"On May 17, 1969, a show which was to become the seminal exhibition of video art in the U.S . opened at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York City . That exhibition, "TV as a Creative Medium," effectively pointed to the diverse potential of a new art form and social tool . Subsequently, the show became renowned for the inspiration it provided for many artists and future advocates of video. The artists represented in the show, a few of whom are still involved in the medium today, came from varied backgrounds-painting, filmmaking, nuclear physics, avant-garde music and performance, kinetic and light sculpture-and their approaches presented a primer of the directions which video would soon take. Theoretically, they variously saw video as viewer participation, a spiritual and meditative experience, a mirror, an electronic palette, a kinetic sculpture, or acultural machine to be deconstructed. Ripe with ideas and armed with a heady optimism about the future of communications, these artists used video as an information tool and as a means of gaining understanding and control of television, not solely as an art form . In "TV as a Creative Medium" alternative television was presented as a stepping stone to the promised communications utopia."