The Legart Archive
A sequence of six video recordings made during an eighteen month period, 1973 -1975. (See downloadable catalogue page.) The title refers to the Contract artists were required to sign prior to work being screened during The Video Show at the Serpentine Gallery in 1975. Video work from this period has been archived by the Rewind project at the University of Dundee and the Scottish Film and Television Archive.
The project was a collaboration between Leggett and Breakwell and a group of Foundation students at the Somerset College of Art, Taunton. Preparatory work occurred over several weeks prior to two days spent in the close-circuit television studio belonging to the Plymouth College of Art. Pre-rehearsed sequences and prefabricated sets and props were recorded to a videotape of 40 minutes duration. The tape is no longer extent. The attached PDF is a facsimile of the original documentation of the project (extracted from Video, Video+Film)
A handbook from the South West Arts Film and Television Panel in support of its interventional activities throughout the SW region of Britain during the late 1970s. Mike Leggett served on the Panel 1974 – 1981 and also contributed to the publication. (ISBN 0 9506991 0 1)
Book based on an exhibition of the same name (Film as Film: 1910 until Now) which toured to four galleries in Germany between 1977-78, complimenting Abstract Film and Beyond by Malcolm Legrice published in the same year. A new version of the exhibition (Film as Film) was staged at the Hayward Gallery, London in 1979, coinciding with the Third (and final) Festival of Avant-Garde Film held at the National Film Theatre.
A compendium of cinema going anecdotes gathered from a host of (mostly) British friends of the editors, Ian Breakwell and Paul Hammond. My contribution recounts memories of my first visit to a cinema, on an RAF base in Egypt, at the age of six.
ABSTRACT: A short paper outlining some issues concerning hypermedia, cinematic immersive states and navigation in the development of an interactive multimedia prototype, PathScape. The experimental model set out to critique Human Computer Interfaces that rely heavily on metaphors derived from the mechanical age and found more in common with classical pre-literacy interfaces that complemented the workings of human memory.
The modern computer is capable of circumventing the written word and demonstrating, on-demand, the spoken word, sound and picture. Though the technical provision for achieving this is rapidly occurring, an interface for indexing sounds and images which is not dependent on words, lies comparatively neglected in HCI advancement.
KEYWORDS: interface, indexing, interactive, cinema, hypermedia.
Digital Arts & Culture Conference, RMIT Melbourne, 2003
“Tools affect visual and physical outcomes. The ideas of inventors and the work of engineers who know the limitations of materials and processes have been central to the development of creative possibilities in the arts, science and commerce of post-Western culture. Photography has been at the very centre of this enterprise. A tool in its own right, it has in addition recorded the impact on the wider culture of each and every tool invented.”
Photofile #60
The Video special issue of Studio International, published in London and edited by Richard Cork, was a landmark publication in effecting the acceptance of video as an art form in Britain, some years behind the rest of the world. Following The Video Show at the Serpentine Gallery in the previous year, a group of practitioners were asked to submit a one-page article. My contribution referred to an earlier work where the physical manipulation of the videotape passing over the recorder head created immediate breakup of the image recording the procedure. The image of intervention references ‘television interference’ (caused by poor broadcast reception) as a rhetorical statement about television state-licensed monopolies.
The Video special issue of Studio International, published in London and edited by Richard Cork, was a landmark publication in effecting the acceptance of video as an art form in Britain, some years behind the rest of the world. Following The Video Show at the Serpentine Gallery in the previous year, a group of practitioners were asked to submit a one-page article. My contribution referred to an earlier work where the physical manipulation of the videotape passing over the recorder head created immediate breakup of the image recording the procedure. The image of intervention references 'television interference' (caused by poor broadcast reception) as a rhetorical statement about television state-licensed monopolies.
A collection of moving image art works, mostly from the London Filmmakers Co-op, made in the 1960s and 1970s, curated by Mark Webber and published by LUX, London. Included are ‘Shepherd’s Bush’ by Mike Leggett; and ‘Sheet’ by Mike Leggett and Ian Breakwell.
Organised by Sigi Krauss in the recently vacated German Cultural Centre in Kensington, London, the program known as Studio House, ran over several of the summer months.