19.5.11

PAYSAGES VIRTUELS

Images are taken from the book Paysages Virtuels, Image Vidéo, Image de Synthèse, Éditions DIS VOIR, Paris 1988

Synthèses de vagues, Alain Fournier, Pixar


Simulation de la mer, CCETT


Digitalisation d'un visage, David Niles, Captain Vidéo


Visualisations de paramètres urbains, Archi Vidéo


Servante Maîtresse, Opéra de Pergolèse, réalisation D. Brunner



Apesanteur intérieure, Cycle: Architecture fantastique, Sabine Porada

18.5.11

JEAN PICHÉ & JoAnn GILLERMAN - "Whispers in a Plane of Light" - 1983

"Whispers" must be one of the earliest interactive videomusic works on record. A Fairlight CMI sampling computer was used to perform the music and control a Sandin Image Processor through a 16 channel analog control interface.

Jean Piché, Fairlight CMI, Voice
Jody Gillerman, Sandin Image processor
Jim Whitaker, Live Camera
Gretchen Bright, Model
http://www.jeanpiche.com/

15.5.11

HENRI JACOBS & JORDAN BELSON

THE VORTEX CONCERTS


Allures par escaton82

The legendary Vortex Concerts conducted by Henry Jacobs and
Jordan Belson at Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park from 1957 to 1960 were quintessential examples of lumia art integrated with sound in an intermedia environment. By present standards one could not ask for a more perfect setting. "Simply being in that dome was a holy experience," said Belson. "The entire theatre was like an exquisite instrument. (...)

Vortex began in May, 1957, as a series of experimental and ethnic music concerts from tapes owned by Jacobs, a poet and composer of electronic music. Within a few weeks, however, he was joined by his friend Belson, and Vortex became an experiment in visual and acoustical space. The sixty-foot dome was surrounded at its perimeter by thirty-six loudspeakers clustered in equally-spaced stations of three speakers each. There were two large bass speakers on either side and one at the zenith of the dome. Speakers were installed in the center of the room, bringing the total close to fifty sound sources. "The acoustics were very unusual," Belson remarked. "Very hushed, and you could hear any sound no matter how far away, as though it were right behind you, because sound carried over the dome."

"We could tint the space any color we wanted to. Just being able to control the darkness was very important. We could get it down to jet black, and then take it down another twenty-five degrees lower than that, so you really got that sinking-in feeling. Also we experimented with projecting images that had no motion-picture frame lines; we masked and filtered the light, and used images that didn't touch the frame lines. It had an uncanny effect: not only was the image free of the frame, but free of space somehow. It just hung there three dimensionally because there was no frame of reference. I used films— Hy Hirsh's oscilloscope films, some images James Whitney was working on for Yantra, and some things which later went into Allures— plus strobes, star projectors, rotational sky projectors, kaleidoscope projectors, and four special dome-projectors for interference patterns. We were able to project images over the entire dome, so that things would come pouring down from the center, sliding along the walls. At times the whole place would seem to reel."

(...) Music ranged from Stockhausen, Berio, and Ussachevsky to Balinese and Afro-Cuban polyrhythms, set against the geometrical imagery characterized by Allures. Jacobs and Belson conducted approximately one-hundred Vortex concerts, including two weeks at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. In 1960 the planetarium withdrew its support and Vortex ended without ever realizing its full potential.

Text from Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema, p.388-390
The whole book can be downloaded here

14.5.11

TOSHIO MATSUMOTO

These videos seem like a triptych to me... Amazing work.





10.5.11

BLEU NUIT - LE RÉVÉLATEUR

Bleu Nuit is made using video feedbacks as basic material. Through various processes of image manipulations, colors emerged from electronic light to create improbable landscapes. It is also a collaboration with Le Révélateur, who’s music was the primal inspiration for the completion of this video. Bleu Nuit is a track from Le Révélateur's forthcoming LP on Gneiss Things, Fictions.

BLEU NUIT from Sabrina Ratté on Vimeo.

8.5.11

ED EMSHWILLER - SCAPE-MATES - 1972





eai.org : In one of his first experiments in video, Emshwiller creates an electronic landscape of both abstract and figurative elements, where colorized dancers are chroma-keyed into a mutable, computer-animated environment. Working with the "Scan-i-mate," an early analog video synthesizer, Emshwiller choreographs an architectural, illusory video space, in which frames proliferate within frames, disembodied heads and hands move within a collage of animated forms, and the dancers and their environment are subjected to constant transformations through image processing. With its witty interplay of the "real" and the "unreal" in an electronically rendered videospace, and the skillful manipulation and articulation of a sculptural illusion of three-dimensionality, Scape-mates introduced a new vocabulary of video image-making.

The whole video can be dowloaded here

28:16 min, color, sound (Excerpt)

7.5.11

ED EMSHWILLER - CAROL - 1970

Ed Emshwiller's portrait of his wife, avant-garde science fiction writer Carol Emshwiller.

4.5.11

POSITANO

IN MY VIDEO CAMERA













FRANCIS THOMPSON - A DAY IN NEW YORK - 1957

Please check out THE SOUND OF EYE for a great description and to download the film.