From the US to Mexico, Jamaica, Africa, and beyond - Auto-Tune usage has splintered, with different approaches from scene to scene and artist to artist. (It remains the most sonically extreme in Berber Morocco.) The plug-in creates a different relation of voice to machine than ever before. Rather than novelty or some warped mimetic response to computers, Auto-Tune is a contemporary strategy for intimacy with the digital. As such, it becomes quite humanizing. Auto-Tune operates as a duet between the electronics and the personal. A reconciliation with technology.
The Natural (2008) - Nicholas O'Brien
The Natural from Nicholas O'Brien on Vimeo.
The Natural is a video that juxtaposes the cinematic landscapes of contemporary blockbuster fantasy films and recent panoramic images from nature documentaries.
Panoramas, or cinematic landscapes, are typically used to simultaneously overwhelm audiences with breathtaking natural beauty and allow them to have a temporary break from a narrative. In other words, panorama's of this kind have become an abstract transitional space, where the fantastical becomes colossal, monumental, and somehow also serene.
By combining these two pools of footage, The Natural aims to investigate how our distinctions between "the real" and "the fictional" have become obscured by the virtual and transient visual economy that we thrive in.
Rutt-Etra Video Synthesizer
It essentially was an analog computer for video raster manipulation.
The Varieties Of Experience (2008) - Mungo Thomson
Thomson’s 16mm film, The Varieties Of Experience, was made by using Nam Jun Paik’s Zen For Film (1962-64) as a negative. Zen for Film consists of a length of clear 16mm film leader projecting a rectangle of pure white. Over time, the celluloid collects dust from the space of its exhibition; this dust is projected as brown and black smudges on the otherwise white image. Dust is largely composed of human cells, and in this way the audience of Paik’s work has literally become embedded in it over several decades. Thomson worked with the NJP estate to procure a “dirty” copy of the film and to use it as a negative from which to make a new print. The new film is an inversion of the original: a black film with the dust printed as white specks and clouds -- a moving starscape, where the stars are composed of dust (and people) instead of the other way around.
-- FROM THE DESCRIPTION FOR "The Varieties of Experience" EXHIBITION AT JOHN CONNELLY PRESENTS
Structural Film (2007) - Cory Arcangel
Delta 1 - Ron Hays
The New Television Workshop at WGBH supported the creation and broadcast of experimental works by artists. One of their projects was the Music Image Workshop, which was primarily a project of Ron Hays, who used the Paik-Abe videosynthesizer to create elaborate visual scores set to music. It was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts from 1972 through 1974. Hays worked closely with WGBH producer and director, David Atwood, to create both live broadcasts and finished works. Additionally, works by other artists were presented under the auspices of the Music Image Workshop.
Zbigniew Rybczynski
Tango (1980)
Steps (1987)
Zbigniew Rybczyński is an Academy Award winning Polish filmmaker. He is a recognized pioneer in HDTV technology and was also active in an avant-garde group "Warsztat Formy Filmowej". Rybczynski has created many music videos for artists such as Art of Noise, Mick Jagger, Simple Minds, Pet Shop Boys, Chuck Mangione, The Alan Parsons Project, Yoko Ono, Lou Reed, Supertramp, Rush, Propaganda, Lady Pank and also for John Lennon's Imagine.
Call for Submissions:
IEEE VISAP'15 / Data Improvisations / Call for Papers and Artworks
Posted by Angus Forbes
Edwin VanGorder