cyberthon

The Cyberthon Archival Project is an attempt to document the unique and evolutionary series of television events that took place during the early nineties; To ensure that the efforts of a group of truly amazing experimental artists who were – and still are – at the cutting edge of their fields.

The first post in this blog is a exert from a letter written as part of a submission to SKA-TV – a public TV group – in Melbourne Australia to gain support for dubbing the original master tapes onto a superior format (SP-Betacam). With the original master video tape formats being a mixed bag of VHS, SVHS, Low Band U-Matic and Hi-8, and being between 10-15yrs old, they were reaching there use by date. The electrons contained within the magnetic media were being subjected to a slow and painless decay. Threatening the loss of hours of priceless cultural heritage.

What initiated this letter was an archival project undertaken by ACMI. The project was called Memory Grid. A request was made by the organizers to include the Cyberdelia documentary; to be digitized and preserved for generations to come. Due to the fact that Cyberdelia covered a period of time and a selection of artists at ground-zero of the Melbourne (and Global) Tekno-Art renaissance.

This process of archiving Cyberdelia prompted a consideration to archive the amazing after math of Cyberdelia; that being the Cyberthon live marathon broadcasts. This Blog, therefore, is a multi-media presentation of all the material collated for the Cyberthon Archival Project; material which now resides at SKA-TV and the National Film and Sound Archives. This material consists of candid photos taken during the events, original website, promotional flyer art, articles written about, proposals and streamed versions of the archived Cyberthons.

A request is being made by the instigators of this archive project; that being if you have any information, documents, photos, video recordings or ANYTHING that pertains to the Cyberthons. Particularly information about who was involved. A huge (over 2 yr) effort was made to locate, contact and obtain correct details of the participants of the broadcasts – whether they were artists or behind the scenes production people. There due credit is due So please contact the author of this blog for possible arrangements to gain access to a copy of this material. Also, importantly, if you were involved with, watched or just heard about the Cyberthon events then please feel free to add your comments and perspectives to this online record. It is the authors hope that a lot of unknown information may make its way here.

So dive in, download or upload; but most of all, ENJOY the Cyberthon experience. Again!

1990 – CYBERDELIA: the documentary
1990 – CYBERTHON 0: the cyberdelia remix
1991 – CYBERTHON I: for the mind, body and soul
1992 – CYBERTHON II: the virtual transmission
1992 – CYBERTHON III: the underground transmission
1994 – CYBERTHON IV: epic omnicast
1995 – CYBERTHON V: spectrum

The CYBERTHON series – over five years; some 80hrs of
marathon VJ mix-up events that were born out of the
initial live to air broadcasting of the Cyberdelia doco.

In 1990 RMITV invited a small loose group of artists to
create a short Doco covering the – then – emergent
revolutionary Tekno movement. Cyberdelia Prod

was formed along with a presentational style for the doco;
And a Director was sought to baby sit the project from
wo to go.

Due to the production being edited using two different
facilities (@ RMIT & Latrobe) an unforeseen technical
(signal) problem occurred which hindered the ability to
compile the Doco, on the very day of broadcast, onto one
continuous 30min tape.

It was then decided to play the Doco – which still existed
on several tapes – and perform the segment cuts (top and
tail) live. This decision gave the production team the
advantage of allowing interviewed artists works to be
extended from 1 minute snippets to (almost) full length
presentation. A kind of long play version of the 30min
Doco.

Towards the end of the broadcast the Video Jockeys
(VJ’s) began to effect some artists works with the Vision-
Mixer effects available to them. At the end of the 2hr
transmission a phone call was made by one of the
producers of RMITV to the VJ’s at the broadcast studio.
It was commented that what was being broadcasted
“… was some of the best stuff they’ve ever seen on Public
TV.. and could they (VJ/DJ’s) continue jamming for
another couple of hours”.

Which is exactly what happened. Due to the fact that all
the Cyberdelia material had already been repeated, more
material was needed. The VJ’s then appropriated tapes
that were used during the RMITV 7 day test transmission
and proceeded to mix-up and apply analogue/digital
effects processing. All this to an impromptu DJ session.
The result was also a kind of abstract revisiting of the
whole 7 day transmission.

Sometime later the Cyberdelia crew were invited by
RMITV to create an event in a similar vein for an up and
coming 28 day test broadcast. CYBERTHON was thus
born, the first being an marathon 8 hour event. The
proceeding 4 years saw these event progress into a
random yearly gathering of (some 300+) artists and
production people from diverse art/music scenes to
exhibit their work. Generating excitement that rippled
through the several converging scenes over the
proceeding 4 years and even in its wake – meme’icly – till
this current day.