Lost & Found Footage
New Television Workshop
This work was written and narrated by Brian O’Doherty to document the growing field of video art. The work features segments from approximately 25 different experimental works, ranging from documentary-style interviews and political works to feedback experimentation to
polished “classics” by artists like Peter Campus, William Wegman, and Joan Jonas. The narration briefly details the rise of video art, starting with the invention of the portapak camera in 1965, and compares the medium to that of traditional television.
–WGBH
58:27, Various video and film formats, 1973

Most of the tapes were labeled and many of them were movies. 2001: A Space Odyssey on U-Matic (I still have this)! There was an 80s educational/propaganda film on the American corporation, plus a bunch of other random stuff. One title particularly piqued my interest: Video: The New Wave. A few years later I inherited a U-Matic deck from a defunct public access station at my college and was mesmerized when I finally was able to watch the tape. I digitized the footage and, a few years later, uploaded Video: The New Wave to YouTube in six parts. To this day (June, 2024) those uploads are the only place I’ve encountered the program anywhere online.
Growing up, I didn’t watch a lot of public television other than Sesame Street and Monty Python reruns, so for all I knew WGBH was some obscure, defunct station from way back in the day. Now I know they were, and are, one of the major stations responsible for creating content for public television. The tone of the show was familiar to me though——reminding me of slow and serious 16mm documentary films we use to watch in art class when I was in elementary and middle school. The WGBH website that had ordering information for Video: The New Wave is no longer active. I am uploading the full resolution video for historical and educational purposes to archive.org. Maybe this will inspire a new generation to experiment with and explore analog video equipment as well as introduce them to some of the video art pioneers.
If I had discovered Video: The New Wave in high school, it would have had a huge impact on me. I’m kinda bummed out that I was in my mid-twenties when I stumbled upon it and no longer had access to the kind of vintage gear the program covers. That’s my main takeaway now: how watching it at a younger age could’ve expanded me and my friends. But, hey, better late than never (this is one of my core mantras and would make a decent epitaph for me).
I started making videos regularly in 10th grade, shooting 8mm video briefly before settling into VHS, editing with a camcorder and VCR, then with two VCRs. This progressed to producing public access television shows from 11th grade on, using their somewhat-outdated, but still amazing-to-me equipment (see the Berkley PATV Studio post for more about the gear we used). A lot of what I shot was on location, but my friends and I also spent a lot of time in the studio, playing with chroma key, experimenting withe video feedback, setting up strange lighting schemes, and madly mashing buttons and sliders on the console that controlled the three studio cameras and keying controls. It was a lot of fun and there were moments of exciting discovery.
If I’d been more aware of what video artists had been doing since the 60s though, I would’ve been less impressed with our innovations because we were sort of just scratching the surface. I would’ve been inspired to go further, experiment more. I would’ve known more of what was possible with the medium and encouraged to experiment and explore more deeply. While I think a lack of history or context can sometimes produce wonderfully novel takes on things, knowing what’s been done before, and what’s being done contemporarily, can inform and inspire new approaches. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, even if that can be pretty fun.
–Jerry White Jr.
Below is the original text for Video: The New Wave as it appeared on WGBH’s website.
Series: New Television Workshop
Program: Video: The New Wave
Date: 1973-01-01
Subject: Documentary films; Compilations; Video recordings; Specials
Program Description
This work was written and narrated by Brian O’Doherty to document the growing field of video art. The work features segments from approximately 25 different experimental works, ranging from documentary-style interviews and political works to feedback experimentation to polished “classics” by artists like Peter Campus, William Wegman, and Joan Jonas. The narration briefly details the rise of video art, starting with the invention of the portapak camera in 1965, and compares the medium to that of traditional television.
Works and artists included are listed as follows:
[Interview with speed user]: Fred Simon. Nixon Convention: Top Value TV: Otto Piene, Douglas Davis, Jim Wiseman, Dan Sandin, Richard Teitelbaum, William Etra, William Rosenquist, Bob Lewis, Stan Vanderbeek, Rudi Stern. Soft Memories: John Godfrey. Garden of Love: Ron Hays. [Japanese Horror Movie]: Walter Wright, James Seawright. [Video time painting]: Donald Hallock, Nam June Paik, John Godfrey, Shuya Abe. [Two Segments]: William Wegman, Eugene Grayson Mattingly, Frank Gilette, Steina Vaskula, Paul Kos, Gerald Byerly, Joan Jonas, Richard Serra. Three Transitions: Peter Campus. Scapemates: Ed Emshwiller. Produced and directed by Fred Barzyk, this was created for national broadcast on public television.
The New Television Workshop created several shows that were broadcast on WGBH without being a part of a series sponsored specifically by the Workshop. The Workshop was also commissioned to create programs for national broadcast. Several shows were made in collaboration with existing series at other stations, including “American Playhouse” at WNET (New York).
Series Description
The New Television Workshop originated at WGBH, a public broadcasting station in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1974 to support the creation and development of experimental video art. This experimental programming included dance, drama, music, performance and visual arts on video and film. As early as 1968, WGBH was committed to the development of video art through residency programs, with artists such as Nam June Paik, and the “Rockefeller Artists-in-Television” project. Many of these early works (pre-1974) were broadcast both locally and nationally.
As an umbrella for arts related programming, the Workshop included “Artist’s Showcase, ” “Frames of Reference, ” “Dance for Camera, ” “Poetry Breaks,” and “New Television,” as well as acquired arts programming. Individual works were created for “Visions,” a series produced by WNET (New York), and “Alive From Off Center,” a series produced by KTCA (St. Paul – Minneapolis). The Contemporary Art Television (CAT) Fund was co-founded by the Workshop and Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) in the 1980’s, to commission works by video artists. In 1993 the Workshop ceased production at WGBH.
Director
Fred Barzyk
Producers
Barzyk, Fred
Tappan, Olivia (Associate Producer)
Editors
Barkhausen, Joan (Film Editor)
Crane, David (Video Editor)
Hutton, David (Video Editor)
Kane, Pat (Video Editor)
McKnight, John (Video Editor)
McSorley, Tom (Video Editor)
Funder
National Endowment for the Arts
Subjects
Video art
Video recordings
Genres
Compilations
Documentaries and factual works
Specials
See also: https://web.archive.org/web/20030101094542/http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/NTW/FA/TITLES/Video14.HTML