Radical Software (1970-1974)

The historic video magazine Radical Software was started by Beryl Korot, Phyllis Gershuny, and Ira Schneider and first appeared in Spring of 1970, soon after low-cost portable video equipment became available to artists and other potential videomakers. Though scholarly works on video art history often refer to Radical Software, there are few places where scholars can review its contents. Individual copies are rare, and few complete collections exist.

Radical Software was an important voice of the American video community in the early 70s; the only periodical devoted exclusively to independent video and video art at the time when those subjects were still being invented. Issues included contributions by Nam June Paik, Douglas Davis, Paul Ryan, Frank Gillette, Beryl Korot, Charles Bensinger, Ira Schneider, Ann Tyng, R. Buckminster Fuller, Gregory Bateson, Gene Youngblood, Parry Teasdale, Ant Farm, and many others.

Eleven issues of Radical Software were published from 1970 to 1974, first by the Raindance Corporation and then by the Raindance Foundation with Gordon and Breach Publishers.

Radical Software, Volume I, Number 1
The Alternate Television Movement,
Spring 1970
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Radical Software, Volume I, Number 2
The Electromagnetic Spectrum,
Autumn 1970
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Radical Software, Volume I, Number 3
Untitled, Spring 1971
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Radical Software, Volume I, Number 4
Untitled, Summer 1971
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Radical Software, Volume I, Number 5
Realistic Hope Foundation,
Spring 1972
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Radical Software, Volume II, Number 1
Changing Channels, Winter 1972
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Radical Software, Volume II, Number 2
The TV Environment, Spring 1973
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Radical Software, Volume II, Number 3
Videocity, Summer 1973
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Radical Software, Volume II, Number 4
Solid State, Autumn 1973
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Radical Software, Volume II, Number 5
Video and Environment, Winter 1973
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Radical Software, Volume II, Number 6
Video and Kids, Summer 1974
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Magazine website

Timothy Murray: Digital Baroque: New Media Art and Cinematic Folds (2008)

“Digital Baroque analyzes the philosophical paradigms that inform contemporary screen arts. Examining a wide range of art forms, Murray reflects on the rhetorical, emotive, and social forces inherent in the screen arts’ dialogue with early modern concepts. Among the works discussed are digitally oriented films by Peter Greenaway, Jean-Luc Godard, and Chris Marker; video installations by Thierry Kuntzel, Keith Piper, and Renate Ferro; and interactive media works by Toni Dove, David Rokeby, and Jill Scott. Sophisticated readings reveal the electronic psychosocial webs and digital representations that link text, film, and computer.

Murray puts forth a Deleuzian psychophilosophical approach—one that argues that understanding new media art requires a fundamental conceptual shift from linear visual projection to nonlinear temporal folds intrinsic to the digital form.”

Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2008
ISBN 0816634017, 9780816634019
320 pages

Key terms: Prospero’s Books, Bill Viola, King Lear, Gilles Deleuze, CD-ROM, Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Laplanche, Louis Marin, Peter Greenaway, Leibniz, Keith Piper, Miroslaw Rogala, Psychoanalysis, Mary Ann Doane, Mona Hatoum, Kuntzel’s, electronic arts, Okinawa, scansion

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Blake Stimson, Gregory Sholette (eds.): Collectivism after Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945 (2007)

“The desire to speak in a collective voice has long fueled social imagination and artistic production. Prior to the Second World War, artists understood collectivization as an expression of the promise or failure of industrial and political modernity envisioned as a mass phenomenon. After the war, artists moved beyond the old ideal of progress by tying the radicalism of their political dreams to the free play of differences.

Organized around a series of case studies spanning the globe from Europe, Japan, and the United States to Africa, Cuba, and Mexico, Collectivism after Modernism covers such renowned collectives as the Guerrilla Girls and the Yes Men, as well as lesser-known groups. Contributors explore the ways in which collectives function within cultural norms, social conventions, and corporate or state-sanctioned art. They examine the impact of new technologies on artistic practice, the emergence of networked group identity, and the common characteristic of collective production to blur the typical separations between artists, activists, service workers, and communities in need.

Together, these essays demonstrate that collectivism survives as an influential and increasingly visible artistic practice despite the art world’s star system of individuality. Collectivism after Modernism provides the historical understanding necessary for thinking through postmodern collective practice, now and into the future.”

Contributors: Irina Aristarkhova, Jesse Drew, Okwui Enwezor, Rubén Gallo, Chris Gilbert, Brian Holmes, Alan Moore, Jelena Stojanovi´c, Reiko Tomii, Rachel Weiss.

Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2007
ISBN 0816644624, 9780816644629
xviii+312 pages

Key terms: Art & Language, collectivism, unitary urbanism, Akasegawa Genpei, video art, detournement, conceptual art, Asger Jorn, Fluxus, ABTV, Ernesto Leal, Situationist International, Guy Debord, Havana, Glexis Novoa, cold war, Art Workers Coalition, avant-garde, Cuba, Gutai

Publisher

PDF (9 MB, updated on 2019-12-18)