Photos From The Video Workshop

The video workshop Alex and I gave was one of the best I have delivered, all 15 attendees got to take home a working CHA/V module they built in the class, it's a hacked VGA signal generator that basically allows you to build a simple video synth by adding some home brew or off the shelf oscillators. We had a great mix of attendees and they were all from really interesting backgrounds and super engaged. Alex as usual did a nicely paced video synthesis tutorial and I then lead the theory and building part of the class. We rounded up with Alex leading a discussion around historical video synthesis work and then proceeded to enjoy the evening concerts that were also part of the fantastic Brighton modular meet. (Pics 3+9 here are from Fabrizio D'Amico who runs Video Hack Space) Thanks to Andrew for organising the amazing meet which hosted the workshop, Matt for making our panels last minute, George for helping us out on the day and Steve from Thonk for supplying some components for the kits.

Edge of Frame DIY Space For London

I am performing on Thursday the 14th at DIY space for London.
Edge of Frame  very kindly asked me to play. There will also be a fantastic selection of films by other artists including some of my favourite people operating in the world of experimental electronic image making.

Brighton Modular Meet Photos

Video Circuits Room at Brighton Modular Meet

Alexander Peverett and I will be looking after a Video Synthesis room at Brighton Modular Meet this weekend. Come down to chat about video synthesis and our strange love for CRT tubes :) there will be at least 6 sony PVMs on display! along with a few systems and unusual bits of video gear. I am super excited that Nitin AKA Bradford Bahamas will be bringing his incredible playable CRT rig.

brightonmodularmeet.co.uk
Invited to be part of the 2016 International Conference on Live Interfaces (http://www.liveinterfaces.org/) at the University of Sussex, this years Brighton Modular Meet takes place in the newly renovated Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (formerly the Gardner Arts Centre). We will be taking over a number of rooms in this Grade 2 listed building designed by Sir Basil Spence.

In addition to a large open access space where you can set up your synth and mingle with others, this year we will have a room for manufacturers and shops, a space for talks and live performances, and a video synthesis room.

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/

DIY video VCO

Here are some shots of early XR2206 based video VCO experiments, the important thing with video is getting sync pulses from your SPG in to a format that your oscillator circuit wants to sync to, some are fine with narrow pulses some want a nice clean saw wave or for the pulse to hit a certain voltage threshold. This means if you don't have the skills to attempt at modifying whatever SPG or VCO you have chosen you will need sync conditioning circuits to sit in between getting the two to talk nicely.

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"

McConnell Macro Video Synthesis System

Here is something you don't see every day a Amiga Video Toaster/ Atari Falcon based video synthesizer with multiple other signal paths going on, thanks to Matthew McConnell for the upload!http://www.tecterran.com/sonovista  Not your standard analogue set up and much closer to systems from the mid 90s

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/

Gieskes 3TrinsRGB1

Gieskes has come out with a lovely little closed architecture video synthesizer with a small break out bread board which opens up the whole thing to more interesting exploitation. Beautiful stuff.

http://gieskes.nl/instruments/?file=3TrinsRGB1

Jones Video Synths

http://www.videosynth.com/ more info comming soon!

Chromaton 14

Chromaton 14

"The Chromaton 14 was designed and manufactured by Ralph Wenger in 1977, and released by BJA Systems

http://chromaton14.tumblr.com/http://www.audiovisualizers.com/toolshak/vidsynth/chroma14/chroma14.htm

Carlie don't surf

Matt Levy and Nick Ciontea on elektronA4 and makenoise 6u respectively.
video patch from the brownshoesonly archive

Reality TV Video Synth Test

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

Gieskes Oscillatoscope1

So as usual Gieskes has come out with something cool the Oscillatoscope1
http://gieskes.nl/visual-equipment/?file=oscillatoscope1#p10

Philip Baljeu

Philip Baljeu has been working on some interesting VGA video synthesizer designs, he has some video effects designs too and a whole host of cool projects over on his site http://ruinelectronics.com/ . He is working on a revised version now which sounds like it will be more advanced.