USCO

Michael Phillips Callahan, b. 1944, San Francisco

Engineer and artist Michael Callahan was the technical director of the San Francisco Music Tape Center from 1961 to 1964, an early electronic studio whose purpose was to explore audio tape as a creative medium. There he assisted in the realization of works by Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Ramon Sender, David Tudor, John Cage, and the dancer Anna Halprin. While at the Tape Center he performed in the recorded reading of John Cage’s Atlas Eclipticalis. In 1964 he recorded On the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma for Harry Partch. In addition to co-founding USCO, Callahan was president of Maverick Systems Inc. from 1966 to 1969, manufacturing specialized electronic equipment for media presentations, including the design and installation of the media system for the World discotheque whose proceeds supported the work of USCO. After moving to Cambridge, Mass., in 1968, Callahan became the technical director of Intermedia Systems Corporation, a company that produced multimedia presentations for government agencies, schools, museums, and corporate clients. Subsequently he provided consulting services to museums and institutions on incorporating media in their exhibits and programs. In 1989 he and his wife Adrienne Callahan founded Museum Technology Source Inc., a manufacturer and distributor of audio-visual equipment, primarily to museums. Callahan held the position of supervisor of film studios and electrical engineer at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, from 1977 to 1994.

Gerd Stern, b. 1928, Saarbrücken, Germany

Gerd Stern is a poet and multimedia artist with experience in both film and video. He emigrated to the United States as a refugee from Hitler in 1936 and later studied at the City College of New York and briefly at Black Mountain College. During the 1950s he befriended Beat poets such as Carl Solomon and Allen Ginsberg and was an active participant in the San Francisco art scene. He lived on a barge in Sausalito, worked as manager for Harry Partch and Maya Angelou, and hosted jam sessions with Chet Baker and other jazz musicians. He worked at public radio station KPFA and was a publicity agent and journalist, writing for Playboy and other magazines. Stern’s first show of electronic sculptures and collages was held at Allan Stone Gallery in 1962. In 1963 his one-person exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art featured the multimedia performance “Who R U & What’s Happening?,” which was also performed at the University of British Columbia with a lecture by Marshall McLuhan. In addition to cofounding USCO, Stern was president of the public company Intermedia Systems Corporation, and currently serves as president of Intermedia Foundation. He has published several books of poetry, including First Poems and Others, 1952; Afterimage, 1965, a serigraphed selection with drawings by David Weinrib; Conch Tales, 1984; Fragments in 2002; and WhenThen in 2018. An oral history of Stern was published by the University of California, Berkeley, in 2002. Stern has been an artist in residence at DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) in Berlin, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, Nebraska, and the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice. The Stanford University Library acquired Stern’s papers in 2013.