John Sanborn

John Sanborn (born 1954) is a key member of the second wave of American video artists that includes Bill Viola, Gary Hill, Dara Birnbaum and Tony Oursler. Sanborn's body of work spans the early days of experimental video art in the 1970s through the heyday of MTV music/videos and interactive art to digital media art of today. Overview Sanborn's work has manifested itself on television ("Alive from Off Center", MTV, "Great Performances", PBS), video installations ("V+M"), "The Temptation of St. Anthony"), video games ("Psychic Detective"), Internet experiences ("Paul is Dead", "Dysson") and multi-media art. He is known for collaborations with virtuosic performers, contemporary composers and choreographers. His oeuvre primarily addresses the themes of music, mythology and memory. Background In the late 1970s Sanborn was one of the artists-in-residence at TV Lab at Thirteen/WNET, an experimental environment started by the Rockefeller Foundation and Nam June Paik as a playpen for video artists to create works for broadcast television. He also created works for the VISA series (originated by Paik) and showed installations at the Whitney Museum, participating in two Biennial Exhibitions. In the 1980s Sanborn was an artist-in-residence at the 1980 Winter Olympics "Olympic Fragments" as well as one of the first directors with work appearing on MTV where he created over 30 music/videos including works with Nile Rodgers, Rick James, Sammy Hagar, Philip Glass, Tangerine Dream, Peter Gordon, Grace Jones, King Crimson and Van Halen. At the request of Jim Fouratt at the nightclub Danceteria, he created the first "video lounge" and hired video artists to VJ video clips and video art. The lounge became a cultural phenomenon in New York City.