Report from New York: TV as a Creative Medium (1969)
《纽约报道： 电视作为一种创意媒介》（1969 年）

First published in:  首次出版于：
Bijutsu Techō, September, 1969.
Bijutsu Techō，1969 年 9 月。

Howard Wise Gallery champions kinetic art, which is often shunned by the gallery market due to its relative fragility. Now, the gallery has organized a group exhibition that showcases TV, the mass medium of the moment, as art.
霍华德·怀斯画廊 (Howard Wise Gallery) 推崇动态艺术，这种艺术由于相对脆弱，常常被画廊市场所冷落。如今，该画廊举办了一场联展，将当下的大众媒体——电视——作为艺术形式进行展示。

The venue is dimly lit and has a somewhat confined feel, consisting of two rooms connected in a question-mark formation. Twenty-five TV sets, representing the work of ten TV artists, are spatially arranged in a manner recalling storefronts of TV shops in Akihabara, Tokyo.
场地灯光昏暗，略显局促，由两个房间以问号状连接而成。二十五台电视机，代表着十位电视艺术家的作品，其空间布局令人联想到东京秋叶原的电视商店。

On stepping from the elevator directly into the venue, you encounter Wipe Cycle, an electronic mural consisting of nine TV sets. This collaborative work by Frank Gillette (b. 1941 in New Jersey) and Ira Schneider (b. 1939 in New York) employs a delay line, an approach that has been popular of late, and presents a TV collage that mixes real-time and delayed on-site camera footage with other “information” (images from commercial television).
从电梯直接进入场馆，映入眼帘的是一幅由九台电视机组成的电子壁画 《Wipe Cycle》 。这件由弗兰克·吉列特（1941 年生于新泽西）和艾拉·施耐德（1939 年生于纽约）合作创作的作品，运用了近来流行的延迟线手法，将现场实时和延时拍摄的画面与其他“信息”（商业电视画面）混合，呈现出一幅电视拼贴画。

First, real-time footage of viewers themselves appears on one of the screens; then, after an eight-second time lag, it flashes onto the screen to the right, and then repeats again after sixteen seconds. 
首先，观众自身的实时镜头出现在其中一个屏幕上；然后，经过八秒的时间延迟后，它会闪现在右侧的屏幕上，然后在十六秒后再次重复。

This description doesn’t really convey the work’s impact, but when we see our own unconscious actions from a few seconds before (gestures of which we are unaware, such as opening a handbag or grabbing a friend’s arm) repeated like an echo on the TV screen, we can be immobilized by embarrassment. The experience speaks to what Time magazine has described as “confusion of our conception of space-time unique to the electronic age .”
这样的描述并不能真正体现作品的冲击力，但当我们看到几秒钟前自己无意识的动作（比如打开手提包或抓住朋友的手臂等我们意识不到的动作）在电视屏幕上像回声一样重复出现时，我们会感到尴尬得无法动弹。这种体验正体现了 《时代》 杂志所说的“电子时代独有的时空概念混乱”。

[Image captions]  [图片说明]
Above / below: Thomas Tadlock, The Archetron
上/下：Thomas Tadlock， 《The Archetron》

Charlotte Moorman  夏洛特·穆尔曼

TV Bra for Living Sculpture
活雕塑的电视胸罩

Frank Gillette and Ira Schneider, Wipe Cycle
Frank Gillette 和 Ira Schneider， Wipe Cycle

Paul Ryan, Everyman’s Moebius Strip
保罗·瑞安（Paul Ryan）， 《每个人的莫比乌斯带》

Nam June Paik, Participation TV I
Nam June Paik， 参与 TV I

Eric Siegel, Psychedelevision in Color
埃里克·西格尔， 彩色迷幻电视

The next thing one notices is sure to be Charlotte Moorman, who has been an increasingly glamorous presence lately, bare except for a brassiere consisting of two transistor TVs. She greets people with a volley of enthusiastic “Hi,” “Hi,” in her charming Texas drawl, and blows kisses. Without her cello, she hardly seems to be there, but upon sitting in a chair, she is transformed into a “living sculpture.” She plays the cello, and the picture on the TV bra is altered and modulated by the degree of energy with which she bows it. A baseball player displayed on the screen pitches wildly and violates the rules of the game. This passionately Dadaistic work, TV Bra for Living Sculpture, is the brainchild of Nam June Paik.
接下来映入眼帘的肯定是夏洛特·穆尔曼，她近来魅力四射，光彩照人，只穿着一件由两台晶体管电视组成的胸罩。她用她迷人的德克萨斯口音热情地连珠炮似地跟人打招呼，“嗨”、“嗨”，还会送上飞吻。没有大提琴，她几乎感觉不到存在，但一旦坐到椅子上，她就变成了一座“活雕塑”。她拉着大提琴，电视胸罩上的画面会随着她拉琴的力度而变化。屏幕上显示的是一位棒球运动员，投球狂野，违反了比赛规则。这件充满达达主义色彩的作品—— 《活雕塑电视胸罩》 ，是白南准的创作灵感。

Thomas Tadlock (b. 1941 in Washington, D.C.), a light sculptor who until five years ago also studied design, presents The Archetron, a psychedelic, kaleidoscopic, automatically shape- and color-changing TV piece. It resembles the flowing stained glass of a Catholic cathedral, and immerses us in a phantasmagoric synthesis of electronics and psychoactive drugs. 
托马斯·塔德洛克（Thomas Tadlock，1941 年生于华盛顿特区）是一位灯光雕塑家，五年前他还在学习设计。他带来了 《Archetron》 ，一件迷幻、万花筒般、自动变形和变色的电视作品。它形似天主教堂飘逸的彩色玻璃，将我们带入电子与精神药物交织的幻境之中。

“Previously, I used light bulbs to produce light machines and light sculptures, but conventional kinetic light machines could not produce the complex images I wanted, so I inevitably got involved with TV,” he explains.
“以前我用灯泡制作灯光机器和灯光雕塑，但传统的动能灯光机器无法产生我想要的复杂图像，所以我不可避免地涉足了电视领域，”他解释道。

The kaleidoscopic The Archetron took two years to complete, was funded by $10,000 from patrons, and is currently priced at $25,000.
万花筒般的 Archetron 耗时两年完成，由赞助人出资 10,000 美元，目前售价为 25,000 美元。

Tadlock’s kaleidoscope is a piece of mood-making TV art that would be an ideal fit for Nam June Paik’s proposed TV program The Silent TV Station, as would Eric Siegel’s (b. 1944 in New York) Psychedelevision in Color. The latter, also a mood-setting TV piece, comprises twenty-one minutes of footage on videotape, shown on a color TV and set to records by Tchaikovsky and the Beatles. Siegel’s work demonstrates how sound can transform visuals with spectacular impact, as in the Hollywood film 2001: A Space Odyssey. It contains a scene where Albert Einstein’s face burns and melts, and the vivid colors convey the ecstasy of a psychedelic drug experience.
塔德洛克的万花筒是一件营造气氛的电视艺术作品，与白南准 (Nam June Paik) 提议的电视节目 《 无声电视台 》完美契合，埃里克·西格尔 (Eric Siegel，1944 年生于纽约) 的作品 《彩色迷幻电视》 也是如此。后者也是一部营造气氛的电视作品，包含 21 分钟的录像带片段，在彩色电视上播放，并配有柴可夫斯基和披头士乐队的唱片。西格尔的作品展示了声音如何以惊人的冲击力改变视觉效果，就像好莱坞电影《 2001：太空漫游》 一样。它包含一个场景，阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦的脸燃烧和融化，鲜艳的色彩传达出迷幻药物体验的狂喜。

Siegel was a brilliant young engineer, and at the age of fifteen he won Second Prize at the 1960 N.Y.C. Science Fair for his home-made closed-circuit TV built from second-hand tubes, microscope lenses, and other scrounged parts. He graduated from a technical high school, and has become an artist of the new TV generation, thoroughly focused on technology and unaware even of such seminal avant-garde art figures as Allan Kaprow.
西格尔是一位才华横溢的年轻工程师，十五岁时，他用二手电子管、显微镜镜头和其他捡来的零件自制了一台闭路电视，并在1960年纽约科学博览会上荣获二等奖。他毕业于一所技术高中，成为了新一代电视艺术家，全身心投入科技领域，甚至对艾伦·卡普罗这样具有开创性意义的前卫艺术人物一无所知。

Earl Reiback (b. 1936 in New York) takes an entirely different approach. A nuclear physicist and graduate of MIT, he received support from RCA for a project in which he removed the color phosphor from TVs and reapplied phosphor directly inside the cathode-ray tubes. His TV sets display images in pale blue and pink, resembling layers of thin ice overlapping.
Earl Reiback（1936 年生于纽约）则采取了截然不同的方法。他是一位核物理学家，毕业于麻省理工学院，曾获得 RCA 的资助，参与一个项目，他从电视机中移除彩色荧光粉，并将荧光粉直接重新应用于阴极射线管内。他的电视机显示的图像呈现出淡蓝色和粉色，如同层层薄冰交叠。

Aldo Tambellini (b. 1930 in New York), who has showcased Japanese avant-garde artists at the Gate Theater, participated alongside Tadlock, Otto Piene, Kaprow, Paik, and George Stadnik in the program The Medium is the Medium at the Boston public television station WGBH in February 1969. Tambellini’s work in this show, Black Spiral, is understated and tends to get overshadowed here, yet it exerts a quiet, almost nonexistent presence.
阿尔多·塔贝里尼 (Aldo Tambellini，1930 年生于纽约) 曾在 Gate 剧院展示过日本前卫艺术家的作品。1969 年 2 月，他与塔德洛克、奥托·皮纳、卡普罗、白南准和乔治·斯塔德尼克一起参加了波士顿公共电视台 WGBH 的节目 《媒介就是媒介》 。塔贝里尼在这场展览中的作品 《黑色螺旋 》低调而易于被掩盖，但它却展现出一种安静、几乎不存在的存在感。

 [Image caption]  [图片说明]
Aldo Tambellini, Black Spiral
阿尔多·坦贝里尼， 《黑色螺旋》

In one corner of the venue, separated by white curtains and reminiscent of a psychiatric hospital’s consultation room, is Everyman’s Moebius Strip, an
在场地的一角，用白色窗帘隔开，让人想起精神病院的诊室，是 Everyman 的 Moebius Strip ，一个

interactive artwork employing VTR by Paul Ryan (b. 1943 in New York). Ryan, who formerly served as Marshall McLuhan’s research assistant, briefly instructs the viewer on how to operate the VTR, then steps outside the curtain. The viewer is left alone with the video deck in this sealed-off space.
保罗·瑞安（Paul Ryan，1943 年生于纽约）创作的这件运用录像机（VTR）的互动艺术作品。瑞安曾担任马歇尔·麦克卢汉的研究助理，他简要地向观众讲解了录像机的操作方法，然后走出了幕布。观众独自一人置身于这片封闭的空间，与录像机为伴。

Suddenly becoming drowsy, I lean back in my chair and close my eyes for two or three seconds. Then I slowly open my eyes, look at the ceiling and walls around me, and widen my eyes for four or five seconds before switching off the VTR to stop recording. Next, I watch what I have just done on the screen, with the footage appearing after a time lag of a few minutes. I’m no narcissist, but watching the video of me alone inside the white curtains, I’m crestfallen at how my face looks on the TV screen. I can’t believe it’s really me, and flick the switch off midway through.
我突然感到一阵困倦，向后靠在椅子上，闭上眼睛两三秒。然后我慢慢睁开眼睛，望着周围的天花板和墙壁，睁大眼睛四五秒，然后关掉录像机，停止录制。接下来，我在屏幕上观看刚才的画面，画面经过几分钟的延时才出现。我并非自恋狂，但看着我独自一人待在白色窗帘里的画面，我对自己在电视屏幕上的表情感到沮丧。我不敢相信那真的是我，中途关掉了录像机。

When I step outside the white curtains, Ryan asks me how it was, in a tone like a psychologist treating a neurotic patient. This approach, using VTR to reverse the external and the internal, and vice versa, is actually used in psychoanalysis.
我走出白色窗帘时，瑞安问我感觉如何，语气就像心理医生在治疗神经质病人一样。这种用 VTR 来颠倒内外的方法，其实在精神分析学里很常见。

Ryan explains, “The ‘you’ that appears on the VTR is the intended image that you present to the outside world. But when you see the image of yourself watching yourself on tape, you are actually seeing your true, inner self.”
瑞安解释说：“录像机上出现的‘你’，是你刻意呈现给外界的形象。但当你在录像带上看到自己观看自己的影像时，你看到的其实是真实的、内在的自我。”

What we see in the TV as a Creative Medium exhibition is a move toward direct public participation, reclaiming televised culture from the establishment and reshaping it into a two-way, multifaceted mode of communication that truly suits its electronic nature.
我们在 “电视作为一种创意媒介” 展览中看到的是一种直接公众参与的举措，将电视文化从体制中解放出来，并将其重塑为一种真正适合其电子特性的双向、多方面的交流模式。

Gillette and Schneider’s delay line piece Wipe Cycle and Ryan’s Everyman’s Moebius Strip involve direct audience participation in creating TV works, and Paik’s pair of works Participation TV I and II are similar experiments.
吉列和施耐德的延迟线作品 《擦拭循环》 和瑞恩的 《每个人的莫比乌斯带》 都涉及观众直接参与电视作品的创作，而白南准的两部作品 《参与电视 I》和《参与电视 II》 也是类似的实验。

Participation TV I features a color TV, on which the viewer’s shadow appears in three primary hues, with varying degrees of light and darkness, on the screen when they stand in front of the TV. When the viewer interacts with various objects, the interactions are fed back as electronic abstractions. When a flashlight is shone on an object’s surface, the actual details of the lit area are revealed.
参与电视 I 以一台彩色电视为主题，当观众站在电视前时，他们的影子会以三种原色呈现在屏幕上，并呈现出不同的明暗程度。当观众与各种物体互动时，这些互动会以电子抽象的形式反馈回来。当闪光灯照射到物体表面时，被照亮区域的实际细节就会显现出来。

Participation TV II features audio interaction. Specifically, the viewer’s utterances, whistles, coughs and so forth are converted into sound waves that generate interference patterns on a color TV screen. Meanwhile, Joe Weintraub’s AC/TV (Audio-Controlled Television) undertakes a similar experiment using radio sound waves.
参与电视 II 具有音频互动功能。具体来说，观众的说话声、口哨声、咳嗽声等会被转换成声波，并在彩色电视屏幕上产生干涉图样。与此同时，乔·温特劳布的 AC/TV（音频控制电视） 利用无线电声波进行了类似的实验。

Electronic music composers who feel a certain dissatisfaction with tape music have already begun using live electronics in performances and improvisations, in a manner quite similar to theatrical pieces. At the TV as a Creative Medium venue, we see the concept of live electronics expanded to video, creating an experiential environment for audience participation in TV.
一些对磁带音乐感到不满的电子音乐作曲家已经开始在表演和即兴创作中使用现场电子乐器，其方式与戏剧作品颇为相似。在 “电视作为创意媒介”的展览场地，我们看到现场电子乐器的概念扩展到视频领域，为观众参与电视创作创造了一个体验式环境。

The industry, for its part, is preparing to assimilate these advances on the part of artists. Paul Ryan commandeered, from a stock-brokerage source, a forecast prepared by the renowned industry consultancy Arthur D. Little. According to this document, by 1973, color TV cameras and color VTRs will drop to one-tenth of their current price, generating a $250 million business, and soon people will be creating their own color TV programs as easily as taking photos. What’s more, cable TV capable of transmitting up to fifty channels is expected to generate about $500 million in annual revenue. Meanwhile, CBS is planning to launch an EVR (Electronic Video Recording) disk that can be produced as easily and cheaply as an LP record, sparking a transition from conventional one-way TV culture to a multifaceted video lifestyle. 
就其本身而言，电视行业正准备吸收艺术家们的这些进步。保罗·瑞安从一家股票经纪公司获取了一份由著名行业咨询公司 Arthur D. Little 准备的预测报告。根据这份报告，到 1973 年，彩色电视摄像机和彩色录像机的价格将降至目前价格的十分之一，创造 2.5 亿美元的商机，很快人们就能像拍照一样轻松地制作自己的彩色电视节目。此外，能够传输多达 50 个频道的有线电视预计每年将创造约 5 亿美元的收入。与此同时，哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）正计划推出一种电子视频录制（EVR）光盘，其制作过程与 LP 唱片一样简单且成本低廉，这将引发从传统的单向电视文化向多元化视频生活方式的转变。

This has led public TV stations to support and foster experimentation by artists. In San Francisco, KQED invited avant-garde creators such as Yvonne Rainer to conduct experiments, drawing on a $100,000 public-sector budget. In Boston, WGBH’s Fred Barzyk is planning a major Participation TV Festival for next year, featuring such prominent figures as Allan Kaprow, Stan VanDerBeek, and Nam June Paik.
这促使公共电视台开始支持和培育艺术家的实验性创作。在旧金山，KQED 邀请了伊冯娜·雷纳（Yvonne Rainer）等先锋派创作者进行实验，并动用了 10 万美元的公共部门预算。在波士顿，WGBH 的弗雷德·巴齐克（Fred Barzyk）计划明年举办一场大型参与式电视节，届时将邀请艾伦·卡普罗（Allan Kaprow）、斯坦·范德比克（Stan VanDerBeek）和白南准（Nam June Paik）等杰出人物参与。

Finally, to summarize the outlook for the future, based on what I heard from a variety of related persons:
最后，根据我从各种相关人士那里听到的信息，总结一下对未来的展望：

Two defining characteristics of the 1960s were the drug culture, which involves voyages into the inner space of human consciousness, and electronic culture, which involves expansion outward. Among the younger generation, there is a natural tendency to integrate the two. Currently, two books on the contemporary avant-garde are scheduled for publication—one by Gene Youngblood on the West Coast, another by Frank Gillette and Paul Ryan in the East – both of which will explore the psychedelic metaphysics of electronics.
20 世纪 60 年代的两个显著特征是毒品文化（它引领人们探索人类意识的内在空间）和电子文化（它引领人们向外扩展）。年轻一代自然而然地倾向于将两者融合。目前，两本关于当代先锋派的书籍即将出版——一本由西海岸的吉恩·扬布拉德（Gene Youngblood）撰写，另一本由东海岸的弗兰克·吉列特（Frank Gillette）和保罗·瑞安（Paul Ryan）共同撰写——这两本书都将探讨电子文化的迷幻形而上学。

As many have observed, in the society of today and tomorrow, transportation and transmission are more important than production. In this context, can the conventional arts endure, when originals are seldom seen and we must be satisfied with color reproductions? Artworks that can be easily mailed or transmitted in their original form via VTR and communication satellites are surely poised to grow in importance.
正如许多人所观察到的，在当今和未来的社会中，运输和传播比生产更重要。在这种背景下，当原作已难得一见，我们不得不满足于彩色复制品时，传统艺术还能延续下去吗？那些可以通过录像机和通信卫星轻松邮寄或以原作形式传输的艺术品，其重要性必将日益凸显。

With movements such as Fluxus, we have seen the proliferation of multiples. Might the logical conclusion of this approach ultimately be TV-based works?
随着激浪派等运动的兴起，我们看到了多部作品的涌现。这种做法最终的逻辑结论会是以电视为基础的作品吗？

In the end, might the history of art mirror that of cinema, with mass-produced films eclipsing theater, and music, with record sales surpassing live concerts and giving rise to a huge industry? Even photography, which has relatively low visual impact and versatility compared to other media, has already evolved into a legitimate art form. If TV art – which can be reproduced as easily as a photograph, while offering far wider scope for visual experimentation than oil painting – becomes a fully mature art form, it will surely spark a revolution in the arts of the future.
最终，艺术史是否会重演电影史：量产电影超越戏剧和音乐，唱片销量超越现场演唱会，从而催生出一个庞大的产业？即使是视觉冲击力和多功能性相对其他媒介较低的摄影，也已经发展成为一种合法的艺术形式。电视艺术——它像照片一样易于复制，同时又比油画提供了更广阔的视觉实验空间——如果能够发展成为一种完全成熟的艺术形式，必将引发未来艺术的一场革命。

Shigeko Kubota lives and works in New York City.
Shigeko Kubota 在纽约市生活和工作。
*TV as a Creative Medium, Howard Wise Gallery, May 17 – June 14, 1969
* 电视作为一种创意媒介 ，霍华德怀斯画廊，1969 年 5 月 17 日至 6 月 14 日

Shigeko Kubota's review of the TV as a Creative Medium exhibition at the Howard Wise Gallery, May 17 – June 14, 1969. Written for Japanese journal Bijutsu Techō in Japanese, translated into English in 2024 with permission of the Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation. Translated by Colin Smith.
久保田茂子（Shigeko Kubota）对 1969 年 5 月 17 日至 6 月 14 日在霍华德·怀斯画廊（Howard Wise Gallery）举办的“电视作为一种创意媒介”展览的评论。该评论为日本期刊《美术手稿》（Bijutsu Techō）撰写，日文版已于 2024 年经久保田茂子影像艺术基金会（Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation）许可译成英文。译者：科林·史密斯（Colin Smith）。