Frank Gillette
| Frank Gillette | |
|---|---|
| Born |
July 26, 1941 Jersey City, New York. |
| Nationality | United States of America |
| Known for | Video art, Video installation art, Contemporary art, Raindance Corporation |
| Notable work | Wipe Cycle |
| Movement | Video art |
| Awards | Rockefeller Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, American Academy in Rome. |
| Website | http://www.frankgillette.com |
Frank Gillette (born in 1941) is an American video and installation artist. Interested in the empirical observation of natural phenomena, his early work integrated the viewer's image with prerecorded information. He has been described as a "pioneer in video research [...] with an almost scientific attention for taxonomies and descriptions of ecological systems and environments". His seminal work Wipe Cycle –co-produced with Ira Schneider in 1968– is considered one of the first video installations in art history. Gillette and Schneider exhibited this early "sculptural video installation" in TV as a Creative Medium, the first show in the United States devoted to Video Art. In October 1969, Frank Gillette and Michael Shamberg founded the Raindance Corporation, a "media think-tank [...] that embraced video as an alternative form of cultural communication.
Frank Gillette was born in 1941 in Jersey City, NJ. He attended Columbia University –dropping out after two years– and studied painting at Pratt Institute in New York –dropping out also after two years. He lives with the artist Suzanne Anker in Manhattan and East Hampton, NY.
Gillette was one of the first artist to explore video as a vehicle for social and political change. Described as an "abstract painter turned media activist", Frank Gillette's fascination with Marshall McLuhan's ideas made him connect with Paul Ryan –who was McLuhan's assistant at the Center for Media Understanding at Fordham University in the Bronx. During the spring of 1968, Ryan facilitated access to four Portapack video cameras, that Gillette (and others) used to make alternative television.
In October 1969, Frank Gillette and Michael Shamberg founded the Raindance Corporation –in an ironic reference to the mainstream organization Rand Corporation. It was conceived to "promote and disseminate ideas about video as a radical alternative to centralized television broadcasting". Raidance was joined by Phyllis Gershuny and Beryl Korot, who worked producing the publication Radical Software.
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