Raven Row Vasulka Talk

Here is a shot from the talk, hopefully will have some more images and audio to share soon.

Video Synthesis Techniques

So I am doing a talk at Raven Row as part of their very lovely exhibition of Steina & Woody Vasulka's work, will be demoing some of the techniques they used to make their work. Hopfully it will be interesting.

"Chris King: Video Circuits
Thursday 2 June, 6.30pm

Artist Chris King leads a live demonstration of early media art and video synthesis technologies, working with a selection of different techniques used by the Vasulkas and other video artists during the 1970s and 80s.Chris King: Video Circuits
Thursday 2 June, 6.30pm

Artist Chris King leads a live demonstration of early media art and video synthesis technologies, working with a selection of different techniques used by the Vasulkas and other video artists during the 1970s and 80s."
http://www.ravenrow.org/events/chris_king_video_circuits/

Seeing Sound

Here are some shots from my talk, the video circuits screening, Alex's piece and Andrews performance at Seeing Sound, It was great fun. 

Seeing Sound

I will be giving a talk on some research I have been doing into early British video synthesis and  electronic video work at this years Seeing Sound. I will also be screening some work from some contemporary Video Circuits Regulars as part of the conference.
www.seeingsound.co.uk Sign up here!

Rob Schafer and Donny Blank - Interview from 1983 - Historical look at Video Synthesis

"Rob Schafer and Donny Blank - Interview from 1983 on the video synthesizer.
Posted by Video 4 ( Synopsis Video) - Denise Gallant"

C.E. Burnett

A recent article on Paleofuture brought to my attention the work of C.E. Burnett an engineer at RCA's  research lab during the 1930s. This must be a very early example of cathode ray tubes being used for pattern generation and certainly predates many more well known media art pioneers. I wonder if he ever spoke to Ben F. Laposky another early pioneer in a related technique.

sources:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vSgDAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Radio-Craft/1930s/Radio-Craft-1938-07.pdf

New Australian Experimental Video Resource

So a while back I heard rumblings about this and have been meaning to post this for a while, Stephen Jones (one of the pioneers of media art in Aus) designed  the Supernova 12, a system owned by Jeffrey Siedler who has very kindly donated it to a new experimental video lab set up By Tom Ellard (of severed heads) and Ant Banister at the University of New South Wales, Other Stephen Jones machines have also been resurrected and integrated with some newer devices and at some point in the future hopefully we will see some new work! I believe Ed and Liz of LZX and Pia VanGelder are also lending a hand  (thanks to Ant for the Photos) and Tom for his blog posts http://tomellard.com/wp/2013/09/operation-big-iron/ http://tomellard.com/wp/2014/09/update-to-big-iron-fingers-crossed/

Denise Gallant, Satellite 1986

"Inspired by the book "Voyage to Acturus", Satellite was released in 1986. This 34 minute video was produced by Denise Gallant with a grant from the American Film Institute and National Endowment For The Arts."

Peter Chamberlain

Peter C has uploaded some amazing work from earlier in his career.

Secretcinemauk.blogspot.co.uk

And sometimes you find something you really shouldn't have missed 

http://secretcinemauk.blogspot.co.uk/

"Secret Cinema was an email list that provided announcements of avant-garde & artists' film and video screenings in London. Secret Cinema ran from 2001-2011, and this blog covers events from 2006 onwards. Subscribers received information about more events than are listed on this website."

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)."

Peter Sedgley

Peter Sedgley's Video Discs and Kinetic work seem to fit well in here.
http://www.petersedgley.com/

Video Workshop

Here are pics of the analogue video workshop packs each attendee will be getting tomorrow! http://encounters-festival.org.uk/news/events/analog-video-workshop/

Tomislav Mikulic

"Tomislav Mikulic is a Croatian computer Graphics pioneer who exhibited at the Tendencies 5 in Zagreb(former Yugoslavia) in 1973 at the age of 20. He had composed the First Yugoslav Computer Animation Film which had it’s premiere on 13th May 1976 in Zagreb.324"

http://tomislavmikulic.com
http://dada.compart-bremen.de/item/agent/585

NOT ABOUT ART: A sampler of short films by AL RAZUTIS—VISUAL ALCHEMY

NOT ABOUT ART: A sampler of short films by AL RAZUTIS—VISUAL ALCHEMY

1200 N Alvarado St. (@ Sunset Blvd.) Los Angeles, CA.

info@echoparkfilmcenter.org

8 PM

Thursday, June 12 

Celebrating avant-garde, Structuralist, formalist, mythopoeic, Situationist and anarchist influences over nearly 50 years of film-making, Al Razutis is pioneer in film/video hybrids, optical manipulations, radical media performance, holographic and 3-D art practice, and all-around troublemaking. Filmmaker will be in attendance to introduce, comment, and engage with audience on the film-forms, context, and interpretation of film practice outside of art institutions, outside of commercial and popular notions of film as experimental and underground cinema. Al Razutis in person!

http://echoparkfilmcenter.org/

www.alchemists.com
www.xalrazutis.org

ANALOG DREAMSCAPE: Video & Computer Art in Chicago 1973-1985

ANALOG DREAMSCAPE:
Video & Computer Art in Chicago 1973-1985

http://www.evl.uic.edu/core.php?mod=4&type=4&indi=919

Friday, June 13th @ 7pm

University of Illinois at Chicago

Institute for the Humanities

701 South Morgan, Lower Level - Stevenson Hall

Chicago, IL 60607

In partnership with the Institute for Humanities at UIC, South Side Projections presents ANALOG DREAMSCAPE, a screening and discussion with Daniel J. Sandin and new media historian Jon Cates. Sandin is a trailblazing video artist and director emeritus of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (co-founded with Tom DeFanti), an interdisciplinary program at the crossroads of art and computer science. Among his many technological accomplishments is the Sandin Image Processor, and analog video synthesizer made in 1973 with the revolutionary ability to radically manipulate images in real time. An early advocate for the DIY, open source ethos, Sandin made the blueprints of rht Image Processor available to the public so that others could hack his original design. The result was a treasure trove of abstract, psychedelic short films that remain utterly hypnotic three decades later. Similar to contemporary glitch aesthetics, the artwork made with the Image Processor conjures up the unconscious of a circuit board, creating a chromatic blur of geometric shapes and patterns. EVL colleague Larry Cube used technology to creating the 3-D computer models used in the Death Star briefing room sequence of Star Wars: A New Hope. Sandin’s additional credits include the first data glove, a device used to control computers via finger movement, and the CAVE™, and immersive virtual reality environment inspired by the Plato’s allegory. He has received numerous grants and his early video “Spiral PTL” (made in collaboration with DeFanti and Mimi Shevitz) is featured in the inaugural collection of video art at the Museum of Modern Art. This program will feature a retrospective of work created by Sandin and others (from both UIC and SAIC) using the Image Processor and early digital computer systems developed at EVL. For more information visit southsideprojections.org.

Sketches of my Sister Plus Laurie

alanpowell2591

"Experimental video produced at Electron Movers, a video art coop in 1975. The video is made on 1/2" EIAJ B&W video. The dancers are delayed by running the video between two video tape decks. Te sound was produced on a Buchala audio Synthesizer at the national center for Experiments in Television. The video processing equipment was built by George Brown and Built by Alan Powell."

F.C. Judd

The work of Frederick Charles Judd previously neglected somewhat by the history books, has over the last few years received renewed interest due to Ian Helliwell's work. Ian's articles, films and exhibitions have collected and disseminated many of Fred's forgotten work and ideas. One of these was his Chromasonics system, which effectively combined CRT based Lissajous figures with a high speed colour wheel to allow full colour display of the electronic images with movement generated by sound. Fred also wrote a series of articles in Practical Electronics magazine on how to construct such a system as well as other audio visualization techniques such as colour organs. Fred is now recognised as an important electronic and tape music composer with a re-issued collection of works available here.

I wanted to focus on his visual work, so here are a series of scans from my collection and some links.

www.fcjudd.co.uk

ianhelliwell.co.uk/practical_electronica

public-info.co.uk/electronics-without-tears

Here are some stills of the images generated by the 

Chromasonics system 

They are very reminiscent of work by Ben F. Laposky although moving rather than static photographs. Fred was also aware of the Oramics system build by Daphne Oram which also used CRT's. Orams system however used them to turn images of waveforms into electronic signals rather than visualise the sounds themselves. Ian's film Practical Electronica contains some footage Fred created of the Chromasonics system in action. below is a full colour image from the cover of Practical electronics. Fred's work on audio definitely inspired wide range of experimenters, I wonder if any visual work by his readers survive. 

Here are some images the construction of the Chromasonics system notice the large colour wheel that synchronised with the refresh rate of the displayed images so as to selectively colourise different signals allowing for multi colour display.

Here are some stills of Chromasonics and the trailer for Ian's film

These are some clippings of the the displays Fred developed.

And finally a few pics of Fred at work creating sound!

Practical Electronica will be screened on Tuesday in London link to the event here 

Foundation for Art Science and Technology colourisations

Any more info on this one gladly received

Joy to the World by William Laziza (1994)

Recovered by the XFR STN project, Joy to the World is Visual Music designed for ambient presentation. Joy to the World combines, optical image processing, Amiga graphics and recursive video imagery with synthesized sound. What is unique about this piece is that the audio is used to create the visuals is also the sound track. This work was created at the Micro Museum.

https://archive.org/details/XFR_2013-08-11_1A_01