Video Looking at Itself by Christina Ducklow

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At 8:30 p. m. , the Be-In is warming up. Rooms are slowly filling up, people drifting curiously around corners to check out the scene. Mostly, things are still pretty mellow. While snacking on a piece of cheddar cheese between interviews, I glance at a TV screen with four thin pieces of tape set on the glass, arranged in a star. Then I notice the pattern has duplicated itself endlessly inside itself, zooming deeper and changing a million colors. "Zoom out, quick!" comes from the couch. "No, come back!" A guy and a girl are slouched on the cushions; the girl is holding a video camera that's pointed at the screen. They're all smiles and giggles as they create a trip using good ol' video feedback. "I'm losing control!" she squeals, as the picture changes from a greyscale vortex to a rainbow plasma blob. "Control, " he replies, "is very difficult to get with video -- you have to let it control you. " Two tie-dyed t-shirts step in front of the screen and become part of the image. It takes the people wearing them a few seconds to figure out how they got inside the swirls on the TV. They turn to the camera and everyone laughs. Control, indeed, is hard to get. But why bother with control when everyone's laughing and waving like children?