Growing up at the turn of the century, I experienced the change from an analog world to a digital world, witnessing the rise of a surveillance state and the abandonment of privacy. Even worse, these throwaway items are now often replaced by some sort of "smart" device that won't survive half the lifespan of that previous item because "technological advances" have led the company to no longer use the software on the object does not support, it into a useless piece of junk. I felt a kinship that was indicative of the reality that my youth was over and we were entering a new era.
I have come across countless discarded televisions by the side of the road in urban and suburban settings. These new understandings can lead to the use of that particular object or lead to a completely tangential idea. A VHS tape loop is an ephemeral phenomenon that can only be properly experienced in person to truly appreciate the necessary mechanical manipulation of the aid and its subtle aesthetic qualities.
Trying to run a stable tape loop on a VCR was difficult and a few machines were broken in the process. VHS tape loops are much more complicated to achieve than a traditional audio cassette loop due to the temperamental nature of how VCRs read tapes. In my research, I discovered that not all VCRs are forgiving in the amount of tension required for the machine to read the tape properly.
The tension of the tape on the head of the reader is the most important aspect of the loop; if you have either too much or too little, the tape will not sit properly, making the tape unreadable by the player.
Replicating analog phenomena
The CHOP audio oscillator is locked to the patch frame rate, which made the rate at which the oscillator scanned and the amount of lines (cycles) scanned were forever interlaced, which is true to the original for authenticity, but also made it much harder to achieve the desired parameter for both of them. The feedback I received on my first iteration was that the patterns created were often too fast, making it difficult to appreciate the pattern layering achieved. The problem was exacerbated by how limited I felt due to the constraints of linking these two parameters.
The Patterns CHOP is very similar to the Audio Oscillator CHOP with one big exception, it wasn't tied to the frame rate of your project. This kind of worked, but still left a lot to be desired in the colors. He mentioned the idea of a colorist that wasn't limited to RGB, which reminded me of a youtube video by Retro Game Mechanics Explained (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjQik7uwLIQ) which shows that how the Battle Screens in the video game Toka were.
Earthbound is a hugely important game for me because it reminds me of the nights I spent with my Aunt Beth. The video game background, in retrospect, was hugely influenced by the early video artist, but I had no context of that influence growing up. Even without the art historical context of the battle scenes, they always remained in my mind.
Taking inspiration from Earthbound, I've added other features like Displace TOP, which helps mimic the horizontal and vertical swings explained in the video. Since Earthbound heavily influenced the resulting instrument, I decided to name it VideoDrugz, a reference to a quote Shigesato Itoi (creator of Earthbound) jokingly made in an interview about the background of the battle. Six single-channel videos created with VideoDrugz projection projected onto the back wall of the Turner Gallery.
I was in a phase of painting murals throughout the room and took inspiration from the patterns I generated from my simple analog setup. While at Alfred, I tested different ways to try to replicate the images created in the analog video realm. I was enabled to seamlessly go from SD to HD to 4k and beyond while maintaining the same parameters for the patterns being generated.
A Return to Canvas
I entered high school trying to figure out how to reproduce images created with analog video synthesis and signal processing. I first tried upscaling an NTSC image from 480p to an image 200x its original size while trying to make a custom background using photo tex. After that, I stepped away from trying to reproduce images with large-scale prints that fall back into painting until I could find a better way.
Each canvas print in my thesis show was designed as a custom size based on measurements from found wood panels and using basic math to ensure the image was at least 250 ppi or higher, depending if the computer could handle the image size without crashing. I started mixing some patches together, even using some as a key source, putting another pattern on top of the key. Trying to compose images for prints enabled me to approach image generation differently than I had previously experimented with.
The real discovery I found in the process of making prints was what two or three VideoDrugz could do in concert with each other, because I built VideoDrugz in a modular way with a user interface that made it easy to link multiple copies of my systems together. In the past I have experimented with layering physical objects on the walls of the murals I have painted. I also experimented with painting ideas on canvas, though these never saw the light of day outside of my studio.
I decided to lay the cut-out panels over some of the prints so they were a few inches off the canvas so the colored acrylic could cast a colored shadow. I also found it interesting how the colored acrylic shifted and defused the colors of the print. This interesting relationship develops as I layer different materials with images generated from a single tool of my own imagination, forming complex abstract compositions that evoke nostalgic memories of the past.
One of the key prints in the series is a piece titled Racing on Rainbow Road to Valhalla in what was the first print I decided to layer acrylic and neon over a digital canvas print. The next print I decided to layer is the print titled Late Night Drive on the 405, which pushed this use of mixed media further as I also attached the plastic road lane markers I found a few years ago. Late Night Drive on the 405 is a clear reference to a common experience that any Southern Californian can immediately identify with.
For me, this part is reminiscent of late night drives home reflecting on the day's experiences. While some of those memories have faded, the experience of driving the car home has not.
Technology list
Catwalk install
5 SONY BRAVIA KDL-40EX720
1 VCR
Equipment List
Tape loop
Projection on back of cube 1 PC
Huge Thanks
