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Episode 2

33 Lewis Wharf

BOSTON, 1968: Evgeny digs deeper into the enigmatic Environmental Ecology Lab, a high-tech operation shrouded in mystery on Boston's waterfront. Funded by a Rockefeller and featuring an eclectic team alongside two colossal, costly computers, the lab's activities evoke the air of a covert CIA operation. Was this simply an avant-garde experiment, or a crazy mission to infiltrate the counterculture movement?

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00:02:55

The photo can be viewed here.

00:03:37

The clip is from a never-released film about the lab made by students from Brandeis University. The credits list David Westphal and Jeanette Lerman as filmakers, while also mentioning the contributions of Bengie Mendlowitz, Michael Lemle, Richard Williams.

00:08:30

Johnson, Avery. "Information Tools That Decision Makers Can Really Talk With." In Decision Making in a Changing World: Selected Essays from Innovation Magazine, 1971.

00:10:43

Johnson, Avery. "The Three Little Pigs Revisited." Student Publication of the School of Design, 1971.

00:10:04

Johnson, Avery. "Information Tools That Decision Makers Can Really Talk With." In Decision Making in a Changing World: Selected Essays from Innovation Magazine, 1971.

00:11:56

Johnson, Avery. "Information Tools That Decision Makers Can Really Talk With." In Decision Making in a Changing World: Selected Essays from Innovation Magazine, 1971.

00:12:40

Johnson, Avery R. "Sealed Off." The Boston Globe, September 19, 1970, 6.

00:13:08

See this article in The Boston Sunday Globe (Doolittle, William M. "Boston Firm Sifts Lethal Missile From Decoys: Electronics Systems, Inc. Designs Unjammable Radar With Complex Coding Device." Boston Sunday Globe, September 25, 1960, A13. link)

00:13:26

See the funding disclaimer in this paper)

co-authored by Avery Johnson (Lindsley, D. B., and Manford S. Reid. "Electromyographic Studies of Reflexes in Normal and Decerebrate Cats." Journal of Neurophysiology 21, no. 2 (1958): 148-157.
00:13:39

Clip from Telling Fish about Water, a 1970 Christian Grote documentary about the quarry. LINK to the copy on our site

00:17:24

The syllabus can be found in the Avery Johnson folder in Warren McCulloch Archive, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA (link).

00:20:12

He wasn't rooming with the Brodeys when the article appeared. The citation for the article is as follows: Whipple, Charles L. "Is M.I.T. Student 6th Nuclear Power?" The Boston Globe, August 1, 1969, 1. link

00:28:55

Brodey, Warren. "If You Can't Support the Revolution Let the Revolution Support You." Innovation 15 (October 1970): 12-22.

00:33:24

This clip is from the Telling Fish about Water film.

00:40:38

Good introduction to McLuhan's thought about "anti-environments" is to be found here: Allan, Kenneth R. "Marshall McLuhan and the counterenvironment: “The medium is the massage”. Art Journal 73.4 (2014): 22-45.

00:40:59

The transcript of that conference is available in Gregory Bateson papers, Princeton Conference file, box 27; Human Distress and Rapid Social Change conference transcript, December 16, 1969. MS 98, Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Santa Cruz

00:41:28

Letter from Brodey to McLuhan, dated July 8, 1968. McLuhan Papers. National Archives of Canada, Ottawa. Volume 19, File 77.

00:41:50

This quote (slightly modified here for oral delivery) appears in Sound and Space (Brodey, Warren. "Sound and Space." Journal of the American Institute of Architects, 1964.)

00:44:15

14 May 1968 diary entry. See XXX diary, Warren Brodey Archives, The University of Vienna.

00:44:46

Brodey, Warren. "If You Can't Support the Revolution Let the Revolution Support You." Innovation 15 (October 1970): 12-22.

00:47:28

Clip from Warren's lecture at the 67 Vision conference.

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Avery Johnson and Warren Brodey in 1968
Photo: The Smithsonian