This was an educational project produced by Education Services of the National Gallery of Victoria, intended to introduce the public to a “video environment” outside the domain of commercial television and to “provide a technological experience … [of new] mediums of communication and creativity.”1

The programme was intended to counter the average person's experience of TV as being made by experts and costing huge amounts of money as well as “the more insidious effects of the commercialism which permeates the TV product.”2 However as Newton remarks it was the commercial aspects that led to the development of the non-broadcast video production equipment that had “created opportunities for some people to crack some of the mysteries of broadcast television,”3 and he makes the optimistic suggestion that, since two people can't use the TV set for different things at once that this may break “the powerful grip [of] the major broadcast networks.”4

He notes that the new non-broadcast equipment was taken up by three groups of people; educational institutions who hope to use to replace teachers and copied broadcast production styles and to a large extent failed because of that. The second group were the community activists hoping to change communities by making media communications more accessible, and the third group were artists who saw video as a means of extending the ways in which they could make art. Although when video first became available to artists it was taken up by groups who “attributed all kinds of magical properties to the [video ] image and … foresaw [it] as a tool to free the world” this did not come to pass, however video has since become a major art form, and some of the communications access it promised have become important aspects of the internet, not that Newton could have foreseen that in 1978.

The works demonstrate that the video image should not be confused with broadcast television, not the least because it was the critique of television that was among the artists' intentions, neither did (or do) they have the budgets and technical support of broadcast television, but more importantly artists are expressing “art ideas” – of a wide range of types – that are generally more interesting than the tired repetitions of commercial television. Newton quotes American video artist, Les Levine, as saying that video is “the medium of television being used to express conceptual ideas about time and space.”5

The formal and technical aspects of video were established by broadcast television and thus television is video's “frightful parent”,6 but distribution is its strength and “the weakness of video art and access.”7 Locally video is usually only seen as tapes, or part of a performance or an installation, occasionally in some of the major galleries but more often in artists' run spaces.

Newton sums up his note to the exhibition with the observation that “Whether video is used to tell a story or as part of a performance or in a video environment where the viewer is part of the piece, it is giving us new ways of thinking about television and the world it creates around us at the same time as it is a new tool for the expression of creative ideas.”8

The exhibition consisted of several video installations:

Jungle Safari (1978) Robert Randall and Frank Bendinelli

Identity Puzzle

Metamorphosis of an Insect (1978), Patricia Milward-Bason

and a programme of videotapes presented in Lecture Theatre, 3rd Floor, NGV.

Saturday 18th November

1.00pm. - A selection of tapes by students of Melbourne State College.
2.00pm. - "Nighthawk" by Warren Burt.
3.00pm. - "Echoes", "Floral Recollections", "Still Life" by Robert Randall and Frank Bendinelli.

Sunday 19th November
1.00pm. - A selection of tapes by students of Rusden State College.
2. 00pm. - "Stonehenge", "T.V. Buddha" by Stephen Jones.
"The Dream" by Ariel.
3.00pm. - "Red Love" by Judi Stack and Betsy Sussler. 

Wednesday 22nd November
1.00pm. - A selection of tapes by students of Preston Institute of Technology.
2.00pm. "The Fish", "Yellow Cake" by Malcolm Ellis and Robert Pollock.
"The Waltzing Instinct in Ostriches" by Warren Burt, Malcolm Ellis, Ron Nagorka.
3.00pm. - "Facial Landscape" by Robert Randall and Frank Bendinelli. 

Saturday 25th November
1.00pm. - A selection of tapes by students of Melbourne State College.
2.00pm. - "Nocturnal B", "Salt", "Danger Dance" by Warren Burt.
3.00pm. - A selection of tapes by Western Communications, a co-operative society that provides video equipment to community groups and individuals. 

Sunday 26th November
1.00pm. - A selection of tapes by students of Rusden State College.
2.00pm. - "Fractured Nude", "Still Life" by Robert Randall and Frank Bendinelli.
"The Fish", "Yellow Cake" by Malcolm Ellis and Robert Pollock. 

Wednesday 29th November
1.00pm. - A selection of tapes by students of Preston Institute of Technology.
2.00pm. - "Stonehenge", "T.V. Buddha" by Stephen Jones.
2. 30pm. - "The Dream" by Ariel.
3.00pm. - "Polyglot Puppet Theatre" by Mac Gudgeon and Ken Otton. 

Saturday 2nd December
1.00pm. - A selection of tapes by students of Melbourne State College.
2.00pm. - "Fractured Nude" "Venus Reclining" by Robert Randall and Frank Bendinelli.
3.00pm. - “Nighthawk” by Warren Burt. 

Sunday 3rd December
1.00pm. - A selection of tapes by students.
2.00pm. - "Red Love" by Judi Stack and Betsy Sussler.
3.00pm. - "Echoes", "Floral Recollections" by Robert Randall and Frank Bendinelli.
3.30pm. - A selection of tapes by Western Communications. (See Above)

• 1. Education Services NGV, “Introduction”, Plug in and Switch on … Aspects of Art and Technology in the 20th Century, Melbourne: NGV Education Services, 1.
• 2. Robert Newton, “Video In Perspective,” Plug in and Switch on … Aspects of Art and Technology in the 20th Century, Melbourne: NGV Education Services, 4.
• 3. Ibid.
• 4. Ibid.
• 5. Les Levine, Video by Artists, Toronto, Canada: Art Metropole, 1976, as quoted in ibid., 5.
• 6. David Antin, Video Art, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Institute of Contemporary Art, 1975, as quoted in Newton, “Video In Perspective,” 6
• 7. Newton, “Video In Perspective,” 6
• 8. Ibid.