Me and Rubyfruit: A prescient glimpse into the future of personal video

Thrown together David Tamés, March 23, 2019

In 1989, Me and Rubyfruit provided a prescient glimpse into the future of personal video 16 years before the launch of YouTube.

Once upon a time, when I lived in San Francisco (1987-1992), I often attended screenings at Artist Television Access (ATA) on Valencia Street in the Mission District. This venerable artist-run organization, which continues to operate to this day, was one of my favorite destinations for artistically and culturally significant media. At that time, I was working at Apple by day and making short experimental and fiction films using Super8 and 16mm film on nights and weekends.

I recall one particular evening at Artist Television Access, the night I came to appreciate the expressive potential of the video medium through a prescient glimpse into the future of personal media making. On the program that night was Me and Rubyfruit (Sadie Benning, 1990), a video diary shot with a Fisher-Price PXL 2000 (a.k.a. Pixelvision) camera that Benning received as a present from her father, an experimental filmmaker. The video consists of dialog between two sides of Benning’s personality intercut with shots of her bedroom. She comments on her unhappiness, sexual awakening, and the prospect of lesbian love. In Behind the Mask, Sadie Benning’s Pixel Pleasures Gary Morris provides a good review of the film contextualized with her other work.

The Pixelvision, a toy camcorder introduced by Fisher Price in the late 1980s, was a unique creation that sold for around a hundred dollars. Its gritty, low-resolution imagery, recorded onto audio cassette tapes, captured the hearts of artists and filmmakers. The distinct pixelated low-res look, for which it was named, added a unique charm. Despite its initial low sales, these cameras have become a sought-after item, with some selling for as high as $1,000. The use of a toy camera to produce a personal video diary was quite original when Me and Rubyfruit first circulated through the art film/video community. At the intersection of experimental cinema and personal documentary, the film exemplifies the spirit of Alexandre Astruc’s caméra-stylo and is still fresh today.

In his 1948 essay, “The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Camera-Stylo” Astruc imagined that cinema would eventually break free of the demands of classical narrative and images and would become a flexible means of writing with the same expressive power, complexity, and subtly, of written language. The pixelated images are well suited for depicting a fragmented character that floats in and out of the frame, with her audio commentary as the camera pans across textual materials in macro close-up. I remember how delightful and engrossing it was to watch for the first time, and I loved the gritty video image.

I was excited by the liberating potential of working in a medium that did not require sending cartridges or cans off to the film lab and paying a pretty penny for film and processing, not to mention the hours spicing and re-splicing the film during the editing process. This liberating potential was not just about cost and time, but also about the freedom to experiment and take risks, which is a hallmark of the best experimental cinema.

This was an inflection point, video was available to media makers at a price point that made it possible to experiment, take risks, video was within the reach of most people. I recall talking about this video and the potential it represented that night over dinner, it has left an indelible mark in my psyche. Without access to the inexpensive Pixelvision camera, Benning might not have begun making short films at the age of fifteen. Two years later she came out as a lesbian, becoming a cause celebre in the queer community.

Me and Rubyfruit is a beautiful example reminding us that expression and emotional resolution are more important than technical qualities, and that experimental film and video (and documentary for that matter) benefits when more people have access to the medium, when more people can create moving images with the same, or similar, ease of writing.

The Pixelvision was well ahead of its time, and while it would be many years before editing would catch up to cameras in terms of accessibility, the democratization of media was well on its way. Today, we see the spirit of the Pixelvision reflected in the ubiquity of mobile phone cameras, inexpensive video camcorders, and the cornucopia of personal videos on YouTube. What will you share with your camera?