Facebook Live with Sonia Landy Sheridan & Aldo Tambellini
Channel: LEONARDO/ISAST
Date: 2020-02-16

CINE SALON LEGENDS 
In Dialogue: Picturephone Primitives Conversation with Sonia Landy Sheridan & Aldo Tambellini Moderated by Katherine Hart, Hood Museum of Art and Bruce Posner, Ciné Salon 

Cosponsors: AVA Gallery and Art Center, CATV, Department of Film and Media Studies Dartmouth College, Hood Museum of Art, Howe Library, Jones Media Center-Dartmouth Library, Leonardo-International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, Vermont International Film Festival, White River Indie Films.

PICTUREPHONE EVENT – Illinois Bell Picturephone System, June 7, 1977, Chicago, Illinois – recounted by Aldo Tambellini This was the first Picturephone, two-way live event by artists. The Illinois Bell Telephone Company made two spaces available which were used for Picturephone conference sites. The company disrupted the order of the “system” by making the Picturephone available to the artists led by Aldo Tambellini, visual and media artist and Sonia Sheridan, artist and founder of Generative Systems at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The goal was to see what new applications these artists would bring to the technology currently used by businesses to communicate. 
“Picturephone meetings evolved from years of experience with regular picturephone service which is basically a person to person medium of communication. Utilizing the latest in advanced telecommunication equipment and technique, we have expanded so that a group of people in one city can have face to face business meetings in another city without having to be there in person. You can show slides, charts, view graphs and videotapes; work on an erasable board. At the touch of a button, on master control, the hard copy machine will deliver a paper copy of any picture on the incoming monitor within seconds.” –Picturephone Meeting Service Plan Guide 
Aldo Tambellini gave a two-week workshop at SAIC prior to the Picturephone Event where he became the catalyst for new ideas and activities to be undertaken in the 30-minute-long event. The two groups of 10 students each, met in 2 separate spaces to interact in real time. Neither space knew what the other was going to do. All the media used was instant. The room was equipped with cameras that were voice activated and images of the participant speaking were transmitted from one site to the other. Anything on the screen could be instantly printed out, and participants could print an image write on it, distort it and rebroadcast it. There was constant improvisation on the material being exchanged. Polaroid images of the screen were taken and words added to the pictures and then transmitted to the other space. There was constant reprocessing of images and verbal communication. The images were generated so fast that often the picture, video and accompanying audio captured had distortions in it. 
During the span of the hectic 30-minute event, Sara Dickinson started from one space and moved to the other. As she walked from one space to the other, she would stop on the street and perform a mime. These mini performances were taped by one of the participants (Bruce Posner). The videotape was then transmitted across the spaces in real time via the existing camera in the Picturephone site. Participants printed frames as the tape was being broadcast. Afterwards, the graduate students prepared an extensive record of the Pictruephone workshop and published the results as a Generative Systems edition of YONY. Decades later, the master videotapes of the live Picturephone event, one tape recorded in each space TA1 and TA2, were combined into a single 2-screen digital file. 
• GENERATIVE SYSTEMS-PICTUREPHONE WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago 1977 
left-to-right: Milton Roberts (hat), Steve Oscherwitz, Ed Kislaitis Covannon, Holly Pedlosky Smith, ??? (man behind microphones), Wil Thornton [Glen Holden], Philip Malkin, Bruce Posner (standing), Aldo Tambellini, Sonia Landy Sheridan, Gerda Meyer Bernstein, John Mabey (standing), Ron Kohn, Marilyn Zimmerwoman. Not pictured: Dayvidd [David Froula], Carrie Nadler, Donna Goetzke, Sara Dickinson, Kathy Cottong, ??? (woman in TA2 sitting on far left), and ??? (woman in TA2 with still camera).