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George Bolling: Invisible is the Medium

Watching the mesmerizing coverage of the Mars Rover landing this summer, I was reminded of video artist George Bolling’s 1974 pioneering, real-time broadcast event Jupiter Flyby. During the event, Bolling was stationed at NASA’s command center, sending captured imagery with his added text-based interpretation via a microwave link. His artist-in-residence projects at the Exploratoruim project would include a video analysis of the behind-the-scenes preparation and execution of the Viking 1 landing on Mars. In 1976, The Kitchen in New York presented Bolling’s edited material of manned and unmanned NASA space probes and television transmissions in Earth, Moon, Mars and Jupiter: Video from Interplanetary Space. The following interview was conducted that same winter by Tom Kennedy, a friend, fellow video artist, and collaborator on the Exploratorium presentation.