Old Skool Revolutionaries - jonCates (2003)

Experimental Media Art moments and memories of the Video Area, precursor to the department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation (FVNMA) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), featuring: Jane Veeder and Phil Morton; Jamie Fenton; Timothy Leary; Nancy Bechtol in collaboration with Jesse Affelder; Woody and Steina Vasulka, The Vasulkas; Ben Kerns; Gene Youngblood; Dan Sandin; Mark Resch; Barbara Buckner; Michael Markowski; and jonCates. “Jon Cates’s documentary on the beginnings of video art at the School of the Art Institute in the 1970s abjures journalistic conventions—there’s no narrator, and we aren’t given the names of key participants (who include Phil Morton, Dan Sandin, and Gene Youngblood) until the end. Instead Cates captures the experimental spirit of the time by using contemporary scenes of the artists explaining their theories that have been altered with Sandin’s “image processor,” an analog device for manipulating vi