PE, June 9, 2012 - draft project concept.

I would be interested with any other interested members of CIE to investigate including additional video elements as active part of the CIE repertoire and website.  This includes ability to support video and projection as integral part of new work, documentary,  and review and resurrection of other materials.

BACKGROUND: There has always been a visual element to CIE. I expect that we have opportunity to make greater use of electronic visual elements in our collective work.  Many of use have used video in our individual works and have pretty much all been involved in various mixed media projections.

I had turned away from an focused use of electronic graphics several years ago due to lack of available tools that were readily available to me.  As with many things, i feel a bit Rip Van Winklish and now finding many re-opened paths.   It seems now possible to proceed with new work and complete some of the unfinished pieces.  There’s also some delight in being able to resurface some of the earlier graphisc synthesis pieces.

I have a number of video works alone and with other from the period of 1972 thought 1987.  I would like to adapt these works for web presentation in part and video projection for live performance and or installation. 

These have never been finalized mostly because of lack of readily available means for editing, post processing and presentation. Given the evolution of digital technology, including DVR technology, Jitter, and post production software, media streaming, this can now be done on readily available technology probably requiring modest funding and facilities.  Additionally, the web and video projectors are wonderful tools for presentation and dissemination.

I propose reaching out to the original collaborators including Tom DeWitt Ditto, John Driscoll, Andres Bosshard, Daniela Zehnder,  Susan Masokowski and others to explore interest in these adaptions.  This includes work with the EBA dancers and choreographer Susan Masokoswski, possibly raw Pantomation footage, processed  images using Rutt-Etra, possibly Paik-Abe, Hearn synthesizers and  Amiga genearted imagery as well. 

Material includes raw and processed materials from EBA, WNET-TV Lab and the Experimental Television Center (probably 1984 & 1987) using then available recording and synthesis technology.

Additionally,as a parallel effort, I would be interested including other material in conjunction with these other activities given technology synergies. 

John Driscoll has documentary footage from interviews at Lincoln Center that’s been transferred to hard disk. 

I would like to work with Tom DeWitt Ditto to see if he is interested in web presentaiton of transcriptions for Cathode Ray Theater, Philharmonia and other works. 

I have about a dozen 3/4” and VHS tapes. 

Proposed steps as follows:

1. 1)Initial feasibility: transfer tapes to digital (MP4 , MOV, AVI) and make available in hole or in part for review by the collaborators on a secure portion of the CIE hosted website.
   

2. 2)Determine if the collaborators are interested in proceed with moving forward with adapting this material for use in web, installation or live performance.
   

3. 3)Identify viable specific projects for implementation
   

4. 4)Develop with john Driscoll projection system to be used with Ultrasonic instruments (either as implementtion of Speaking in Tongues or other work.
   

5. 5)Identify useful and available technologies: Elgato, Matrox or other, HDMI compatible projection, VLC streaming clients, icecast or other streaming services, Kinect, LCD illumination.
   

6. 6)Gather archival footage - that is look for funding to transfer the George Bolling 1” video from DeSaissert which John and I believe to be an early noteworthy effort to represent Rainforest in video and Synapse/Bill Viola on the Synapse Rainforest tape.
   

7. 7)identify opportunities for video based rendering of Rainforest IV or remote viewing of Rainforest V.
   

8. 8)Develop aspect of this work as a collaborative “maker” workshop.
   

9. 9)Identify possibly sources of backing and outside interested parties and resources.
   

10. 10)Estimating required storage and bandwidth
    

11. 11)Note: Soundings interview with Davide Tudor (John Sanborn, Kit Fitzgerald, John Driscoll) is available from Electronics Arts Intermix.
    

12. 12) Would also be nice to be able to obtain a copy of the Rainforest Dance in America for our Archive.
    

13. 13)Resurface Liz Phillips video from the Kitchen
    

14. 14)Resurface Julie Martin’s interviews from the Kitchen.
    

July 6

I have Elgato video capture and have started digitizing VHS tapes including:

1. -Tom DeWitt roll of “This Is TV America”, “Cathode Ray Theate”.  The Cathode Ray Theatre contains pretty intact versions of “Philharmonia”, “Studies for Philharmonia” and “Rob Roy”.  
   

2. -ETC Residency with Andres Bosshard and Daniela Zehnder. This has raw material that seems to be worth carrying forward into a more presentable form.  There are portraits, assisted self portraits, sound triggered frame buffer and various action painting processed imagery.
   

RAINFOREST VIDEO

We have also been aware of the challenge of a rendition of Rainforest in video (more so than film).

Most of the video captured so far has been somewhat adhoc in natrue.  We’ve never done a focused production that captured the combined audio and visual sense of exploring the objects and experiencing the variation of sound based on location.  One of the shortcomings has been in getting near-audio that reflected the sense of being envoloped by the sound of an object.

The binaural recordings going back as far as the 1980 Berlin recording from the Akadamie Der Kunst captured a substantial ambiance but we’ve missed the means to get the internal sound of objects and enclosed space and the transition inherent in exploration.

John and I have discussed various means to produce or capture that sensation.  Possibilities include use of highly directional microphones.