Paul Ryan (video artist)

“You are sitting in a curtained booth on a stool, a TV aperture hangs before you like a surrealistic picture frame, beyond which the portable video camera sits and observes, as you are prodded ever so gently by calculatedly stimulating questions: "React to the following people : Nixon, your mother, Eldridge Cleaver, Teddy Kennedy, you... for the next ten seconds, do what you want... now let your face be sad..." You watch yourself in full audio-picture recap of your "interview," erasing all but the fewest frames of the previous tape as your tape will be obliterated by the next.”

“Paul Ryan, a research assistant with Marshall McLuhan at Fordham University, lent Fordham's equipment to Frank Gillette, a painter; filmmaker Ira Schneider met Gillette at a party and later taught a video workshop at Antioch College with Gillette... Completing the variety of work in "TV as a Creative Medium" was Everyman's MobiusStrip, by Paul Ryan (who, along with Gillette, was soon to become the theoretical mover in the video collective Raindance). Working with McLuhan, Ryan was exploring video as a psychological mirror, asocial tool, and a communications device.”