In February 2009, the United States will “unplug” analog television broadcasting. While the millions of viewers with cable or satellite will be unaffected, those watching television through antennas will be suddenly left with dead air. On Saturday, March 22nd, the Video Gentlemen launched BYOTV (Bring Your Own TV) at New American Art Union. BYOTV is an ambitious, if a bit unfocused (or should I say “snowy”), array of installations, workshops, and video presentations stretching over six weeks. The space itself has been transformed into a broadcasting station, in which three short range signal transmitters beam video into the air, and viewers are free to manipulate supplied (or brought) televisions to mix, distort, and otherwise play with the broadcasts. If this sounds like a lot of distortion and white noise, it is. The Video Gentlemen are among those soldering-iron armed lads who rejoice in electrical errors, bent circuits, and noise as music.

But this show is by no means limited to lo-fi gimmickry: There are serious issues being discussed here. While the decision to terminate analog broadcast will supposedly ease the Federal deficit, free up frequencies for emergency responders, and supply higher quality television to those who are currently watching analog broadcasts, it also marks the largest and most affecting government mandated technology upgrade in US history, brings up numerous class, accessibility, and environmental issues, and for some artists, threatens the manner in which they work. There are also issues of progress being discussed; the death of analog broadcasting is just one corpse in the ever growing graveyard of obsolescence. Polaroid film, Kodak slides, and floppy disks, mainstays of our lives just twenty years ago, are being laid to rest with an almost hedonistic abandon. And lest you think this graveyard is figurative, it has been estimated that over 80 million analog television sets will be junked in the next two years.

There’s obviously a lot to be managed here, and it will be interesting to see how The Video Gentlemen handle it all. To tune in, click here.