Synthetics | A History of Video Art in Australia | by Stephen Jones | 2018-24 | With thanks to Wendy Joy Robertson
The production of art and images, music and text, interactive performance and installation using contemporary computing technologies; flat-screen or CRT video monitors, complex operating systems, networks, digital signal processing, etc, etc, though intensely modern, have surprisingly deep roots in Western culture and technological development. Some of them, particularly the number systems and technologies of image making, even go back into times before the ancient cultures of China, India and the Arab world.
Activism and Access
Art is not a mirror but a hammer. John Grierson
There is a curiously long trail leading to video art in Australia. This trail stems from activist and artists’ work in the US, Britain, Europe, Japan and many other parts of the world. It probably began (supposing one ignores the development of the technology itself) after the Great Depression of 1929 with a Scotsman named John Grierson (b.1989 – d.1972), who had been brought up in a family steeped in (“small l”) liberal politics. For his parents, education was invaluable and hard work was necessary to achieve anything. He studied English and Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow and “spent a good part of his [undergraduate] career enmeshed in impassioned political discussion and leftist political activism”.[1] He received a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in 1925 which allowed him to write a PhD on the psychology of propaganda at the University of Chicago. In this research he explored the influence of the popular press on the education of new immigrants to the US.
Synthetics
Aspects of the history of Electronic Art in Australia
In which I discuss many of the technologies and conceptual constructs upon which contemporary electronic art is based:
Early computing and computer graphics.
The history of electronic art and video art in Australia.
Restoration and archiving of video art.
Biography
Stephen Jones : Exhibitions and Publications
Stephen Jones (born 1951) is an Australian video artist, curator, video engineer and conservator of long standing. Since 1976 he has provided technical support for many artists and major exhibitions including the Biennale of Sydney (1976) and Australian Perspecta (1981).
Dancing the music: Philippa Cullen 1950–1975
Philippa Cullen: Dancing the Music (2023) Curated exhibition on the dancer and electronic sound artist at McClelland Gallery, Langwarrin, Vic. May-July, 2023.