Phil Morton
Phil Morton (1945–2003) was an influential American video artist and activist who founded the Video Area in 1970 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he taught for many years. Biography The Video Area that Morton founded was the first department in the United States to offer college degrees in Video art, through the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Video Area eventually became the Video Department, which later became part of the Film, Video & New Media Department. Frequent visitors and collaborators in the Video Area during the 1970s included Steina and Woody Vasulka, Gene Youngblood, Dan Sandin, Timothy Leary, Barbara Buckner and many other active and founding members of the early Video art community. Morton introduced analog and digital computers into the curriculum of the Video Area and the School in the 1970s through the use of the Sandin Image Processor, a patch-programmable analog computer optimized for video processing and synthesis developed from 1971 - 1973, and The Bally Astrocade Arcade Video Game System, a programmable home video game console developed in 1974. Morton's playful, critical, self-reflexive and conversational Video art works, projects and performances often involved ongoing collaborations. In particular, Morton collaborated