Radical Software, Volume I, Number
3
Untitled, Spring 1971
Click cover for thumbnails
Despite the bizarre cover drawing by Andy Poyner, a
California-based artist from Joplin, Missouri, this
Radical Software's main theme is grassroots television
- using portable video as a tool for helping communities
coalesce around issues important to them. This is more
revolutionary than it sounds. Most early video people
understood that change came from people gaining real
understanding of their true situations and empowering
themselves to express their desire for change in an
effective way. Although the Civil Rights and Anti-War
movements had the ability to gather broad groups of
supporters, smaller communities with local issues and
injustices lacked the means to formulate and publicize
them. Video could help.
The video activists of the early 70s tried to avoid
arrogance. A large part of their organizational effort
was teaching people how to use video, and letting them
decide for themselves the best way to use it. As artist
Jenny Holzer once wrote: "Any tool is a weapon
if you hold it right." The Raindance people, and
most of those practicing 'guerrilla television' in those
days believed in starting from the ground up.
Certainly weapons come to mind with Paul Ryan's opening
article, "Cybernetic Guerrilla Warfare". But
despite Ryan's provocative title the reader will find
few polemics. Although there is some mention of Sun
Tzu, a closer examination of Ryan's essay reveals a
skeptical attitude toward violent revolutionary behavior
in favor of a more reasoned approach, supported by some
ideas of Norbert Wiener and Warren McCulloch. Following
Ryan's essay is one by Gregory Bateson, an excerpt touching
on the importance of cultural and ecological flexibility
and the work of Ross Ashby, Richard Sennett and Christopher
Alexander. Frank Gillette and Raymond Arlo continue
with a discussion of media ecology.
Other major topics included networks, video editing,
video distribution, a comparative report on portable
video systems, and a prescient article by Paul Ryan
positing the need for an 'information economy'.
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