Ithaca College

Patricia Zimmermann, Professor of Screen Studies and Director of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, interviewed video and new media artist Philip Mallory Jones on May 20 as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Electronic Arts Intermix hosted by the Mayles Documentary Center in New York City. The session focused on Jones's wide-ranging career in film, video, installation, new media art, digital photography, projections, and VR.

The interview and conversation between Jones and Zimmermann was part of the exhibition “Etudes & Riffs: Selected Works by Philip Mallory Jones,” a career-spanning survey of videos by the media artist. Ranging from impressionistic portraits of Black American life and experimental videos made abroad in Burkina Faso and Angola to his recent 3D reconstruction of Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood circa 1940, these works display Jones’s idiosyncratic approach to technological innovation and his ongoing inquiry into the roots and branches of the African diaspora.  

For over five decades, Jones has experimented with the possibilities of emerging video technologies. He co-founded and directed Ithaca Video Projects (1971-84), a collectively-run media arts center, and the Ithaca Video Festival (1974-84). Utilizing a wide array of tools including film and video animation, the CD-ROM and optical disc, the online virtual world Second Life, 3D modeling software, and the game development engine Unity, Jones has forged an oeuvre as varied in its visual splendor as in its ideas of place, history, and identity.  

This program is part of an ongoing celebration of the 50th anniversary of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), a leading resource for video and media art. EAI will be issuing semi-weekly video features, commissioned texts, and oral histories with foundational figures in media art. An extensive oral history with Jones will be released in parts during this program.