Career
She is credited with creating the concept of "mash-ups" editing a television show or movie by disconnecting the images from the original soundtrack and re-editing them to a song to tell a new story. Fong’s media practice includes zine editing, short story writing, slideshow creation and sketch comedy. While attending Arizona State University in 1973, Fong was compelled by a newspaper advertisement to join a group of students in forming a Star Trek fan club
This club would become ” (UFP), which stands as the longest-running Star Trek fan club in the world.
In collaboration with other club members, Fong assembled frames set to a tape-recorded audio track, that included narration written and read by Fong, and, notably, an a-Capella performance of the filk song “What do you do with a drunken vulcan?”. The first public performance of the same slideshow occurred in 1975 at a fan-run Star Trek convention.
As her practice developed, Fong became interested in videotaping her performances and developed a two-projector technique allowing for soft fades between slides. Correspondence with Gene Roddenberry
At Equicon, Gene Roddenberry expressed an interest in the slideshows.
Roddenberry had been trying to convince Paramount Studios that there was demand for a Star Trek film and granted Fong permission to continue making slideshows.
The two maintained a correspondence and Roddenberry, who provided her with Star Trek slide outtakes. Both Sides Now
Both Sides Now, sets images of Mr. Spock to a recorded performance of the titular song by Leonard Nimoy.
Fong claims that her Both Sides Now performance was inspired by the music video for the Beatles" Strawberry Field"s Forever, which is similarly to Both Sides Now in that it interprets a song with images that do not depict the performance of the song by the artist.
In an interview with Francesca Coppa, Fong describes her interpretation of the performance:
"Spock is such a dual character: half human, half Vulcan. Half trying to follow Starfleet.
The two sides of him. And then there"s Chapel, and then there"s T"Pring, and then there"s Kirk.
There is just so many different sides to him that "Both Sides Now"—he"s trying to be both sides now.
And it seemed to just fit him so very well."
Fong"s video recording for Both Sides Now was included in the 2013 exhibition Cut Up at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens.