Analog video synthesis

Generative art in motion.

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https://vimeo.com/cskonopka

By Christopher Konopka

Background

In the past year, Chris has published nearly 2500 improvised video pieces.

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You may be familiar with analog modular audio synthesis. The hardware to produce video looks nearly identical – a maze of patch cords and dials.

Television

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Analog video is television. A CRT (cathode ray tube) resynthesizes video information by demodulating signals from a camera. Vintage televisions have dials to adjust color and vertical sync. When you turn the dials you are synthesizing analog video. Distortion, filtering, and feedback – either at the source (camera) or the destination (tv screen) – offer up an infinite variety of images.

Analog vs. Digital

Today all media is digital. Like the screen you are looking at. The difference with analog is in how it’s produced. Boundaries are less definite. Lines curve. Colors waver. Feedback looks like flames. Every frame is a painting.

https://vimeo.com/172035463

Patterns

Images can be generated electronically using modules – without a camera.

Filters

Like with audio sampling, anything is a source. Movies, Youtube, live television, even Felix the Cat.

Feedback

When you aim a guitar at an amplifier it screams. Tilt it away slightly and the screaming subsides. In between there’s sweet spot. The same is true with cameras and screens. Feedback results when output is mixed with input.

Radio

Analog shortwave radio signals are distorted by the atmosphere in a manner similar to video filtering.

A studio in Bethel, Maine.

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An improvised collaboration between Chris and Tom Zicarelli using shortwave radio processed with audio effects.

Live Performance

Gem

https://www.instagram.com/p/BImQwOGBveV/?taken-by=cskonopka

A recent screen test at the Gem Theatre in Bethel, Maine. Source material is a time lapse film of a glacier installation – produced at the same theatre – by Wade Kavanaugh and Steven Nguyen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c36Y-Dcj30  The film was re-synthesized using analog video and feedback. Soundtrack by Tom Zicarelli.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BImRSzHBOLL/?taken-by=cskonopka

Big screen equals mind bending experience.

Note: previous clip excerpted from this 15 minute jam: https://vimeo.com/177843310

TAL

The patterns in this clip appear to be three dimensional. They are not.

From a show that happened somewhere in the known universe:

Alto

Improvised analog video with the band “Alto”. Patterns reminiscent of magical textiles.

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