medium for reports from distant remote locations in Network news / current affairs programming.
The only problem with Skype is that it only allows point - to - point video conferencing, for years already there have been rumors about “a new multipoint version” that has never materialized in the meanwhile ooVoo a multipoint videoconferencing is operational since 2007.
De Hoeksteen introduced ooVoo, surprising exhibitors, participants and visitors during the coverage IBC (International Boardcasting Convention) 2008 in the Rai in Amsterdam with multipoint videoconferencing originating from Bogota. Since then, ooVoo multipoint video conferencing is part of Hoeksteen regular programming.

Mobile Media Receiving and Sending.
Mobile media has been part of De Hoeksteen programming since the turn of the century.
Phone ins First and later voice commentary and reports from mobile phones were a part of programming in the late 1990s, SMS (short messages service) also known as “text messages” or “numeric pages” also has played and still play an important role in Hoeksteen Television as well in some of my live works and academic activities. First SMS’s were read while displayed on the screen during cablecastings and streams in De Hoeksteen by pointing a camera to the phone’s screen In 1999 I exhibited in Brussels a wall work that consisted of mobile phones that received / displayed SMS’s at regular intervals a formula that later became of a way to contribute in Hoeksteen programming at preset times priorly announced.
With the introduction of the First models of mobile phones with a (still) camera, like many artists all over the world I began to explore possibilities, things were not easy at First interphaces and downloading was very limited and in many cases the only possibility was to go back to the optical transffers that were later issued as prints, projected photo secuences and the First Digital Photo Albums: DDS, Yahoo, Altavista, etc.
Mobile Phones and the very First HHD (Hand Held Devises) also played a major role in terms of work shops and laboratories.
During my narrowcasting workshop with Perfect Studios, Pisa 2002, we did optical displays for narrowcastings of casually narrated photo sequences.
The same year I produced the photographic series: “XX Century Famous Television Detectives, Private Eyes and Busy Bodies” (stills from reruns of famous American and English detective series that was presented as a narrated Power Point photo sequense for Berlin Public Access Cable Television.
Also in 2002 I produced a Second series titled “Paparazzing Home from the Comfort of Your own Couch” following Royalty, film and television stars and other celebrities on television, at home based T.V. guides. The final series was cablecasted by De Hoeksteen Live and TeleStreet in Bologna.

The following year I conducted a video conferencing exercise with the Portsmouth students who were asked to submit a “graphic reportage” (photo reportage) generated with their mobiles that the phone was placed in front of the webcam at their end in the video conference while they narrated the situation of the graphic reportage, the entire workshop was streamed live by HoeksteenNet (Hoeksteen’s internet television channel)
Lessons learned with my art work and academics were soon applied in television programming, still image (narrated) reprotages became a main feature in De Hoeksteen for several years.

It was not long before users mobile became imagery became a part of main stream media; what can be described as “mobile citizen paparatzzing” became a new source of information in hardcopy -tabloids with “citizen snapshots” of royalty, film and television stars, politicians and other celebrities press but also dailies, television and the newly introduced on-line services of networks and publishing conglomerates.
One of the examples in the Netherlands is the picture of Dutch journalist / film maker Theo van Gogh assassinated in Amsterdam November 2004, taken with a mobile phone and sold to the media.
In 2005 television viewers all over the world saw very dramatic footage of London’s underground system recorded by a passenger right after the terrorist attack on July the 7. Since that period “citizen mobile reporting” has become a regular part of network programming on a regular basis: iReport from CNN, BBC, NBC, etc.

The incorporation of video in mobile phones and other HHD (Hand Held Devises) brought new perspectives in almost every area of operation.
Manufacturers in the meanwhile began to pay attention to content generated by users in general and artists in particular, by 2003 Nokia was collecting “mobile video art” and the following year Siemens sponsored a “mobile video art” festival in New York followed by similar events all over Europe and the Americas.
I conducted my initial tests with mobile video phones in 2002 with a series of short chronicles: “War Diaries far a way from The Battle Front” (2002) followed by “(re)Covering the Balkans War a Decade Later” (2003) and “Dispatches from a War that is already over” 2004, etc. in the same line of works that I had produced with the video function of digital photographic cameras at the turn of the Century: “Brussels Europe’s Capital” (1999), “Berlin on Remote” (2000) “Maastricht Revisited” (2000) and “Souvenir de Paris” (2001).

In 2005 I was invited to conduct a workshop London - Paris with Italian art historian Fiammetta Ghedini who at that moment was busy her Phd at the media department of the Faculty of Art History in La Sorbonne.
I had been working on a piece that was to be realized from internet cafes on each location. 72 hour before the event my wife gave me a Nokia Type RM-1 model 6630 as a present, Nokia’s state of the arts mobile phone at that moment.
I decided to change the format of the workshop and to go for a real time chronicle of the French Capital entirely generated and complited with my new mobile. “Paris Fiammetta & Mon Portable” was produced in 3 days and it consisted of short dispatches postproduced on the flight (camera editing) or, in Two ocasions, edited afterwards with the telephone using it’s basic but efficient and friendly editing function; The fragments recorded at different locations in Paris were sent to London as MMS (multimedia message service) and Summaries of the daily events were e-mailed at the end of the day as attachments. There was also a daily program of HoeksteenNet streamed at 23:00 C.E.T (Central European Time) from Amsterdam.
Back in Amsterdam, Nokia offered to buy the “Paris Fiammetta & Mon Portable” to use a short version as a television ad to promote the 6630. For obvious ethical reason I could not accept Nokia’s generous offer that was not the intention of this exercise, but they bought the piece for their collection.
“Paris Fiammetta & Mon Portable” is the First of a series of works that I have been producing with mobile phones until they include: “Antwerp Parachute Drop” and “Una Visita a Barcelona” (2005) “Maastricht 35 Years Later” followed by “Pisa in the Vicinity of the Tower” 2006 “Views of Madrid” 2006 and “The Golem of Prague” in 2007 that have been exhibited but also streamed and cablecasted in several places in the past Two years.

In terms of Hoeksteen television programming mobile video dates back to 2002 with the First recordings with impromptu interviews, comments and statements recorded in parliament, city councils and provincial assemblies, banks, stock exchange, etc. that were cablecasted on arrival.
Early optical transfers were soon followed by cable downloads and infrared wireless transmissions.
Guests in the studio also would do mobile recordings that were it was transmitted in the program. Cable downloads to the PC, were followed by infrared and by BlueTooth shortly after and transformed again the entire situation

Short Range Emissions, BlueTooth and Toothing
I began to using BlueTooth in 2003 downloading pictures and videos taken with mobiles.
After the screening of “Paris Fiammetta & Mom Portable” in Amsterdam August 2005 an advertisement agency offered us Five prototypes of the Nokia N70 to test them in De Hoeksteen for a Six month period.
The original plan for IBC 2005 was to use my mobile 6630 to do part of the coverage of the event next to regular video cameras but the unexpected arrival of the N70 prototypes entirely changed plans and we decided to do the entire coverage with with 6 mobile phones and 6 mobile teams reporting from the fair and the convention.
Items were recorded with the mobiles and sent to our computers via BlueTooth, from those computers they were uploaded in De HoeksteenNet and cablecasted by Salto in a One our television programs, daily compilations of the fair’s main events.
It soon became clear that we could link with our own computers but also with hundreds of other HHD units, PC’s and laptops (with BlueTooth) in the fair and convention so the “BlueTooth Limited Editions @ Random” were introduced as wireless -short range / push media- narrowcasting.
At First it was a lengthly affair because we were sending items to anonymous recepients on a one - basis the only option from our mobiles the Second day, we switched to one - to - many sending the messages from the computers.

The same year did a series of works, live events, titled “Short Lived Magazine Covers (we all are a bit vain)” where BlueTooth was used to send images -portraits- to a the computer screen that represented the cover on the magazine. a freeze frame of the computer screen with the exact time that each “cover” lasted on display was again BlueTooth narrowcasted to the public, with HHD and computers near by.
In February 2006 I was invited to participate in HorizoTV a festival in Barcelona, I did a series of workshops broadcasted life by the Catalaunian regional television channel DTTV (digital terrestrial t.v.) Salto in Amsterdam and Laika T.V. in Pisa, they included BlueTooth Limited Editions @ Random and “Las Reporteras BlueTooth” (the -female- BlueTooth Reporters) that brought items recorded in the streets that were downloaded via BlueTooth on arrival.
After Barcelona I went to Pisa for a 3 day workshop organized by Laika TV and Perfect Studios, it was broadcasted live by the regional, DTTV Channel.
A special version of BlueTooth Limited Editions @ Random was produced daily to be narrowcasted in several of Pisa’s main squares, reactions from recepients were documented when ever possible interviews.
The pioneering role of De Hoeksteen and myself with Blue Tooth Limited Editions was short lived when Colombian Cellist Jorge Alberto Guerrero living in Italy told me about “thoothing” an activity performed by homosexuals in Milano’s train station in which they exchange visuals of their “body parts” and make contact via BlueTooth, long before our First experiments at IBC the previous year.
The story has been told many times but like in the case with Viditel in France 20 years early, nobody wants to acknowledge the situation.

In Septemeber 2006 I participated in the Gogbot Festival in Enschede with the last in the series of “Short Lived Magazine Covers” but the “revolutionary” event of the festival was a BlueTooth automated piece by Park TV, a short video, that was sent to every piece of equipment with BlueTooth that entered the premises of the festival.

MMS (multimedia message service) is an other tool that has been very present in the mobile agenda. Artists have used this system since its introduction at the beginning of the XXI Century.
By 2006 MMS exhibitions and festivals flourished everywhere. I produced several works for SMS in 2005 and 2006 and SMS contributions at specific times became a part of some of my real time, interactive art works as well as academic activities.
In term of television programming MMS has played, and continues to play a very important role in terms inmediate deliverance of content generated far a way.

Since 2004 Els van der Plas director of the Prince Claus Fund in Amsterdam and a frequent traveller has been number One Hoeksteen Correspondant from places as close as Paris and Milano and as far as Teran, Kabul and Kampala.
Dutch Journalist Willem Lust in New York and analyst Steve Hawley in Seattle are regular MMS contributors in Hoeksteen programing.
Viewers’ MMS contributions have steadely increased throughout the last Three years in De Hoeksteen and probably will continue to do so especially if the telephone costs go down as expected.
MMS scheduled participation at specific times is a format in itself very useful in terms of Hoeksteen programming but also in live art works and academics, it has the element of surprise on arrival.

Mobile distribution is an other area that is rapidly evolving: downloads of ring tones, screen savers, etc. are a multimillion dollar business and new platforms like the mobile divisions of BBC, CNN and other mayor networks (”Breaking News” and “News Summaries” ) radically transform the way in which (televised) information is disseminated, new software and applications make these platforms more and more available to the user and it wont be long before when citizen journalists, activists and media artists will be able to stream through their own mobile platforms.
In 2007 I conducted a series of experimental mobile narrowcastings in Madrid during Arco in what could be described not as one - to - many but one -to- few (receivers) with the help of Spanish mobile software developers Sidsa
The same experiment but repeated with improved technology as part of a Hoeksteen Television program for a festival in Berlin in the Spring of 2008.

Mobile Video Streams
In August 2008 I had an exhibition at entreArte Gallery in Bogota, Two young engeneers Lukas Canal and my nephew Federico Marroquin proposed to use ooVoo videoconferencing and “Qik” real time mobile transmisions from Bogota during IBC 2008. It was not until I was back in Amsterdam that I finaly understood the magnitude of their propoussal a month earlier. Live video streams from Lukas Nokia N95 mobile to our own “Hoeksteen page” in Qik a new platform that supports real time video.
As with ooVoo multipoint videoconferencing plataform, Qik was premiered by De Hoeksteen during the convention inaugural day with dispatches sent to our page in Qik by Lukas Canal and Federico Marroquin.
They were joined 24 hours later by stage director / actor Carlos Satizabal who organized a series of readings and performances for the following days of the IBC convention and since that Qik contributions from Bogota are a monthly item in De Hoeksteen.

On Demand / On Request Video Archives - Asset Management On - Line Publishing
Digital and on - line publishing have added an extra dimension to communications. The differences and affinities between publishing world and broadcasting industry are very vague because today networks have entire new on - line publishing divisions where video is one of the many components and that are as demanding as broadcasting: webpages that have to be up contineusly updated, ascii (text only) and html news letters and digests, mobile editions, etc. publishers in the other hand are more and and more involved in video / television production “multimedia documents” either on - line or in DVD are an integral part of today’s electronic publishing.
In this merge of two disciplines broadcasters bring the immediacy of live television while publishers bring the knowledge and experience of archiving and asset management.

On line archives have become a new, indispensable division in communications video archives in the meanwhile have transformed distribution in the media arts.
An on-line video archive is in fact television on demand, because of this asset management become an integral part of the operation and it can determine success or failure, relaiblity and accessibility are just some of the elements of the equation.

New user archive platforms like YouTube has shaken users but also the main stream communications industry. It was introduced launched in February 2005, in November 2006 it was bought by Google from their original developers for US$1.65 billion and it has created a new on - demand television format that influences entertainment, politics and communications
CNN is one of the many networks that has today its own YouTube edition as part of their multimedia multiplatform operation, while politicians and celebrities post their on content permanently.

On - line archives have been around in the art world since the mid 1990’s. The First encodings of Hoeksteen programming were done by the DDS and uploaded in 1997.
The Netherlands Media Arts Institute has had its own archive since 1997 with fragments of works from their collection. Although many artists today have their video / multimedia works embedded in their own sites and in YouTube, this particular archive has been a very informational aid in terms of presentation because of that it became from the very early stages a “narrow casting tool” and an “on request channel” simultaneously.
Artists could refer to it in when proposing projects or exhibitions, applying for grants or simply posting or distributing information.
I used it my self several times as part of exhibitions, festivals and art fairs.
Although YouTube has an absolute monopoly in user distribution and is used by almost every artist working with video “special interest archives” keep appearing everywhere and they are becoming a new sort of television transmission, television on request.

Things that could transform into television
Social networks like FaceBook, Flickr, Hyves, etc. are regarded by many as a new venue in terms of special interest “narrowcasting” (programming for one friends) present video and multimedia embeddings in user profiles also redefine the meaning of broadcasting, it wont be long before live streams can be incorporated into those profiles and that is live television.
In the immediate future, the implementation of real time video in services like Twitter would influence and radically transform production and programming of television in all its present forms.

“Virtual worlds” developed from video games and enter the media landscape at the end of last Century, after several years of try and error, they began to grab users attention. In the beginning of the 2000’s; Linden Labs lauched Second Life in June 2003, by January of 2004 it had become the latest craze in terms of media with millions of visitors and activities and Linden dollars transactions taking place on a 24 hour basis. Countries like Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the U.S.A. countries with “Fat Pipes” (broad band internet connections) and state of the arts computers populated Second Life.
Artists were among the First to experiment and explore the possibilities and limitations in Second Life and by the end of 2004: museums, galleries, fairs and festivals surfaced in Second Life at a very fast rate..
MauzZ had his First presentation of Second Life in De Hoeksteen in the Fall of 2004 by January 2005 a group of Hoeksteen viewers / contributors built the “Hoeksteen Cinema” in Second Life that operated for almost 3 years as one more option transmission option next to the cable and the real time video stream(s).
Second Life has also open the door to a wide range of possibilities within the context of virtual worlds, at the end of 2006 MauzZ introduced laptop computer -Second Life- prototypes that could be used by avatars to “get the stream” of De Hoeksteen Live! Television.
Although the Second Life craze is in decline it is still very much used among certain communities as a tool to distribute audio visual information, it also has become a preproduction tool for digital = animated story boards and the Machinnima feature of Second Life allows the production of pilots and complete scenographic and it wont be long before new and improved alternatives will compete with Second Life for the monopoly of the virtual wolds. Yahoo introduced a platform similar to Second Life in 2007 but failed.

One can see many things like the ambiance platforms recently introduced by Philips for homes hotel and even hospitals as a new tool for television distribution but is impossible to forecast the surprises that we will encounter in the near future.

Raul Marroquin

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