Synthetics Aspects of Art and Technology in Australia, 1956-1975

Just been reading Stephen Jones (of Severed Heads) book on early Australian media art, It's kind of like the book I wish someone would write about the subject world wide but because it limits itself in scope by confining the subject to Australia and between 1956-1975 it actually deals with the mechanics of the work better more thoroughly explaining the significance connections and evolution of this type of work. Stephen also goes on to compare video to writing as the technology stems from encoding images of signatures down a single telegraph wire using  synchronisation pulses to set the start of each line of an image, this is amazing to me as for a while now I have been giving talks explaining the relation of video to drawing and drawings links to writing so it was nice to read a really concise explanation of this linage similar to what I have been saying but backed up by the very roots of the technology. I had been explaining that a video image whether raster or vector drawn was actually linear in nature and then showing early sound and image recording technologies roots in drawing with examples such a the phonautograph. Australia made some big strides in media art and there are some amazing artists work dealt with here https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/synthetics.
More Jones inspired posts to follow at some point.

Ron Pellegrino

Ron Pellegrino has been making and documenting his visual music work since 1967, He makes incredible work often utilizing lasers and sometimes video synthesis techniques and has written many books on the subjects of composition and working with sound and light. More info on his site. I have all his books :)

www.ronpellegrinoselectronicartsproductions.org

http://www.youtube.com/user/ronapell
http://www.nbma.com/cat/pell/pell.html

Ed Leckie

Some beautiful LZX patches here from Ed one half of the team behind LZX they have quite a few new modules on offer now and in the pipeline

Detergent from BOB-SNARE on Vimeo.

Weavings #1 from BOB-SNARE on Vimeo.

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

Gieskes Oscillatoscope1

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

New Oskar Fishinger Book

Just got this new Oskar Fishinger book, which has some beautiful images and interesting writing and  contributions. Lots of visual music and abstract film techniques and ideas.
http://www.oskarfischinger.org/
http://www.eyefilm.nl
http://www.centerforvisualmusic.org/

here is one of the most interesting Images

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 >:(