COPY-IT-RIGHT! Selections from The Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive

COPY-IT-RIGHT Selections from the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive (intro)

On February 15 2007 the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive; Film, Video & New Media Department; Video Data Bank and the Gene Siskel Film Center at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago presented “COPY-IT-RIGHT! Selections from The Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive”. The program included excerpts from Morton’s “General Motors” and the complete works of “Program # 9 (Amateur TV)” by Morton and Jane Veeder and “SAIC Memo” by Morton. This introduction features Amy Beste and jonCates introducing the evening’s screening program.

We are all star stuff – Lenka Dolonova (2007)

“We are all star stuff” – Lenka Dolonova (2007) Umelec international 1/2007

In 2007 Lenka Dolanová wrote an article for Umelec international on the early Chicago Video Art community including information on Phil Morton. Dolanová is a Prague-based curator, free-lance art critic and scholar. Dolanová was a Fulbright researcher-in-residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the first scholar to use the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive. She is interested mainly in the various aspects of the avant-garde of electronic arts.

The Distribution Religion – Dan Sandin and Phil Morton (1971 – 1973)

The Distribution Religion – Dan Sandin and Phil Morton (1971 – 1973)

Phil Morton asked Dan Sandin if he could build the first copy of Sandin’s original Sandin Image Processor. Sandin and Morton then began to work together to create the schematic plans for the Sandin Image Processor, a document they called the Distribution Religion. Through The Distribution Religion, Sandin open sourced his Sandin Image Processor, giving the plans away for only the cost of making Xerox copies and mailing them while incorporating any additions or modifications made by those who built their own Sandin Image Processor into any further releases of the Distribution Religion.

In 2005 Chicago-based criticalartware group (of which i am a founding member and core.developer) released an archive of the Distribution Religion, converting the documents to digital formats and distributing them freely online as shared cultural resources in order to encourage and activate the present and futures of these Media Art Hystories. – jonCates

The Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive

Phil Morton developed the COPY-IT-RIGHT ethic, an anti-copyright approach to making and freely sharing Media Art. The Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive (located in The Film, Video & New Media Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago) seeks to coordinate and freely distribute Phil Morton’s Media Art work and associated research under Morton’s COPY-IT-RIGHT license. jonCates initiated the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive in 2007 after receiving a generous donation of Phil Morton’s personal video archive/database from Morton’s surviving partner Barb Abramo.

Phil Morton (1945 – 2003)

Influential Video Artist and activist Phil Morton (1945 – 2003) founded the Video Area in 1970 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he taught from 1969 – 1981/82. The Video Area was the first department in the United States to offer a BA and MFA degree in Video Art. The Video Area eventually became the Video Department, which later became part of the Film, Video & New Media Department. Phil Morton also founded The Video Data Bank, one of the world’s leading collections of Video Art.