Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Lost & Found: More DEAD AIR

We came not to praise Atomic TV, but to bury it!


Now we're respectable: ATV gets curated -
just like in a museum!


Now that it's dead air, Atomic TV is finally (like John Waters after Broadway) respectable. Right? I mean, after being curated as part of a "video installation" at the Metro Gallery, we even have a nameplate (eerily similar to a cemetary headstone) commemorating our efforts - a fossil footprint of our legacy on the soon-to-defunct analog wavelengths! May we R.I.P. - Rest In (posthumous) Press!

No Press Is Bad Press, or:
The Importance of Being Erstwhile


Here's the Baltimore City Paper's review of the DEAD AIR: End of Analog "wily exhibition" at the Metro Gallery: Lost Signals. Reviewer Martin L. Johnson commented:

The furtive aesthetic of Davis' video is matched, in an odd way, by Scott Huffines and erstwhile City Paper contributor Tom Warner, whose public access show Atomic TV gets a retrospective here. Although the public access series ended in 2005, with the bulk of the episodes having been produced in the late 1990s, its inclusion acknowledges that with the loss of broadcast television, other things, such as public access, may go as well. Huffines and Warner acknowledge that many changes in the new millennium, from digital videotape to YouTube to the sour economy, led to the discontinuation of their project. To see it here is to remember what's possible when you can assume that a viewer will watch something for more than a minute and, more importantly, lives in your hometown.

Well said, Mr. Johnson. In today's 15-minute-frame-of-reference world - in which everything's a Wikipedia entry just a mouseclick away - attention spans seem to be going the way of analog TV.

(By the way, the CP nevers lets me forget that I'm an erstwhile City Paper contributor. It seems I can't escape my past!)

DEAD AIR: End of Analog Party Pix

And, leaving no stoned unturned and - following the Atomic TV Recycle-Everything-Ad-Infinitum Credo (aka "No Footage Left Behind"), leaving no footage unused! - here are some pix from the "DEAD AIR: The End of Analog" party held at the Metro Gallery on February 17, 2009.


Dead On Air-ival.



Screen credits



The Eternal Shrine of the Cathode Ray


Cur-in-a-Blur:
Underdog Lady on Atomic TV



Atomic TV: A View Askew.


Tom gets nipple-tweaked on ATOMIC TV


"Male enhancement" specialist Dr. Joel Kaplan
tries to pump up Atomic TV's Tom Warner



Phil Davis' "BE-278" video (s)mash-up.


We repeat: this is not a test.
(It's a video installation.)



"Fascinating!" says Atomic TV viewer
Amy Linthicum, in between yawns.



"When's the lottery drawing coming up?"
asks Amy, impatiently.



Jane King, Kristen Miller Huffines
and Chris Campbell schmoozing.



Marnie Colton, Ray Cruitt and
Bridget Gibbons hobnobbing.



The crowd gathers around TV sets,
just like at a Superbowl Party.



Still from the "Bushwacked" installation



Towers of Transmitted Power

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