Satellite of Love – Witte de With

Satellite of Love

The cathodic tube and its pervasive spread in the contemporaneity are a rich argument in itself. But during the latest Rotterdam FIlm Festival, the Witte de With museum has developed a entire program on the television production mechanisms, unveiling them to a large public. It was made by different conferences (one of course dedicated to the Telestreet movement), workshops (like the crowded one on how to build their own television micro-transmitter (pluggable to a PC) led by Adam Hyde and Tetsuo Kogawa, or the ‘open studio’ days when it was possible to enter and use a professional tv studio, transmitting on a real public channel. What emerged was the concept of ‘personal television’, or the technological transition from the professional studios to the PC’s desktop that draws elements from the net and at the same time feeds it with new artifacts. This guide is not limited to presenting the various events (as the exhibition that hosted a careful selection of works embodying the television paradigm), but it includes critical texts and a huge number of annotated links, effectively investigating the manipulation of the unavoidable pop dimension, that tv is supposed to be part of.