Glass House (1983)

"Video by G.G. Aries
Music by Emerald Web
from California Images: Hi Fi For The Eyes"

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."

Dan Bucciano

Dan Bucciano recently posted this fantastic clip to the discussion group so I thought I would share. It's some lovley black and white feedback processed with a color solarizer prototype he designed around 20 years ago.

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."

South Kiosk Summer Screen #2 - Oscillate Wildly

South Kiosk have turned their gallery into a screening space, for a series of one-off events taking place over the course of latter summer months.

For the second installment of their Summer Screen programme, South Kiosk will work with a number of artists, musicians and technologists to construct an immersive installation of flickering CRT surfaces. The various works will offer up a series of experiments in visual mutation through analogue processes, and the degradation of video signal and the VHS tape format. These different approaches offer perspective on a particular branch of filmmaking, and sonic experimentation.

Featuring work by: James Alec Hardy, Phil Baljeu, Will Cenci, Greg Zifcak, Dan Sandin!

southkiosk.com

Live Performance

So me and Dale played live on tuesday, here are some video and audio shot by Anne.
Dale plays his cassette tape images as scores that are also instruments, I am generating audio from my modular and video from DIY circuits and a fed back video mixer. I'm playing solo in London on Saturday here .

Kit Young

Very weird awesome feedback work here from Kit Young

Tiny Dazzler (Andy Puls)

 Tiny Dazzler (Andy Puls) has some awesome video things going on over at his blog and here

The first video is of an impressive CMOS based video pattern generator 

Bermuda Triangle Lovely Audio Visual Extravaganza featuring James Alec Hardy

He so James gave me the heads up about this great event this Saturday for the benefit of Resonance104.4fm

He will be presenting the first performance of his Ziggurat 00120140215 broadcast system around 20:30ish here is a little sneak preview


and the rest of the audio visual line up looks great too

When: Saturday 15th February 2014 8pm - 2am
Where: Roxy Bar & Screen, 128-132 Borough High St, London SE1 1LB
Door: £5 donation to Resonance104.4fm

more info here 

Pipilotti Rist

How have I never posted any Pipilotti Rist before, maybe because she is so well known and the main focus of her work is a little divergent from the bulk of the work here, still cracking stuff !
http://www.youtube.com/user/AtelierRist/videos

Can't embed but this one here is good
http://youtu.be/8DLuj-xMphQ

Bill Sebastian's Outer Space Visual Communicator

It's not often I come across such a unique hybrid instrument, the OCV by Bill  Sebastian and eventually his company Visual Music Systems is a complex hybrid visual music machine with some very complex control interfaces. It incorporates both optical electromechanical light sources, electronic video effects and video generation and an incredibly complex interface system for intuitive instrumental control. The system has been adapted and added to over time extending it's original functionality while maintaining the beautiful imagery and excellent user control. So here is some information very kindly provided by Bill about his astounding and very unique visual instrument. (please excuse accuracy of the info as with such a complex system I may make mistakes or place the available images in relevant but not completely correct contexts)
http://visualmusicsystems.com

"The Original OVC built 1973-1978
Input devices (original system)
multi-touch keyboard using capacitance switches to support something similar to electronic finger painting,

as well as large numbers of switches, faders etc to control signal processing, 7 foot-pedals

Signal processing (original system)
signals processed by about 5000 separate TTL digital logic packages (DID YOU SAY 5000 BILL!) to build patterns, implement sequencers, and otherwise expand upon the multi-touch input. Total latency through processing system < 10 msecs, so that responses were as immediate as audio musical instruments, phase-controlled firing of projector lamps

above is a pic of 1 of 6 wire wrap boards, each with about 750 ICs.!

Display (original system)
12 foot diameter hexagonal display curved as if looking at 10% of the inside of a sphere
rear projection using 3 primary filtered lamps per segment. 91 segments. 

high contrast: performed in optically controlled environments (absolutely no light other than display) so that sections of performances were done in scotopic range (where luminance is too low for retina cones to function), so that we could explore the bottom threshold of visual perception. Concerts usually began at those levels and remained there long enough for the photoreceptor chemicals to adjust for maximum sensitivity, so that when we moved up to higher brightness levels, colors were generated that are not possible under normal lighting conditions

"Funniest moment in that process was once when we had a short between ground and VCC, which could be anywhere on board.Couldn't find it after half a day of searching.  So we took the VCC & ground (no ICs were installed at this point) and plugged into 110VAC.  Got a nice 'POP' and then had to do 1/2 hour of cleanup repair." (brilliant!)

Real-time video synthesis experiments 1980-1985

Input devices
used original OVC, but played with only 1 hand, as 2nd hand used control video equipment
video control system that allowed controlling cameras, optical effects, etc. with 1 hand
mouth controller that controlled 18x3 channel RGB mixing board using something like a 3D harmonica 

Signal processing (video synthesis experiments) - added to the orignal OVC system: 

optical video effects, such as 6 foot long front-surface mirrors with 4 axis servo control over camera at one end and 2 axis control over monitor at other 18x3 channel RGB analog video mixing system, with 6 level depth controls per channel 

I asked Bill about the complex lines generated in the mandala like structures and he very kindly replied

"There are actually 2 low-level image sources in the the videos, both of which go through the optical

kaleidoscope feedback processor. The blob-like shapes are coming from a video camera pointed at the original OVC. If you look closely at the them in some places you can actually notice that is a hand doing multitouch fingerpainting.

The other low-level source is a line generator.It doesn't make a good dancer, but worked well with the kaleidoscope processor to provide a nice background texture to counterbalance the blobs."

To add a short extra interesting bit of information to this story the OVC was primarily if not exclusively used with the amazing Sun Ra and his Arkestra (can you think of a better partner for these visuals)

 and Bills work is mentioned in the excellent book How To Wreck A Nice Beach which I am yet to dig in to. Bill apparently is also a keyboardist/synthesist and built much of the OVC in a basement at MIT as well as a barn in Ore City, Texas. The OVC would later go on to be referenced in the pioneering early Hip Hop classic from Jonzun Crew "Pac Jam Look Out for The OVC" 

The lineage of Sun Ra's direct influence on the cosmic aspect of early hip hop can clearly be seen with the OVC being a link in that chain (detailed in a few places linked below in a far more knowledgeable way than I could ever do). Bills 3D system - started construction as of Jan, 2011 and is still under progress see coverage on web site!

Ill Leave you with Sun Ra and the OVC

http://visualmusicsystems.com/OVC.html
http://www.libraryofvinyl.org/tag/sun-ra/
http://howtowreckanicebeach.com/?p=197
http://www.thafoundation.com/jonzun.htm

CTI (Chris & Cosey)- Elemental 7

Chris & Cosey messing with some video

Oscillographic Colourisation Experiments and the Barbican

 So the performance at the Barbican went ok Lawrence's performance and the structure he designed were really great annoyingly my oscilloscope refused to work even after Stan very kindly lent me a screwdriver so I could trouble shoot, However I had plenty of equipment to perform with and Lawrence and my performance fed in to each other as we played so it went pretty well. Stan and Dan's performance was really amazing. Thanks to Andi who was also on hand to help capture some film of the performances.

here is a still of Stan performing with Dans visuals which sounded and looked crazy good!




















Here are some stills of Lawrence and my performance

And here's what it might have looked like had my scope been working >:(

Philip Baljeu's Video Kaleidoscope Tutorial

I recently featured Philip's great work here and now he has posted a good tutorial on using mirrors with video feedback to achieve more interesting results, a technique that allot of artists have employed in different ways. http://ruinelectronics.com/?p=225

if you use this be sure to link his tutorial

Antonio Roberts Hellocatfood

Antonio Roberts has been making interesting work for a long time now, more info on his site,

http://www.hellocatfood.com/ http://hellocatfood.tumblr.com/ he combines both hardware and computer based processes with a deft hand.

"The first output from a visuals jam session with Gabriella Gardosi/Gaia Gaoi whilst she was in the UK. She drew abstract forms using the Tagtool which I then uikdusahdisalhg4 messed with using a Panasonic WJ-AVE5 video mixer."

more

and more

a really nice example of how video bending works

catch him soon at SuperByte 2013 

Mátyás Csiszár & Attila Kujbus

Some feedback work here from Mátyás Csiszár and Attila Kujbus
syncnoise.tumblr.com/
vintagedigitalism.hu/?p=282

https://vimeo.com/demonode

VHS signal and noise experiment made by Mátyás Csiszár and Attila Kujbus.

Music:
Silf & Áron Birtalan - Wavelengths of Destruction pt. I

Technique:
Blaupunkt DVM-1000 mixer,
Sony XV-T500 Superimposer,
Sony XV-C700 Multi Color Corrector
and 2 video recorder.

and here is one more

Dan Tombs

 Dan Tombs has been making some great visuals for a while now both in a live context and for music videos and related content, he makes great use of both computer editing and hardware based processes such as feedback. 

http://dantombs.net/