RTL TV 40 ANS - Le Hit- Parade, Featuring EMS Spectron

A little snippet here of classic TV graphics from an anniversary on RTL, which includes some video mixer feedback effects and some very familiar EMS Spectron/Spectre shapes, blink and you will miss them!

"La télévison Luxembourgeoise a célébré ses quarantes ans en 1995.Voici un extrait de la soirée qui c'est déroulée à la Villa Louvigny."

Why Not, Jim Sosnin (1980)

A recent upload by Jim Sosnin drawn to my attention by the ever vigilant Jeffrey 
http://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/artist/sosnin-jim

"Video synthesis demo from 1980, realised using EMS Spectron video synth plus some homebrew gear. The audio was created in 1978 using 3 Transaudio synths linked together. This digital transfer via an old U-matic (3/4-inch format) VCR, repaired for the occasion, to retrieve original stereo audio (my more recent VHS copy had mono audio only)."

Art électronique

As a British person from 2014 I have never wanted to be a young French kid in in a polo neck from 1978 until now, this is pretty much my dream audio visual studio, featuring some lovely  shots of the EMS Spectron video synthesizer in action as well as a whole host of other nice EMS and custom rack gear for sound and video experimentation. http://www.ina.fr/video/CPA7805092804
Thanks to Jeff my good friend from across the seas for digging this video up!

Jacques Guyonnet

Jacques Guyonnet a swiss composer and video artists who worked with Geneviève Calame whose video I posted here
thanks to youtube user apocaline

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

Robert Cahen

Robert Cahen video artist, photographer and composer first developed his work as the result of his studies of electro acoustic composition with Michel Chion and Pierre Schaeffer at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique (CNSM) in Paris in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Cahen discovered and used the EMS Spectron in a series of video works he made in the late 1970s. He first worked with the an early French video processor called the Truquer Universel built by Francis Coupigny , Cahen began using the Spectron when he gained access to one whilst working at the INA (Institut National de l’ Audiovisuel), and produced Sans Titre (1977), L’Eclipse (1979), Trompe- l’oeil (1979) and L’ent’apercu (1980) he has gone on to produce many more interesting works and collaborations.

L’ Invitation au voyage

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cahen

http://www.music.mcgill.ca/mumt303/slides/MUMT303_Slides_Week04.pdf

http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=734

http://www.eai.org/artistBio.htm?id=294

http://www.alchemyfilmfestival.org.uk/2012/fugitive-beauty-the-films-of-robert-cahen/

http://www.meigh-andrews.com/writings/essays/video-colour-image-processors

http://www.cjcinema.org/pages/fiche_auteur.php?auteur=50

http://www.newmedia-arts.be/english/reperes-h/70.htm

http://www.dotcrawl.org/action/download_files/cmeighandrews-article.pdf

http://www.ina-sup.com/ressources/dossiers-de-laudiovisuel/les-e-dossiers-de-laudiovisuel/pierre-schaeffer-ou-la-quete-de-lalchimie-entre-limage-et-le-

Walter Schröder-Limmer

Walter Schröder-Limmer seems to be a German video artist and possibly composer responsible for some early video work and a notable collaboration with Benjamin Heidersberger who's father was responsible for early experiments in one of my other loves 'drawn sound' using his amazing series of harmonograph like machines the Rhythmogramm,  As far as I can tell Benjamin later went on to build an electronic version of the Rhythmogramm which also created amazing Lissajous patterns on an oscilloscope, it seems Walter Schröder-Limmer processed these images with an EMS Spectre and other studio equipment resulting in a series of collaborative videos. Walter Schröder-Limmer's work has also been featured more recently at an exhibition Record> Again! 40 Years of Video Art at Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe (ZKM) which I believe is part of  this project http://40yearsvideoart.de/main.php?p=3.

http://www.muart.de/exhibition/pattern/
http://40yearsvideoart.de/main.php?p=3
http://www.record-again.de/
http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/
http://knowled.co.uk/80995
http://www.nbk.org/video-forum/Walter_Schroeder-Limme/Video-Synthi.html
http://dieneustadt.de/2009/11/26/ausstellung-record-again-40-jahre-videokunst/
http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/36/36877/1.html
http://www.heidersberger.de
http://bostoncyberarts.org/events/events2011/event_details_page.php?page_id=0&eventid=583&catid=0&startpage=6
http://think-analogue.hu-berlin.de/heidersbergerrodrian

labyrinthes fluides : Geneviève Calame

uploaded by apocaline

Flo Kaufmann Plays The EMS Spectre

Remember the post I did about the "Analog Visuals Labor" at shift festival in Basel Switzerland involving Michael Egger & Flo Kaufmann (link to the post here and links to the artists are there too)

well here is some video created by Flo on the EMS Spectre Analogue Video Synth

Michael Egger & Flo Kaufmann - Analog Visuals Labor

here are some fascinating shots of a project involving artists Michael Egger & Flo Kaufmann from shiftfestival on flickr that looks like some kind of live analogue visuals lab

"Shift Electronic Arts Festival is an annual international festival in Basel, Switzerland that includes concerts, exhibitions, video and film screenings, lectures, artist talks, workshops and more."

there website and blog are:

http://www.shiftfestival.ch/

http://blog.shiftfestival.ch/

the modular video synthesizer in the front is synkie a project detailed on this fantastic page with development information and schematics! It looks like its is Michael Eggers work (possibly a collective research project) from what I can read more info here 

the synth  in the back is the legendary EMS Spectron/Spectre that I put up more info on here (with links to good sites) and further related projects here I was originally designed by Richard Monkhouse

and Flo Kaufmann's very cool site is here 

you can see some video of the work in action here

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!