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“The condition of music is that it is the live production of organised
sounds that extend in time and affect our inner selves without the necessity
of mediation through verbal or conceptual structures.
The condition of video is that it is the live production of organised
images that extend in time and affect our inner selves without the necessity
of mediation through verbal or conceptual structures. As one plays a
musical instrument the result is an immediate feedback through the ear
of what the body and mind has created. As one plays a video instrument
the result is an immediate feedback through the eye of what the body
and mind has created. Video is the visual equivalent of music.
My own concern with video has been the search for and discovery of a
coloured visual expression of equivalent potency to that of music. Music
needs no external references other than itself. It just is. There is
now no reason why a visual event should need external references. Let
it be. Video as a medium is unparalleled by any other in its ability
to allow immediate visual and aural experience extend in time and be
recorded. It extends our possibilities for expression.”
Donebauer, 1975
All
his videos from the Seventies involve a complex real-time performance
between one or more electronic visual artist(s) and one or more
musician(s) and electronic performer(s) – always including a key
collaborator, Simon Desorgher. Each participant had visual and aural
feedback of one another’s output in real time and the visual element
thus became an equivalent to the production of live music. The
recordings saved were the best “take” achieved during the typically
three-day set-up and recording schedule.
This
process positioned the videos in a different practice to that occupied
by other artists working with video in the UK at that time, perhaps
having more parallels with some artists working in the USA who were
similarly trying to explore the achievable visual boundaries of this
new medium. In 1978 Donebauer founded a travelling performance group
called VAMP (for Video and Music Performers), but despite packed
audiences at the ICA, Birmingham Arts Lab etc VAMP could not continue
due to lack of funding.
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