Light Years Out
Posts for this category are about the video work. My image processed video work are serial constructions that are produced with custom built analog and digital processors. Each section is a synthesized real time recording where sound and image are parallel electronic structures which are mutually controlled by predetermined waveshapes.
Most often, periodic wave forms (the basic analog elements generated with oscillators) are used as image source. The essential structure of these wave forms, a periodic change over time that defines a shape (sine, triangle, ramp, etc.), belongs to a class of primordial rhythmic experiences. They participate in, and express, the natural and physical ordering principles of our environment.
A couple of years back I began a process of digitizing original 3/4″ recordings from the 80′s and re-cutting the material to conform to the original edits in Final Cut. Some material seems to be irretrievable though most of it was saved, even if it had a good deal of drop out. The video on the work page were digitized using DVlabs compression, which is high quality than vimeo or youtube.
This material was created at a Signal Culture residency in 2015. This is an odd piece as throughout most of this Signal Culture residency, I kept up a core patch, making small incremental changes and recording long segments in real time playing the knobs performance like. The first piece shown here, Twist, is 6:01 and yet comes from a larger stash of work. A good amount of this was recorded with wall works in mind rather than a single channel piece, like what you see here.
A couple of years ago I hacked a few Vectrex's, 3 for a colleague and one for myself. Here is a simple documentation of how I did it.
From Wikipedia:
Video Haiku was a 3/4" tape compilation. It included work that also appeared in Lonesome Blues and Green River Blues. Video Haiku originally leaned heavily on the work from the September '82 session, now seen in Lonesome Blues; none of those segments are shown here. In creating this version. I defined Video Haiku as work that was created in the 3 ETC sessions from November '82 thru May '83.
This version contains:
Video with charcoal is a thread that I explored from 1980 probably through 1983. This cut shows a few of those experiments. A couple more are seen in Green River Blues. This grew out of sequencer work that was being done at the Experimental TV Center, by Ralph Hocking, and by others. I was also influenced by Ken Jacobs who, while I was at SUNY Binghamton, had us look at and explore his work that utilized Alfons Schilling's shutter experiments - all amazing work and you should get yourself to one of Jacob's performances if you have not seen this.
Green River Blues is the title of the first compilations of ETC work I created in 1981 - 82; it is also the title of the first piece in the series. At that point I was distributing compilation tapes, usually 20 to 30 minutes in length. The problem in creating digital versions now is that there were several compilations with the title Green River Blues, and all were different. The same goes for the next compilation called Video Haiku.
This post was copied in 2017 from and L2O posting made in 2015.
Tuesday night I attended a panel discussion at Hunter called "Barbara London and David Ross in conversation with Constance DeJong." This was in the context of the "The Experimental Television Center: A History, ETC..." show at the Hunter College Art Galleries in collaboration with the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art Cornell Library - Sept 25 - Nov 21, 2015. The Hunter Art Gallery is at 205 Hudson Street in NYC. It’s a great show by the way.
This was recorded in 1986 in Brooklyn, NY. Terry Mohre and I used to drive out to Hank Linhart's house in Greenpoint where the three of us had a weekly video poker night (no cards were played). My video and audio synthesizers were installed in Hank's studio at the time. I don't recall us finishing much other than this piece, which Terry sent to the 1986 Bon Videonale where it won some recognition. I soon moved my studio to a new apartment in Park Slope and our weekly meetings stopped.
YouTube and Vimeo lend themselves to short singular work, which would be perfect for so much of my earlier real-time video segments. I intended to create singular clips for posting some of the many short works that went into my early compilations like Green River Blues, Lonesome Blues, and Video Haiku, see Untitled #20. Looking at this material though, I changed course and cut a compilation of work called Lonesome Blues, originally known as Suicide Blues.
This is the first Recording from an ETC session in September 1982. It appeared on a couple of my compilations of short works at the time: Green River Blues, Lonesome Blues and Video Haiku.