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Ponton/Van Gogh TV «Piazza virtuale»
Ponton/Van Gogh TV, «Piazza virtuale», 1992
© Ponton/Van Gogh TV
All the television links open for the duration of the live programme converged in the studio in Kassel. The images for broadcasting were transmitted unchanged per dedicated video line to the public station ZDF in Mainz and up-linked to the European Space Agency's Olympus satellite. For the 100-day duration of the ‘documenta' show, 'Piazza Virtuale' was broadcast twice daily on the 3Sat television channel and, after midnight, via the Olympus satellite. 'Piazza Virtuale' registered up to 25,000 callers per hour, and up to the present day remains one of the most successful world-wide interactive television projects ever.


 Ponton/Van Gogh TV
«Piazza virtuale»

Artists and technicians from Austria and Germany have been working together as Van Gogh TV since 1986 in the Ponton European Media Art Lab. Some of their members developed joint projects from as early as 1979 in the Minus Delta T group. 'Piazza Virtuale' is an interactive television project that could be received all over Europe via 4 satellites for 100 days during documenta IX in 1992. Visitors to documenta could beam themselves in via videophones and cameras that had been permanently installed in Kassel and other European cities to the live broadcast called 'Piazza Virtuale'. It was possible to use telephone, fax or modem to dial into the broadcast from home. The aim of the project was to transform the mass medium of television into an interactive medium that reverses the relationship of one broadcaster and many receivers.