Video Commune: Beatles from Beginning to End – An Experiment for Television

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video still from the live transmission transferred to DVD
Courtesy of WGBH Media Library and Archive

The video synthesizer developed by Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe was first used publicly on 1 August 1970 during the four-hour Video Commune program, which was broadcast by the public television station WGBH in Boston. Beatles songs were accompanied by an eclectic mixture of images that was electronically modified electronically in real time. A narrator told the television viewers that this was participation television and asked them to manipulate the brightness and colors of the picture with the controls of their TV set. The program was explained as being an electronic wallpaper, without a beginning or end, and always present in the background, even if people left the room. In several places, the Beatles segments were interrupted by segments from a Japanese TV program showing performances of Japanese hit songs. This juxtaposition of icons of Eastern and Western popular culture illustrated Paik’s theory of global television, which is also reflected in the title of the work—Video Commune.



 

Workdetails
  • original Title: Video Commune: Beatles from Beginning to End – An Experiment for Television (Video Commune)
  • Date: 01.8.1970
  • Genre: Television Broadcast