Somebody wanted to tape a lecture that I was doing for broadcast and I said, you know that is not going to tell anybody about my work at what what are my concerns are what artist concerned that him better? Why don't you give the air time to an artist to use and that'll tell the people were interested more about what's going more about that the art of the concerns of the artist than any kind of talking. That's artist Robert Whitman one of six artist currently being shown at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis who use filmmaking video and audio techniques to create luminous large-scale environments. The exhibit projected images brings Woodman to the Twin Cities to spend some extra time. And while he's here, he has used Minnesota educational radio as a medium for one of his artworks. The piece called a news program by artist composer Whitman was a half hour Saturday broadcast on these Minnesota educational radio station Whitman explained his work know about the particular program itself. There are things that I like that happen. I mean, there are three or four threads that serve will run run through it would take you there. Any particular program that sort of organized in this way until I try and keep track of the things that I'm concerned with are the persons who blew calling in and they're kind of individual development during that period of time as they become more aware of articulating themselves in a very brief time or describing with a seeing which happens. I mean, it's begin to learn how to say a sentence for one thing the first time it's hard and and they begin to they realize that they stumbling and maybe not as articulate as they wanted to be about something and then it is it goes on to become more aware. How to express themselves and that that happens to a Day begin to express themselves and their own particular fix on what they're seeing and their own way of Imaging a situation people can have tended and times that I've done it. In the past to begin to express themselves in terms of images and they may develop metaphor or something like that and there was a may use literary techniques to talk. And I like that so so in one case you have like a series of these images that begin to define the people who are doing the program the city their environment and the culture There community, you know a cultural community. So that's one sort of threat is red is kind of rhythm of time. Didn't get to go out. I like to keep each. I have an average length of the call, which is 20 seconds, which theoretically allows for 90 phone calls in half hour. But usually what happens if I end up getting a 75 or 80 because people can't make the phone or or you know, whatever else happens. It's a Miss time isn't that are things like that? So I try and keep a kind of a rhythm of this still at least 20 second 25-second 15-second 32nd units. As a kind of a plastic quality, it's it's not that specific because of each call is a little bit unexpected as a different voice a different sound and they're calling from a different place and what is not necessary but in General within the community that is where it is and awareness. Of the location. So the listener is also thinking about what that place is that this person is talking about they're saying it I'm going to corner of 52nd Street and Broadway. They have the begin to think about what that's like or what their mind is telling them what they think it's like things like so you have that kind of activity. You also have the kind of classical radio activity, which is somebody says it's a lady with a brown paper bag and for every person that's listening is a different lady with a different brown paper bag. So you have it that kind of thing but in general so that's that's basically what the pieces about those are my concerns and interests but listening to it. I've listened to the tapes of the other ones. What time is it and it's compelling. I mean what happens people seem to want to listen to it and That is a nice nice thing that happens. So but this is it. This is a sort of a substantial need a half hours. Pretty substantial. Oh, yeah. I'm insane Pawn at the corner of Sherburne and Rice Street and I'm in the phone booth right outside the white cancel here on the corner kind of minimal traffic here at this time. It is about 45 people waiting for bus right outside Edelstein super duper. Baskin-Robbins ice cream store in the IDS building and there's a formica plaque on the wall here that I'd like to share with you all says, there's hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey that was written by John Ruskin. I think he's the man that invented rainbow sherbert. I'm in lincolndale in St. Louis Park and there is two people eating here. There's two couples sitting near me and their eating very slowly, but I've nothing better to do and there's a woman in a white sweater nearby was feeding her husband toast. Go ahead. You're on the air in the summit matter and I was just walking by and I noticed that wouldn't going on the wedding of Bill Miller and Elizabeth Macklin and it just so happens that the person I talk to to ask the time was the Father of the Bride that Sabbath Macland and I'm standing in the reception room right now, You're on the air and I'm coming to you from South 21st Avenue and East Franklin. This is a student neighborhood and people here are getting ready for school. Which starts Monday for most of them. Across the street from me is the Temple Bar where most weekend nights. You can hear live music and get free peanuts down the street. The other direction is the Seward Community Food Cooperative where they specialize in selling unprocessed are on the are on the are vacant lot 63 station wagon. It's been stripped thing in the middle of the lot about a quarter of a mile from the state capitol here and you can see in the background just came around the corner from the little diner there were three or four kids and they're playing The Beauty Queen pinball change. Traffic is moderate. I'm on Harvard Street and Washington. I was just going to hamburger place people are all excited about the football game on the Go free from 1:30 to 2 and 2:40 to 2:31 or something and racial slur confusion as with some person coming in and breaking somebody's lights up again. Verizon relative positions of the sun moon and stars the day of the month is summer time of the sun moon and the stars at the Meridian Star time used in conjunction with astronomical tables the current phase of the moon the times of daily sunrise and sunset the meantime of star rise and starset and the current time and stage of ties around there. I'm at 12th Avenue South and East Franklin. This is a neighborhood that's deteriorating. It's one of the most run-down in the South Minneapolis. And it's also the highest concentration of Native American people in the United States. It's also a student neighborhood. It's cheap housing and slowly. Popcorn shirt smells good at the show here on 7th street and Hennepin Avenue. Around here. There's a whole herd of football players coming down the street at 26th and Nicollet. And in green and yellow get up there to play some of the rifle walking down the street why do police cars lined up their Certified Auto Body and it's red Volkswagen st. Paul Front St. Paul shop as you save. Do I understand you correctly that you're interested in the sound and the texture and the form of the whole half hour above the content added spice or something. If that date that goes on it's fine. If it doesn't it's fine. It's just that's part of what the environment is so that the basic sounds are not particularly unusual. There might be some music coming from a bar or a guy's using a telephone or it might be a traffic sound but that's about eight or siren something like that. I'm not terribly interested in composing that part is what's important to me is people And their language and the kind of images that there are developing what you seem to be saying Bob is that what is important in this instance is the person that is being is is performing the act of communication the person in the phone booth. Yeah, his eyes and his voice and you know, they say his attitudes in his culture. Artist Robert Whitman, discussing and demonstrating his news program a work composed by Whitman and broadcast by Minnesota educational radio. Woodman also has a great interest in Media communication and education. His background has brought him to that point as literature major at Rutgers University. He came into contact with a small but important circle of new jersey-based artist that included Allan kaprow the historian of happenings as well as the originator of that term kaprow influence Whitman's development, but it was to John Cage the composer and an early experimenter of mixed media events that Whitman and other younger artists in the 50s came into contact with an advance guard that rejected painting and sculpture in favor of music dance and theater. This is the perspective that Robert Whitman brings two projects that have to do with art Media communication and education. Yeah, I do have other I mean I have done other kind of communications projects one having some have already been putting some don't some up just acted as a kind of them as a medium myself over like a director like making a decision one. When was the thing called children and Communications? Where we hooked up two locations in the city and different different parts in New York City, which is to say almost different parts of the country. I mean because the neighborhood so crappy Define, but they really are different and there are indigenous cultures within these neighborhoods. And they were hooked up with 10 dedicated phone lines and then different kinds of equipment terminal equipment. So there was a couple of Telex machines a couple of Electro Riders a couple of those things to do to sort of Xerox copies over the phone a couple of regular phone lines that pretty much describes at the notion was to develop. We'll see what happens when kids groups of kids start using the equipment letting you quit might be the interface between to sort of Warren College shirts that say or think like that week that it was quite interesting and the equipment did act as a good medium. Between the different groups of people actually did that with enough of the thread to think of the other person at the other end as a as a person that they would like to continue a relationship with kids and the kind of natural aggressions that kids feel when their Turf is threatened in one way or another by another group or another individual a new kid in town type of thing or the black kid and white school with a white kid in a black school those kind of natural fears and hostilities were a little bit moderated by this thing out. Nobody did any long-term psychological work or study of the material that we got out of this project, but it was enough to do it and to discover that was interesting and also was interesting because they they learn how to use the equipment immediately are very highly motivated to learn how to use the equipment if you'd like a kid in a type with a typewriter the room he might or might not learn how to use Typewriter but if he's got a Telex machine that talkin directly to another kid naked into it immediately. And it takes me a couple of it took me a long time to learn how you to tell ex took those of those kids were instant into it. They were inserted into learning how to use a Xerox phone copier with takes a little bit of skill a little bit of knowing what to do when how to work a machine and little things like that. So that that was quite interesting. Anyway, that's one. So the communications are media that I was involved with not directly as I say, I mean as an artist but not putting art into it. I didn't construct the environment myself. What are the implications do you think of art projects in education with children using the medium as the thing that's in between that the communication goal and and and the child will my own feeling about that is the artists or well exercise. I work on a lot of projects. Would have been in some social areas. Okay, and what the art that is feeling it was developed. I need my participation. Another participation in these kind of project is it is that artist Sentara involved directly in the business of making calls her or being culture have no culture in a certain way and they're able to perceive the cultural attitudes in other environments as being cultural attitudes rather than being something at the guys doing wrong. I mean, I've read a lot of material information that's a UNESCO type information or research information that has to do with you know, what do you do when you want to communicate and then I'd say to the rural types in it. So cold in less developed countries. Well always in his report is a section my Hardware man or an engineer or somebody says will these guys don't know how to work the equipment. The first thing you got to do is to send them to UCLA or somewhere where they can learn how to properly operate the equipment. They learn the techniques of modern television, which means that they're going to out Turn in NBC or CBS or some other damn thing that has no cultural validity in that environment. For example, one of these guys he's a so-called consultant gurus was shocked and appalled because after each shot the guy was going to Black well now and never heard of the guy that made me think I wanted to go to Blacken me that was part of his kind of cultural input and then take me to the medium has to function. Known in the community or another hide from the outside in two children in education children is another thing you just have to consider you all come from Mars. I mean, no don't know nothing about what's going on in the mind. And the thing is just let him be yours but these manifestations that you can do a little easier. I'm not a professional in any of these fields, but these so-called culture manifestations are much easier to spot in adult situation. you know, there are there are terrific guys who are in the business of going around doing this and being sensitive to what's happening and helping people Express themselves and letting them use the equipment the way they want to so that's that's the point in that I guess the point that I was making is a notion of the artist is the guy who and sometime sometimes more easily perceive these things and stick is put in in some way that they won't be trampled on and then the the tools of the equipment or the media can actually be used by the community to help to tell so that's why I say that such an attitude or concern or something that I've been involved with. I'll just mention one other project that was directly in art project using a Communications tool when we did a piece that involves sending. I was sitting at the Telex terminal in Stockholm. New York Tokyo and I'm going to buy it in India for people to use than in a long specific lines that we did two things one was questions and answers about 10 years and future What would life be like in these different communities 10 years from now on the questions would circle around the world and get picking up answers picking up new questions as they went and that was one project that we didn't interesting enough. That was the first free. around the world Communications link for people strange to say after all this time. Nobody never done anything like that. I mean, it's not wacky when you think of all the incredible energy. Robert Whitman, one of six artists represented in projected images on view at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis through November 3rd and unusual and personal view of Media communication education and art I'm Connie Goldman.