From its inception in 1973, the UB Media Study Department brought together some of the world's most distinguished artists.
Now, "MindFrames: Media Study at Buffalo, 1973-90" at the ZKM Media Museum located in Karlsruhe, Germany, honors the work of eight UB professors in a whole new way.
Gerald O'Grady, retired professor and founder of the Media Studies Department at UB, explained the idea behind this groundbreaking exhibit.
"This is a historic exhibition not because of what's in it, which is basically the faculty who were at the Center for Media Study as it was then known in the 1970s," O'Grady said. "It's about a new way to exhibit film, video and the digital arts."
The featured artists include Gerald O'Grady, the late Hollis Frampton and Paul Shartis, Woody Vasulka, Steina Vasulka, James Blue, Tony Conrad and Peter Weibel.
Each artist has over 20 works displayed on digital tape, adding up to more than 70 films and videos exhibited simultaneously.
What makes the exhibit both unique and possible is its innovative arrangement, "an astonishing completely new way of exhibiting film, video and digital arts," O'Grady said.
Weibel, who serves as director of the exhibit, selected the ZKM Media Museum because of its generous features.
"ZKM is the most advanced museum in the world for the transmission of electronic images," O'Grady said.
Each of the rooms in the ZKM Media Museum is the size of two football fields and shows at least one work from each artist. The entire exhibit is controlled from a remote location in Cologne, Germany and can be changed on five-second notice.
UB graduate Robert O'Kane implemented the intricate programming and operation of the exhibit, whereas the concept of viewing the works simultaneously was innovated by Woody Vasulka.
"You go to a museum and there're a hundred paintings," O'Grady said. "Here there are 135 films. The show is up for three months - it would take three months if you wanted to see all the work. You're into a totally new kind of experience."
The original intention for the exhibit was to transmit via Internet to several other museums simultaneously.
"This exhibition does not only fulfill the classic mission of the museum to act as a cultural memory, but offers at the same time an outlook," Weibel wrote in an editorial for the exhibit.
Intellectuals from across Europe have attended "MindFrames," and 25 leading scholars from France, Belgium, Belgrade and the U.S. are all contributing essays on the exhibit.
"It's gratifying to see that these people have been recognized, though each on their own has been recognized in many years," O'Grady said.
When O'Grady founded the Center for Media Studies in 1973, no such department existed on a college campus.
"I saw a need to bring teaching of the craft of film-making by independents into the university," he said.
While some schools offered education in the ways of Hollywood filmmaking, no school provided a department for independent filmmaking.
"The university had the good sense to allow us to bring independent film and video arts makers into the university," O'Grady said.
He went on to explain that UB was already known for distinguished professors. The music department's Creative Associates program brought in a world-renowned artist each year, while the English department was home to a number of prominent poets and novelists. The Center for Media Studies was yet another testament in the school's commitment to excellent faculty.
Originally a professor of medieval literature in the English department, O'Grady brought together a group of internationally known artists with distinguished records.
"It was a productive and unusual faculty and each did things in a great many new directions," O'Grady said.
Housing the first digital arts laboratory in the U.S., the center was more than an art department.
"MindFrames: Media Study at Buffalo 1973-90" is on display till March 18. The museum's web site, http://hosting.zkm.de/mindframes_e, provides further insight into the exhibit and the individual works of the artists.
