then more and more equipment started accumulating in our loft. The Portapac was not returned to Harvey Lloyd anymore, stayed in our place, then a recorder or two. Sandy Devlin laid two cameras and a Special Effects Generator on us when she did not need it. I became addicted to the medium. Since I had been manipulating audiotapes, video seemed just like an extension. I had always wanted to do film but I had no entry into it. A housewife is supposed to greet her man with a hot dinner, but I would be waiting for Woody with a hot tape. He would come home from work and say, "Honey, show me your tape." (Laughs). Actually he didn't really say that. He said, "This is intolerable. Why am I at work and you are playing. I quit!" So, he quit. That way we not only lost the income, we also lost access to a lot of equipment. But it was one of the luckiest things we have ever done. Now also Woody was doing video fulltime.

W.V. There was virtually no structured media education, but everything around us was educational. We would go to a concert of LaMonte Young and he would perform two oscillators adrift. It went on for several hours. You could move your head slightly to hear the standing waves. The Automation House had fantastic programs of art, interactive technologies and early electronic music environments. The whole city was a sort of huge educational experience. There was also "Experiments in Art and Technology," which was Billy Kluver's baby. And there were brain wave concerts by David Rosenboom.

S.V. Also 3-D experiments and binocular vision phenomena.

D.F. Was that the time of VanDerBeek's "Newsreels of Dreams" at Stoneybrook?

W.V. That is correct. He later brought the "Dreams" to the Kitchen. We were quite privileged to meet many people that way.

D.F. What was the exact date of the opening of the Kitchen?

S.V. June 15, 1971. In the fall, LaMonte Young was the first one to give a formal concert. He was a bit pompous. He said he could not give a concert for free, but could on the other hand promote his new record. And after LaMonte's concert everybody else wanted in. At first the avant-garde music was presented every Monday and then it spilled over to Tuesdays. For the two years that we ran the Kitchen, we kept congratulating ourselves on how lucky we were that these people would be so kind to come and perform, even as we had no fee for them. In reality it turned out, we were it - the only outlet. On Wednesdays we had something called Open House. Whoever showed up could show their videotapes. On the other nights there were other kinds of media events. Saturdays sometimes had disco, like "The New York Dolls," who actually started in the Kitchen, or this group of transvestites who called themselves something like "El Trocadero de Monte Carlo."

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