CEREBRUM WAS AN INFLUENCE

My interest in images emerged strongly in the late '60s when I joined the crew at Cerebrum in NYC.

In 1968 an innovative entertainment concept was introduced in New York by Ruffin Cooper, Jr., a banker's son from Texas who was joined by a score or more of independent artists and media freaks. A ground-level Soho loft on Mercer Street became a nightly laboratory for mind bending excursions into film, sound, slides, mist, music, strobes and eroticism. Visitors exchanged their clothing at the door for sheer white gowns and were lead along a raised cat-walk to connected media platforms where they became canvases for the artists in the projection booths perched high at either end of the studio. Then Cerebrum Guides offered them toys for the senses, including headphones, Viewmasters, slide projectors, parachutes, spools of magnetic tape for unwinding, etc., so they could interact with other guests and the environment. There was usually just one event each night. The white gowns were laundered every day, usually. More can be read about Cerebrum by visiting this site:

http://www.interiordesign.net/article...

Cooper went on to become a Hog Farmer at the Woodstock Festival and a well known San Francisco based photographer of architectural subjects printed in mammoth scale. His show, Creating an Illusion: huge, consecutive photo details compositing the face of the Statue of Liberty, printed on fabric, spanned the length of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in NYC in 1985.

Creators of, and visitors to Cerebrum are invited to comment about their recollections. I'm happy to have been able to restore this film and I'm certain many of you will be happy to have seen it.

The film is an off-air from a local channel's broadcast crew (NYC)