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Allan Kaprow «Hello»
Allan Kaprow, «Hello», 1969
Filmstill | ©
 


 Allan Kaprow
«Hello»

In 1969, Kaprow created «Hello,» an interactive video happening for «The
Medium Is the Medium,» a thirty-minute experimental television program with six visual artists. Five television cameras and twenty-seven monitors connected four remote locations over a closed-circuit television network.
Groups of people were dispatched to the various locations with instructions
as to what they would say on camera, such as «Hello, I see you,» when
acknowledging their own image or that of a friend. Kaprow functioned as
‹director› in the studio control room. If someone at the airport were talking
to someone at M.I.T., the picture might suddenly switch and one would be
talking to doctors at the hospital.
Kaprow explained that he was interested in the idea of «communications
media as non-communications,» and that the most important message was
the idea of «oneself in connection with someone else.» «Hello» offered a
critique of the disruptive manner by which technology mediates interaction.
It metaphorically short-circuited the television network, thereby calling attention to the connections made between actual people.

(source: Kristine Stiles and Edward A. Shanken , MISSING IN ACTION: AGENCY AND MEANING IN INTERACTIVE ART)