radical software

"Radical Software was an important voice of the American video community in the early 70s; the only periodical devoted exclusively to independent video and video art at the time when those subjects were still being invented. Issues included contributions by Nam June Paik, Douglas Davis, Paul Ryan, Frank Gillette, Beryl Korot, Charles Bensinger, Ira Schneider, Ann Tyng, R. Buckminster Fuller, Gregory Bateson, Gene Youngblood, Parry Teasdale, Ant Farm, and many others.

Eleven issues of Radical Software were published from 1970 to 1974, first by the Raindance Corporation and then by the Raindance Foundation with Gordon and Breach Publishers.

PDF files, opened with the popular application Adobe Acrobat Reader, can be downloaded and stored on a recipient's hard drive for later use. They can be enlarged, reduced, and zoomed in on. The recipient can not only read the text and view the graphics, but also view the original page layout.

The wonderful on-site search engine devised by the Langlois Foundation will allow scholars and other readers to follow keywords through the many articles and essays that appeared in Radical Software over the years of its publication.

Enjoy the site. Please read David Ross's Introduction, and our (not so) Brief History of Raindance. David Ross is Director of the Beacon project New York, and formely Director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. In 1973, Ross realized one of the first museum exhibitions dedicated to a video artist, Nam June Paik, at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York.

We believe that putting Radical Software on the Internet makes available an important primary source on the origins of an aspect of video art not often covered, and on the intent of those who first saw video as a tool for change.

Republishing Radical Software on line helps make clear the rationale behind much early video, and the aspirations of those who devoted their time to producing, writing, and designing for Radical Software during that important era."
you can read the scanned copies here