More islands… this time drawn on receipt paper and rolled past the camera. The video above has been cropped and heavily processed to get the 2 tone effect. I also added some music by Goodiepal, mostly because I happened to remember it whilst recording the video, it was a free download (so I don’t think I’m breaching any copyright) and I like the imagery audiery.
It’s all looking a bit ropeyer than I wanted at the moment, I plan to go back to it and attempt different camera positions, lighting and of course better island drawings.
The islands from old sketchbooks re-emerged on arrival to Turku after looking at all the maps of the Archipelago, it seemed like these drawings had been lying dormant waiting for me to come here. They now actually seem to make some sense, where as before they were almost an exercise in composition, randomness and mark making. I won’t go into this too much here as I think it’s worth an essay or two, instead I drew a diagram to explain all the connections that seem to have come together.
Diagram to explain current thought processes 11/11/08.
In the first week I have barely been in Turku as we decided to take a trip out to the Archipelago, taking a ferry all the way to Utö on the edge of the Baltic and the Archipelago sea. The trip has not only given me a lot of video to edit (a short film of the ferry journey is already half finished) but a hell of a lot to think about… see diagram, above. Below is a quick edit of some of the footage from the actual island just to give an impression of the place.
Exploring Utö on the edge of the Finnish Archipelago, November 2008.
Utö is a tiny island less than 2km across and a 5 hour ferry journey from Nauvo, which itself is an island an hour from Turku. It is remote but inhabited by around 30 people during the off season who are all supplied with wireless internet by the lighthouse. Utö used to be an important military outpost is now mostly a tourist destination, the numbers swell to around 300 during the summertime as many people own summer houses here in the islands.
This was filmed when the weather was bleak, I only had a couple of minutes of tape, the battery was dying and we needed to catch the ferry soon.
A brief introduction to the Paik Abe Raster Manipulation Unit aka The Wobulator, designed by Nam June Paik and video engineer Shuya Abe. The Experimental TV Center have one of around 4?? that were ever built, it directly modulates the scan lines of the TV so to record any of its output you have to point a camera at the screen. I think a similar process using a more complex 3 channel (RGB) version was used by Paik to manipulate the image of Nixon in Paik’s video tape Global Groove.
The archives at ETC contain the full instructions for building one of these, although it relies on a specific make of TV that was available in the 70’s but might be a little harder to find now. If anyone wants a copy of the instructions please send me an e-mail. Although it looked like a fairly simple hack, according to Hank at ETC it was ‘funky’ and the instructions warn anyone off from attempting to build one.
I’m on the 5th and final day now of working and staying at the Experimental TV Center in Owego, a small town in New York State. It’s been a fairly frenzied period of production and I’m sure I could spend at least a fortnight here, actually I want to have this place as my studio (if it weren’t in the middle of nowhere). During the 5 day residencies, of which there are nearly 40 a year, artists stay in the studio which is equipped with everything you could possibly need except for a shower, but I’d trade a shower for a wobulator any day. The real draw is the video synthesizers of which I’m sure only a few remain and most of the ones that do are in private studios.
I came here with loads of work prepared to do but, as is inevitable, the work I planned didn’t work out but I’ve ended up doing a whole load of other work with all the equipment here. None of it is quite finished but here’s a few screenshots:
Origami/Sequencer Experiments
A setup with four cameras feeding into the Jones 8 Channel Video Sequencer (a device that automatically switches between video signals) and a tray full of folded paper. The top image has been fed through the Jones 6 Channel Colorizer/Mixer but the bottom image id the raw output of the black and white CCTV cameras they have in the studio here. This may develop into a performance if I can find a way to sequence the video on the cheap, maybe some kind of wheel with contact points on it? Or the things they use for actual CCTV displays in shops, maybe it would be possible to rig one up to switch faster…
Lightning - Foil Films
The only work I had that came from all the origami I scanned… This uses images of metallic origami paper with the audio coming from the video source. It sounds like thunder and lightning. This particular shot uses a couple of DVD loops that go in and out of phase.
Color Phase Adjustments
Possibly a nice short from adjusting the colour phase of these pens. Note the american spelling of colour, it’s an NTSC thing…
Other stuff
All these screenshots are from the first 2 days - I’ve got 8 more tapes to capture yet. More when I get those tapes logged.
After spending a while in New York City, being a tourist and seeing a lot of art and film stuff I’m off to start a residency at the Experimental Television Center in Owego NY. So I’m going to be reporting about my work and the place itself and posting a few pictures here as the week progresses.
