{"id":4639,"title":"Up in the Air, An Interview with Brian Springer","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/air-interview-brian-springer","version":"81e047891676de415bab17c4879525ed6ab3145205f069ed270484302ed84903","modified":"2026-09-19T01:41:47.5334746+00:00","credits":[{"role":"Author","name":"Cheryl Jackson"}],"authorKeys":["Jackson, Cheryl"],"subjects":["Interviews"],"metadata":[{"label":"Publication","value":"The Squealer","url":null},{"label":"Publisher","value":"Squeaky Wheel","url":null},{"label":"Date","value":"1989","url":null},{"label":"Place","value":"Buffalo, New York","url":null},{"label":"Volume","value":"March April","url":null},{"label":"ETC archive","value":"ETC0494","url":null},{"label":"Interviewee","value":"Brian Springer","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022Up in the Air, An Interview with Brian Springer.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/air-interview-brian-springer.","publication":"Cheryl Jackson. Up in the Air, An Interview with Brian Springer. The Squealer. vol. March April. Squeaky Wheel. 1989.","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/4639.ris"},"links":[],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":15166},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":785}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"The following is an interview with Brian Springer, one of the founding members of Squeaky Wheel. He has recently returned to Buffalo after living on the West Coast for three years. As Hallwalls\uFF92 Video Artist-in-Residence, he\uFF92s been very busy for the past few months with activities from recording satellite feeds to collecting W.N.Y.er\uFF92s home videos, to helping all of us with our projects, no matter how large or small. His recent installation at Hallwalls, \uFF93Viewing Baby From the Blimp\uFF94 incorporated various media technologies: behind the scenes satellite broadcasts, wireless telephone transmissions, intercom interceptions, all presented in a living-room environment. A portable satellite dish presides over the familiar scene like a sentient cipher, and we were asked to recognize and admit our complicity in the project of global media pervasion. Brian\uFF92s current project is called \uFF93Home Video Theater,\uFF94 a Public Access television series now showing on three different cable networks in W N.Y., which seeks to showcase the video work of people living, working, and playing in the region. Cheryl Jackson: Brian, I want to talk about both of your recent projects at Hallwalls but first, I\uFF92m very curious how did you come up with the title for your installation \uFF93Viewing Baby From the Blimp?\uFF94 All kinds of strange, sort of aerial images come to mind... Brian Springer: Well, basically the title came from a quote from a Monday Night Football game. Dan Deardorf was talking about getting a view of the football game from the Goodyear Blimp and so he said \uFF93Let\uFF92s get a view of this baby from the blimp\uFF94 and I had this artist in residency and had to do something and I was trying to fill in the blanks and that filled in the blank. CJ: Oh, right! Are we talking blimps being used for satellites? Sorry, I\uFF92m not following what blimps have to do with your installation. BS Blimps are big, blimps are big in surveillance and are making a big comeback as a surveillance tool. I worked in a place that sent fax\uFF92s and this one guy was involved with border patrol and the surveillance blimps that they\uFF92re using over the border between the U.S. and Mexico in order to monitor activities there. CJ: I see. Scary! How dare they make blimps scary?! They\uFF92re so cool to look at. Your Interest in surveillance is an aspect of your general interest in the impact of new technologies on both our public and private lives. Can you tell us a little about how you first got interested in so-called \uFF93surveillance technologies?\uFF94 BS: I met this guy, a video maker from Ithaca, Phillip Jones. He and I worked together one time at the Summer School of the Media Arts and he had a magazine called Popular Communications which deals with all kinds of surveillance technologies that are sort of used as an entertainment form by people. Part of it deals with monitoring short wave, scanner communications, police bands and such. But it also gets into tips on eavesdropping, how to tap into car telephone stuff, how to tap into land-line microwave transmissions, satellite telephone transmissions. There seems to be a whole little sub-culture of people who are interested in this sort of alternative broadcasting network, which is actually just people. CJ: Yeah, I\uFF92ve always been fascinated by and loved to listen to CB radio, it\uFF92s like, what are these people talking about and what kinds of things are interesting to them?! So is it legal or illegal to go around recording and collecting this kind of stuff, these radio and video waves and transmissions? BS: Well, it became illegal in 1986. So I stopped all my activities in the field then. CJ: Yeah sure, tell me some more! BS: It was really nice before ... Before 1986, everything was under the guise of the Secrecy Act of 1934 which said that you could listen to private transmissions as long as you didn\uFF92t record it or tell anyone what you heard. It was the Secrecy Act of 1934 so you could listen to any of this stuff without any problem as long as you didn\uFF92t talk about it. CJ: And now we\uFF92re not even allowed to listen to it, even though it\uFF92s right out there, accessible to whomever might be the least bit curious or intrigued? That\uFF92s crazy. BS: Yeah, but it\uFF92s not enforceable. That\uFF92s the thing that\uFF92s crazy about it. CJ: Let\uFF92s talk about the stuff you pick up on your satellite dish, the T.V. junk which you sort of re-broadcast in your show at Hallwalls. BS: That was just video, and that\uFF92s just public domain. It\uFF92s up there and anyone with a home dish can see this stuff. But it does sort of fit in with my idea of a personal broadcasting system, where you watch people watch television and they are watching some of the behind the scenes goings on, of how television news is made. It\uFF92s basically just a way to watch people. CJ: Oh, those newscasters are grotesque! I can see the fascination ... To see the difference between their on and off personalities is astounding. We see how stupid they look and act when they go \uFF93on the air\uFF94 and yet they probably think they look really stupid when they\uFF92re off and have to do something like itch their nose. In the end, which personality do we believe? There\uFF92s one more thing that occurs to the viewer- that what is commonly perceived as the most glamorous job in news is really the most boring because they say a few lines to introduce the next item and then immediately they\uFF92re off screen for the cut-away. I guess they need time to practice reading their next lines off the teleprompter, huh? Brian, can you elaborate some more about how you perceive the line between public and private domain today? I see It becoming very fuzzy at this point in telecommunications times and I know your work is trying to question and challenge our traditional notions about this. BS: Well for one thing, and this is central to \uFF93Home Video Theater,\uFF94 we can now have access to what I call a personal broadcasting network, a sort of broadcast network of private communications. CJ: Yeah, we, the people can show and see something much more true and even very intimate because we\u0027re the ones actually making it. It\uFF92s more about humanity than TV has ever been. BS: There\uFF92s something else. I mean when I used to scan I would sometimes feel good about it, like with public officials. They\uFF92re the best people to scan because they should have to be even more publicly accountable than they are. And I think that a certain lack of privacy can mean a lot to the concept of the decentralization of power. Eavesdropping does give a feeling of voyeurism, there\uFF92s no way around it, but I sometimes have felt real bad, even perverse, when I know I\uFF92ve crossed a very personal, private line. So yeah, it is a weird kind of intersection or overlapping I\uFF92m still thinking about a lot. CJ: It\uFF92s certainly something that\uFF92s affecting or will be affecting all of us, and there aren\uFF92t, it seems to me also, any clear answers. Now I want to ask you about the furniture in the installation. It seemed you were trying to set up a living room kind of atmosphere, with the easy chair, coffee table, and stereo and television console. There was also a portable satellite dish with a small monitor mounted in the center. So far so good, it fits together for me... except for one thing. The chair was facing away from the tv sets and I wasn\uFF92t sure just why? Was it referring to seeing things we aren\uFF92t, as happy news viewers supposed, to see? BS: No, I wanted people to have to think about the act of viewing and I thought maybe, seeing a chair that was empty facing toward them might give them the sense that someone should be sitting there or someone should be looking out from the chair. Also, the monitor in the satellite dish was placed somewhat near the head level of the chair so that it became like the head of someone sitting there. CJ: Right, so we, the viewer, really aren\uFF92t sure, don\uFF92t really know, who is sitting in the chair. It could be us, but is it them? What I mean, is that we see them, the newscasters or our politicians, and by believing in the truth of the picture, they have us. They are sitting in our chair, taking our place. There\uFF92s one more thing about the installation, can you explain what was going on in the car telephone conversation? Sometimes I thought it was live because I would always catch different snatches, I\uFF92m just curious about what it actually was? BS: It was pre-recorded and it was just one conversation, a re-created car phone conversation of a whistle blower for General Electric who was talking about some price fixing that G.E. had done against the Federal Government to the tune of about $130,000,00 and that G.E. had never paid back. The whistle blower went to G.E. and when asked why they were doing this they decided to hush him up by giving him a promotion and a transfer to California. But when he got there he was laid off and in this conversation he\uFF92s discussing all of his options with a lawyer. CJ: So you must have gotten it in California... BS: It was something that I got before 1986 and it\uFF92s just a loose transcription of a telephone conversation, a reenactment actually. CJ: A re-enactment? It\uFF92s not really those two people who had the original conversation? Too bad! BS: No. CJ: No. But it is a very good solution to this problem of not being able to record anything. BS: I look at the car telephone as a dialogue synthesizer. Where you can have a video synthesizer that produces different video effects and images, well you can look at the car telephone receiver as a dialogue synthesizer, you can just create dialogue from it. As long as you don\uFF92t treat them as real people and don\uFF92t literally use what\uFF92s said or record it but use it as a way of getting insight into how people talk and the different things different people talk about. CJ: The perfect post post-modern device: something to create fictitiousness with ... This interest in finding out about people, who they are, what they\uFF92re Into, etc., does this relate to your other project, Home Video Theater? BS: Well it\uFF92s part of it. I think it\u0027s interesting that since 1985 they\uFF92ve sold like 5,000,000 camcorders in the U.S., so that means there\uFF92s a lot of tape being produced and no one really knows what\uFF92s going on in the home. Sociologists don\uFF92t really know, but here\uFF92s these people recording bits of life and it might give some insight into what happens in the home in some way. CJ: Or out of the home, like what people do when they\uFF92re out with friends, what they see as important to record on tape. Have you gotten a picture of what you might call a typical modern-day \uFF93Americana\uFF94 or maybe just the opposite, stuff that looks and feels pretty untypical?! BS: No, there\uFF92s not a broad enough sample yet, I haven\uFF92t gotten that much response with people sending in work to really get a really fair assessment of what it is the people are up to. It\uFF92s just not that broad of a sample to be reflective of the families, of an American family, there just haven\uFF92t been enough. CJ: I find it quite fascinating because this Idea of \uFF93home video\uFF94 can be thought of as almost the complete opposite of what a lot of us normally think of as \uFF93video art\uFF94 and now here are all of these people, they\uFF92re not \uFF93video artists\uFF94 by profession and yet here they are, doing something...dare we call it art? BS: Yeah, a lot of it is accidental art and such but the other thing that I\uFF92m trying to address is the fact that given that these 5,000,000 camcorders are out there and that even if only one in every 1,000 is actually creating work that is self aware and actually made for an audience that is outside of their family, that means that there\uFF92s like 5,000 new video artists in the United States. And if it\uFF92s like 2 in every 1,000 then that\uFF92s 10,000 already and those numbers are just going to go up. So, in a way, I just wanted to create a forum where people that might be doing that type of video work might see there\uFF92s options for distributing their work or getting it shown via something like public access television. CJ: Right, the industry, having profits as th","offset":0,"nextOffset":12000,"totalCharacters":15166,"complete":false},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}