Richard Monkhouse

Richard Monkhouse often thought of as a designer of equipment (somthing I am guilty of in older posts) is also an active artist in his own right, He seems to be very comparable to the more numerous American  artists technicians working with video synthesis around the 1970s such as Stephen Beck or Dan Sandin. The tools he began developing for commercial reasons as well as artistic ones such as the Spectre/Spectron and much later Videosizer were also used by Richard for his own less well known work. He also assisted Peter Donebauer with his Videokalos video processor and performed with Peter as VAMP (Video And Music Performance) whose members would perform live audio visual sets using various acoustic and electronic techniques. Two final things allot of this history has already been covered very well by Chris Meigh-Andrews on his excellent site and in various publications and I also have an interview with Peter that I have been meaning to post for about a year but have been put off by poor sound quality so I may post the information and stills in a post at some point soon! Images sources here are from various sites and books (links at the bottom), If you have an issue with me using an image please contact me and I can remove it, I hope you will understand the benefits of sharing and disseminating this sometimes difficult to find work.

A still of Richards abstract work
from 1976













Various images of  Richard's machines

 Richard's image processing using photos from William Kentish

Some very interesting abstract work

 Richard and Peter as part of Vamp

And finally a computer art image from Richard's Site

http://www.richardmonkhouse.co.uk/
http://www.meigh-andrews.com/
http://www.donebauer.net/manifestations/movingimages/broadband/theseventies/live/live.htm
http://www.rewind.ac.uk/documents/Peter%20Donebauer/PD008_009_022.pdf
http://www.rewind.ac.uk/documents/Peter%20Donebauer/PD090.pdf
http://www.audiovisualizers.com/toolshak/vidsynth/spectre/spectre.htm
http://www.soundtransformations.co.uk/vampattatebBritain.htm
http://www.rewind.ac.uk/database/searchrewind.php?table_name=REWIND&function=details&where_field=id&where_value=97&Section=Details
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20206483?seq=4

Peter Donebauer "Entering" (1974)

"The imagery and sound in Entering were performed 'live' by Donebauer and composer Simon Desorgher, and recorded in real time, using a colour TV studio at the Royal College of Art. Later Donebauer and Richard Monkhouse developed the Videokalos synthesiser, as an image-sound performance instrument. Entering was transmitted by the BBC in 1974."

Uploaded by Visual Remix Workshop   rmx-visual.tumblr.com/ "Visual remix" is a project consisting of workshop series aiming to explore ideas of remix in visual arts and design. It invites students to re-interpret or hybridize classic design/art piece and produce unique result independent of the intentions and vision of the original designer/artist.
Project by Rafaela Drazic (rafaeladrazic.net)

Peter Donebauer & The Videokalos

I always thought that most video synthesizers were a product of 1970s American experimental film and video art but I'm finding more and more instances of project based in other countries. Here is a synthesizer from Britain! The Videokalos was developed in 1975 and 1976 by Peter Donebauer (a pioneer of british video art) with help from ex EMS engineer Richard Monkhouse who also developed The Videosizer and the Spectre. There are some excellent essays and information about it and video art in general on Peters site so I wont repeat it here go there!

EMS Spectron/Spectre

famous British video synthesizer sold around 1974 more info here



Sans Soleil or Sunless by Chris Marker (of La Jetée fame) is an amazing film and also uses a spectron for some effects and here is a video made with a Fairlight CVI and a EMS Spectre by youtuber WarrenABurt
imagine running one with a VCS3!