SYLVANIA

**EXCERPT

Television transmissions flash reflections off waxed floors into the waxworks of the family room. These programs misted up in the crystal ball console watched by juvenile earthly occupants eager for distraction and mild hypnosis. With TV manufacturer names such as Sylvania, Zenith, Noratheon, Norelco, Admiral and Magnavox, we knew we were in the realm of the metaphysical and the mythical. And the realm of our own backyard and the ever strange terrain of adults where TV caricatures seemingly did justice. Insidious and endearing , the world of television and the set-piece domiciles of sitcoms could ring true as a common reality or have the effect of implanted memories. For some even with the laugh tracks and impossible cheer they were akin to closed circuit broadcasts of one’s own home, a sanitized mirror in which to dwell. For others they were like signals bouncing off of Mars, a never-never land of impossible attainment but so lacking in dimension, so half human and bodysnatcher-like that one might wish to be spared the fate of such depleted perfection.

Like the Amberson staircase that traveled from film to film on different sets of the RKO lot, certain notions of domestic bliss and the design attributes of suburban architecture jumped from station to station from Bewitched to My Three Sons to Dick Van Dyke to The Brady Bunch. This ongoing series (so far Sylvania and Zenith have been completed and Raytheon and Magnasinic are in the works) is working with a set of recycled elements that will be put into play in the arena of photographed houses used as stage sets for TV sitcoms of the 1960s and 70s. The pieces could play simultaneously in an installation. In the case of Sylvania we are in the home that “belonged” to Samantha and Darren in Bewitched but without a hint of those characters ever having existed. The elements presented: Spiragraphic mandalas, a prowling alien (protector or intruder?), a naked woman (asleep or dead?) on a couch of a suburban living room. An unshaven figure who might be the videomaker or his double looms like a cyborg in nebulous space. His movements make us wonder if he is an apprentice to the robot like figure, or the puppetmaster of the scene, a paradox like the role of television itself—reflective, instructive and/or indoctrinating. Can the elements of this mystery resolve? The series continues. - Mark MacElhattan

YEAR: 2005
TRT: 10:00
MEDIUM: SPY CAM / ANIMATION
PREMIERE: NEW YORK VIDEO FESTIVAL
DISTRIBUTION: VIDEO DATA BANK

ZENITH

**EXCERPT

In the next chapter of Bobby Abate's mysterious tale, we find ourselves roaming the set of a 1960's evening newscast. The mysterious unearthly being has claimed a new test subject and is making use of the station's control room in attempt to communicate and perhaps reunite with his unshaven counterpart.

YEAR: 2006
TRT: 10:00
MEDIUM: SPY CAM / ANIMATION
PREMIERE: NEW YORK VIDEO FESTIVAL
DISTRIBUTION: VIDEO DATA BANK