Electron Movers, Research in the Electronic Arts, Inc. was a video artist collective established in 1974 in Providence, Rhode Island, and active through 1979. The original group of five artists came together because of common aesthetic interests, the desire to collaborate on works and performances, and, in the spirit of inquiry, to explore the electronic arts as an art form and communication medium. The group was comprised of five individuals: Laurie McDonald, Robert and Dorothy Jungels, Alan Powell, and Dennis Hlynsky. Larry Heyl, Philip Palombo, and Ed Tannenbaum later joined the group. The Electron Movers explored the intersections of many disciplines, challenging established moving image narrative formats in their attempts to explore video as a new language system.

During the early days of experimental television, imaging equipment was engineered to process video signals in ways that were unconventional. Sometimes the video camera was eliminated altogether, and images were created via electronics only, without the use of optics. The video "quantizer," designed by Larry Templeton and used extensively in the Electron Movers’ experiments, segmented a black and white video signal according to percentages of luminance, and synthetic colors were substituted for these divisions of luminance. Various PBS stations began opening their doors to video experimenters, and Laurie, Bob, Alan, and Dennis spent six weeks at the National Center for Experiments in Television at KQED, San Francisco, one of the premier experimental video and electronic music facilities of the time. Electron Movers was an outgrowth of these experiences.

Along with other early video art pioneers, the Electron Movers’ research in both the electronic arts and other arts disciplines created works that had no precedent in the art world. The video medium offered a way to create a new, hybridized art form that borrowed, and combined, both working methods and aesthetics of various other art forms. Organizing images in time invited parallels to musical composition—images as well as sounds have certain connotations, timbre, and dynamics—and to dance. “Painting” the cathode-ray tube (the technology of the time) with a spray of electrons invited parallels to painting a canvas. Even though a video screen is a two-dimensional surface, it can both evoke three-dimensional space and be used in combination with other materials to create a sculptural context.

The individual members of the Electron Movers represent a variety of backgrounds and artistic disciplines. From a young age, Laurie McDonald studied music, photography, and painting. In 1971, Laurie began experimenting with film and its relation to musical composition. Shifting from film to experimental video and electronic music, she created compositions on a Moog Synthesizer synchronized to largely abstract colorized video imagery. “One of my artistic goals is to blend aesthetic structures and principles with technology, the work emerging from a spirit of inquiry and experimentation. I strive to create work that induces the experience of aesthetic arrest, that sense of suspension of time and place that artists themselves feel in the act of creating a work. An art work must make a deep emotional connection to the viewer; an art work must explicitly convey the notion that it could exist as nothing but itself.” Laurie’s work received a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship and four American Film Institute/National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is distributed by the Video Data Bank in Chicago, USA, and the VIVO Media Arts Centre in Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

Robert Jungels approached video from a literary perspective. He graduated from the esteemed Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa and edited a poetry magazine in Chicago. In 1963, he was hired to team-teach a course in design at the Rhode Island School of Design and hosted a Boston television show on art and design. He subsequently became involved in filmmaking, photography, and television and, in 1971, he founded the experimental television studio at R.I.S.D.

Dorothy Jungels comes from a visual arts and dance background with experience in printmaking, sculpture, puppetry, ballet, and modern dance. In 1973, Dorothy became involved in the integration of video and dance and later developed her own highly successful dance company, Everett Dance Theater. “I have worked as an artist in a wide variety of educational and community settings over the past thirty years with many populations—children, college students, people with disabilities, the elderly, and the criminally insane. In every new situation, we would learn from each other. The experiences and interactions with people and their lives led to an interest in creating work of social significance.” 

Alan Powell came from a formal visual arts background. He spent many years exploring sculpture, painting, drawing, and film media. His major concentration was the creation of environments that alter or redirect the viewer's perception. These environments were created with various materials and with video. In the early days of Electron Movers, Alan’s interest lay in electronically generated and processed images. He started working with several channels of video exploring both documentary and graphic display of multiple images as an outgrowth of his interest in installation. Alan received a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship in 1974. In 1976, he and Connie Coleman began collaborating and, in 1978, they started presenting their video art as Coleman and Powell. From 1980 through 1993 they were artists in residence at the Experimental TV Center in Oswego, New York.

During his time with Electron Movers, Dennis Hlynsky was interested in the concept of the constant changing of present into past and created works with this theme at their core. Video was a medium that combined and manipulated images in ways that enabled the viewer to reconsider them as abstract concepts as opposed to tools for narrative storytelling and, for Dennis, a video screen was a kinetic graphic surface. Dennis also used video in many sculptural contexts, notably at ArtPark (Lewiston, New York) and at the Everson Museum of Art. Prior to his involvement with video, Dennis was a still photographer, graphic designer and visual artist. After Electron Movers he became a professor at RISD and chaired the Film/Animation/Video Department. To view Dennis’s work, visit: https://vimeo.com/dennishlynsky

Laurie, Alan, and Dennis were all graduates of the Rhode Island School of Design and after earning their degrees in 1974, they continued their experiments in video in association with Robert and Dorothy Jungels. During the five years of their collaboration, Electron Movers exhibited works at The Kitchen in New York City; The Avant Garde Festivals of New York; the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, (The Video Maze); Artpark in Lewiston, New York; at universities throughout New York and New England; and internationally. For more information, visit: https://www.lauriemcdonald.net; https://www.bluemorphopress.net; https://www.alanpowellartist.com/; https://www.risd.edu/academics/film-animation-video/faculty/dennis-hlynsky; https://artpil.com/news/tracing-the-ephemeral-dennis-hlynsky/

Poster from the Electron Movers Video Show. 1978. Photo by Laurie McDonald. From Left Laurie McDonald, Alan Powell, Ed Tannenbaum, Dennis Hlynsky, L McDonald, Bill Jungels.

Original article (1976): https://archive.org/details/ETC1097