Founded in 1969 by Frank Gillette, Michael Shamberg, and Ira Schneider among others, Raindance was a self-described "countercultural thinktank" that embraced video as an alternative form of cultural communication. The name "Raindance" was a play on words for "cultural R & D" (research and development). Influenced by the communications theories of Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller, the collective produced a data bank of tapes and writings that explored the relation of cybernetics, media, and ecology.



From 1970 to 1974, Raindance published the seminal video journal Radical Software (initially edited by Beryl Korot and Phyllis Gershuny), which provided a network of communications for the emerging alternative video movement, with a circulation of 5,000. In 1971, Shamberg wrote Guerrilla Television, a summary of the group's principles and a blueprint for the decentralization of television. In 1976, Raindance members Ira Schneider and Beryl Korot edited Video Art: An Anthology, one of the first readers on video art.



The original Raindance collective dispersed in the mid-70s; the nonprofit Raindance Foundation continues to exist today.