Tom Moody Dallas Public Access Project

Above is a proposal page for a project I did around 1990 for Dallas Public Access Cable. Messages 2-6 above were translated into "teletext" (block capitals on blue screens) and aired individually at random times of the day. I made this crude prototype using MacPaint. Clearly, as text-based art the piece owes more to Harvey Kurtzman of Mad than Lawrence Weiner of Dia. Never saw these live because I didn't have cable but remember one anecdote from their run: Due to a technical glitch the "WE COMMAND. YOU OBEY..." screen accidentally ran on an African American affairs channel and the station got a lot of angry complaints. What, black people don't want authoritarian messages coming from their TVs? Seriously, sorry that happened but it was kind of an anti-authoritarian (or a-authoritarian) message.

I was reminded of this because Emma Davidson (Lektrolab) and Paul B. Davis (Lektrolab/BEIGE) are doing a Teletext project that will run on Dutch TV later this month as part of ambientTV.net. Their Teletext TV station is called Microtel, and they are calling for submissions to create simple text and graphics messages. If you saw the Bodenstandig 2000 show at Deitch you saw some of drx's girlie/sex ads done in this format and they looked great--very low res and cheesy. You have to download a program (Windows only) to create the Teletext files and then email the files to Paul and Emma for reformatting.

- tom moody 1-04-2006 7:54 am

Speaking of Dallas, don't you have a show there soon? Or did that already happen? Or am I trippin?
- jimlouis 1-04-2006 7:00 pm


I posted pics of some of the work a few posts back. So, yes, it's happening--I just shipped everything yesterday. Thanks for asking!
- tom moody 1-04-2006 7:18 pm


Oh, the 28th, I was hoping it would coincide with my visit, but no.
- jimlouis 1-04-2006 7:30 pm





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