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To paraphrase E.H. Gombrich, there is no such thing as (Video) Art there
are only artists (who use video). For every group of artists who are
willing to struggle to express or communicate something with the television
technology that already exists, there are odd individuals with strong
creative visual imagination whose vision stretches to the possibilities
of a new technology beyond that developed for the needs of broadcasting,
surveillance, etc. These people recognise the possibility for visual
instruments that may be played in the same way that musical instruments
are played, but someone has to get down to building them.. For good
or ill most artists do not happen to be electronics engineers, nor are
most electronic engineers artists. But over the years in scattered parts
of the world enough hybrid individuals or collaborative groups have
emerged willing and able to take the plunge and help these dreams materialize.
As a result a range of instruments has been built which give birth to
new visual forms which are a strong departure from the conventional
pictorial realities and limited 'special effects' which dominate the
world's television screens. (How the serious artist working with video
gets to hate those words 'special effects' - no one presumes to call
Picasso's paintings by such a term just because they do not conform
to our 'normal' view of reality!)
For a picture to appear on a television set there must first be an electrical
signal with certain conventional properties (like its size, timing,
etc.) which allows the television set to accept it and display an organized
image. It is conventionally assumed that such a signal originates from
a television camera, and that this camera is designed and aligned and
pointed at the `real' world to give an (approximately) accurate representation
of that world. There are many visual artists, of which I am one, who
reject both these notions as being an unnecessary limitation on man's
creative imagination and expression and on the television medium itself.
It is not necessary to use a television camera in order to arrive at
the electrical signal which forms meaningful images on a television
set. We can for example achieve this result by direct synthesis of that
signal.
Nor is there any human law which insists that television cameras give
an accurate representation of -the world as we normally perceive it.
It is true that they have largely been designed to mimic normal human
ocular perception, but to restrict them to this mode for all purposes
is to deny the enormous visual possibilities they have for showing us
the world in different ways. Some people may well say at this point
'Why bother?' but there are always those who are shut off to the riches
that art proclaims. It is perhaps worth noting at this point that video
signals may be projected directly onto a screen without need for television
sets at all, This rather deflates the theories of certain academics
in this country who have tried to define an aesthetic based around television
cameras, monitors and video tape recorders. Video can exist happily
without any of them! The prime aspect of video is the electrical signal
and those artists who have been involved in technical innovation concentrate
their attention on the possibilities inherent in its formation and manipulation.
This craft relationship becomes fused with the inner needs of the artist
and audience via the work produced on the new instruments.
There are several types of technique developed by artists to achieve
the images they require on television screens. Many of them do overlap
with techniques developed by commercial engineers for broadcasting needs
and there is probably a degree of influence and interaction between
the two groups. Many artists are abreast of the latest engineering developments
and the new possibilities opened up by the fast develop micro-electronic
circuits, digital computer techniques, microprocessors, etc. Also many
design engineers watch what artists are doing with both the 'traditional'
equipment and the new instruments that have been developed.
There are basically four areas that artists have developed in their
need to utilize the television screen as a canvas (for this categorization
see the article by Stephen Beck in Video Art). These are:
1. Camera image processing
2. Direct video synthesis
3. Scan modulation or re-scanning
4. Non recordable manipulations.
This is a useful categorisation
which covers pretty well the activities of artists who have engaged
in the development of video instruments for their own and others' use.
Let us go into these various areas in more detail.
There are various traditional
camera manipulations available in most television studios: cutting and
mixing between television cameras for example; also the generation of
wipe patterns as a means of transition; and often some simple colourisation
intended for titling, but often of very restricted range. But much more
is possible, including sophisticated colourisation either by tinting
monochrome images or altering the colour balance of colour images; colourisation
by quantizing an image into various levels of grey and colouring each
level independently; keying either by luminance information from a monochrome
image or chrominance information from a colour image and inserting different
images into various parts of other images; modification of images from
positive to negative; generating edge effects around lines of contrast
change; cutting and mixing between images in nonstandard ways, etc.
Many of these effects are available on conventional studio vision mixers,
but artists have had specific reasons for developing their own particular
instruments (see later in this article). My own Videokalos lmage
Processor falls into this category. Dan Sandin in Chicago has
also developed an equally sophisticated though less compact system which
is often used in conjunction with Tom DeFanti's digital computer graphics
system called GRASS. Several other systems have been built over the
past years, mainly in North America.
2. Direct video synthesis
This category includes instruments which have been developed to produce
images without any need for television cameras, although many of them
do process camera images as well to some extent. Without going into
too many technicalities the basic principle is to use electronic signal
generators coupled to signal processors to form meaningful images. For
example, signals may be generated to give points, lines and colours
which together form coloured patterns. These patterns could then be
made to move by modulators or oscillators or even audio signals, and
could be changed in size or colour shading by further amplifiers. The
aesthetic of such devices tends towards the geometric, and they often
have combined into them elements from category 1. Instruments of the
direct video synthesis group include Chromaton by
BJA Systems, Stephen Beck's Direct Video Synthesiser
and Richard Monkhouse's Spectron (for EMS)
and Videosizer (for Ludwig Rehberg).
There is another group of instruments within this category, and which
overlaps into the next, which should be described as computer animation.
This process imitates the procedures of film animation and is still
usually photographed from the television screen frame by frame by a
film animation camera with the result being film. It is technically
just possible to do this directly onto videotape which is why it is
included here. Basically the television screen is used to display a
computer generated picture which acts like the acetate cell of the animator.
Much time can be saved by the computer being able to interpolate between
images, colour in large blocks etc, but such systems are very expensive
and no individual artists to my knowledge have developed their own systems.
More easily one can use a cathode ray tube as a display for computer
generated abstract patterns which can be film-animated as above, or
changed in real-time and observed by television cameras. This overlaps
into our third category.
3. Scan modulation or re-scanning
There are basically three variations here, involving a normal television
camera (usually monochrome, viewing (a) an oscilloscope or computer
visual display unit, (b) a television screen carrying a blank raster,
or (c) a television screen carrying an image derived-' from a second
camera or some other source. However it is
first derived, the image being viewed may be modified by two means:
either by computer programme and normally displayed, or by geometric
manipulation of the display screen itself. This deflection modulation
may be achieved by magnetic or electronic means. If a blank raster is
used, lissajous patterns result. If an image is used, distortions of
a particular nature due to scan conversion are the result. It should
be noted that a normal camera is used to observe such distortions in
order that the final signal conforms to the normal pattern required
for recording. This signal may of course be processed as in category
1.
The various systems developed may or may not have the re-scan camera
built into them. Examples of type (a) are Tom DeFanti's previously mentioned
computer system GRASS and Richard Monkhouse's oscilloscope pattern generator
Quartic. Examples of (b) and (c) are the systems of
Paik/Abe and Rutt/Etra in North America.
4. Non-recordable types
Any of the last category examples would serve here if there were no
re-scan camera to convert the manipulations and distortions into a normal
recordable signal. Many artists have used 'prepared television sets'
or even simply faulty ones as part of their work in gallery displays
and of which there is no permanent record. On the whole technical innovation
in this area has not led to the development of new instruments.
All the instruments developed
in the above categories may be divided into two basic types. Either
they are primarily designed for real-time operation like a musical instrument,
or they are best used to create images that are edited together to form
a cohesive whole. In the UK at least, and probably in North America
too, there is a strong tendency towards the former aesthetic as it embraces
both possibilizties and is becoming more possible as electronics and
design experience grows.
Personal involvement
My own particular involvement as an artist with technical innovation
should serve as an interesting example, and is the one I am best qualified
to write about. Whilst studying film and television at the Royal College
of Art in London I was fortunate in having access to an ex-broadcast
colour television studio. I was at that time interested in the relation
of music and sound to the picture area, and in particular with the relationship
between electronic music and electronic (television) imagery. I was
also involved with the equivalence between music as an abstract aural
phenomenon (not taken from the natural world but invented by men and
their instruments), and television images as an abstract visual phenomenon
(most 'normal' television images are derived from the natural world,
although with man-made instruments). This involvement has continued
to this day. Armed with these notions, I entered the colour studio.
I should perhaps add that I had also at that time constructed a crude
but effective physical device for transposing sound into a visual pattern.
I soon discovered that from the remote camera control unit of a broadcast
colour television camera one could control the colours and density of
the image perceived by that camera. As all the camera control units
for the studio's four colour cameras were situated side-by-side in the
engineering control room I realized that one could colour the four images
as one chose from the one location. Unfortunately the way to mix or
cut between these cameras was on the vision mixer in the traditional
'director's' control room, so I broke with normal studio practice and
'directed' the vision mixer (a person that is) from the engineering
control room rather than from the traditional place alongside them.
This proved to be no problem as most other 'effects', such as chroma-keying,
could equally be controlled from the engineering position. I thus began
to use the studio as an expensive electronic colour paintbox. The screen
became a canvas upon which I could paint colours using images derived
from the cameras (see category 1).
Video, and television in general, has the important quality that one
can see exactly what one is doing on the screen as one does it, with
no guessing. It is fundamentally different from film in this respect.
With film it is ultimately a (professionally trained) guess as to exactly
what is on the film, and it certainly does not allow the incredible
flexibility of manipulation of the image in real time as television
does. I was working in conjunction with live performance electronic
music at that time and it very quickly became apparent that there was
a direct analogy between musical instruments and the way I was working
visually with the television studio. With a musical instrument one,
say, plucks a string and immediately receives aural feedback of one's
hands' action on the instrument. With, say, the television camera control
one turns a knob and immediately receives visual feedback of one's hands'
action on that instrument. The composer/musician and myself soon developed
an aesthetic utilizing all these techniques whereby we created non-representational
video programmes by recording real-time performances recorded directly
onto videotape, he playing his instruments and watching my visual output
on a television screen and I playing the studio instruments and listening
to his aural output on loudspeakers. A diagram of this situation shows
the arrangement schematically:
There are several small points
of interest. We found we could produce videotapes without any need for
editing and with just four people: myself, the musician/composer, a
vision mixer and the studio engineer. In particular no camera crew was
necessary. l should also note that my “performance” on the
studio cameras resulted in their being totally misaligned from their
normal function of accurately reproducing the 'normal' world around,
and some time had to be spent later re-aligning them.
Having left the college and finding I could only occasionally raise
the finance to return to continue this work in an expensive broadcast-type
television studio I realised I had been in a privileged position there,
but long enough to have learnt some important lessons. No such experimentation
seems to have been possible within the broadcasting institutions themselves,
for, despite the better equipment, the cost of utilizing it in this
way and the rigid demarcation of people's roles prevented such an informal
searching approach. It was obvious that there was a real need to develop
a video instrument, analogous to a musical instrument, that would allow
me (and later others) to perform the same functions I had been doing
in the colour studio, but without the need for so much expensive equipment.
What was really needed was a specially built image processor that would
allow the functions of complex colourisation, keying and vision mixing
in the same console, preferably utilizing cheap monochrome cameras as
inputs.
The idea was thus born to build an instrument. I had no knowledge of
electronics personally and had no contacts or knowledge at that time
with what was happening in North America. Fortunately though I crossed
paths with a wonderfully inventive and enthusiastic self-trained electronics
designer called Richard Monkhouse who was himself very keen to develop
abstract television imagery. He had almost single-handed designed and
built Spectron, a complex though somewhat unwieldy
digital direct video synthesizer (see category 2) whilst working for
EMS. This instrument could produce complex patterns of images without
need for a video camera (though it could also be used in conjunction
with one). I approached him and he was enthusiastic about the concept
and my building my envisaged instrument! I will cut short here a long
story of personal endeavour, frustration, tears and expense and enormous
demands on Richard's tolerance to say that after about eighteen months
the prototype was complete. I suppose one could say he designed the
circuitry (from my concept of what was needed), I somehow built it and
he then got it all to work (though all these processes went through
many stages for each section of the instrument).
Basically what we ended up with was a portable self contained unit,
physically modelled on Spectron which performed the following functions:
colour sync pulse generation with genlock; five independent inputs of
monochrome or colour signals, each of which could be independently colourised
or altered positive/negative; three independent keys operating in a
luminance or chrominance mode; 22 x 22 hole patch board for rapidly
inserting any signal within the instrument into one side or other of
the keys; and an eight channel four bank ABCD mixer/switcher with independent
fade to black on the AB and CD banks (AB banks give a composite PAL
encoded output capable of direct recording onto videotape whilst the
CD bank output is left in an RGB mode - three outputs, one for red,
one for green and one for the blue signals. This is used for previewing
or for other effects manipulation external to the machine).
So many people thought that
there would be a small market for such an instrument that we decided
to go a stage further at this point in order to build a fully professional
version, properly engineered for purchase by third parties and with
all the electronics on printed circuit boards for reliability and in
a sturdier case. Certain other refinements were added at the production
stage, such as a wipe pattern generator, a colour bar generator to allow
the instrument itself and external equipment to be lined up to a common
standard, and an integral encoder switchable between PAL and NTSC colour
standards. An RGB output is also supplied for SECAM users (one of the
first built was supplied to a studio in Paris).
The end result of this process,
then, is a fully portable self-contained instrument generating all the
pulses necessary for driving a colour television studio and providing
an extremely complex manipulation of video source inputs (usually cameras,
but other synthesizers could also be connected) in real time. It should
be noted that it is entirely an analogue device, giving totally different
effects to the digital processors now beginning to appear, and it maintains
its great flexibility by operating throughout on a separate RGB principle
rather than on encoded signals. Only the output needs to be encoded.
It seemed sensible to build an instrument that could be used anywhere
in the world on any television standard and with any mains electricity
supply, so this we did. The sync pulse generator is also switchable
from PAL to NTSC; SECAM shares the PAL pulses, only the encoding system
is different. Although priced so that any small studio could afford
it the instrument will interface with broadcast equipment and video
processed through it has been broadcast by the BBC.
Designing and building the professional version engaged me in the acquisition
of new skills, in particular that of designing printed circuit boards
from the drawings of electronic circuits provided by Richard, which
I picked up largely by trial and error (and a few more tears along the
way). The advantages of a professional version over a hand-built one
are the enormous increase in reliability and the potential to interchange
sections should faults ever occur.
I hope this gives an illustrative account of how an artist might get
involved in technical innovation and how, once started by some catalyst
or other, the ideas develop as an interchange between what is technically
possible and what sort of artistic control one seeks. The need in my
case was for a portable instrument giving maximum real-time control
over the colours and forms possible on a conventional television screen.
The instrument itself once built then generates possibilities one had
not at first thought of and which get integrated into the on-going development
of one's creative work. This is really a totally traditional process
in the arts between expressive needs and one's grasp of the techniques
or crafts of one's medium, between content and form and the means to
achieve both. In my view the great majority of good artists are good
craftsmen in their medium and the craft aspect of video requires at
least some understanding of the electronic substance of the television
medium if not the extreme of actually designing circuits and building
things.
This is a very exciting time historically in that the rapid advances
in electronics are allowing the development of new instruments in both
fields of music and visual events. There is some criticism along the
lines that electronic sound synthesisers, for example, produce a crude
recognisable sound and do not integrate well with their human operator.
Well, all instruments have their own particular 'sound' which is based
on their harmonic structure (or lack of it), and as for the other criticisms
we should remember that it is very early days yet compared with the
hundreds of years over which most instruments have developed. I for
my part am aware that the 'feel' of an instrument is very important
to the overall pleasure one must gain from playing it and I incorporated
this element into my design.
My philosophy as an artist also differs radically from that of the
designers of much highly expensive equipment designed primarily for
broadcast users. A good example is the present generation of digital
devices that store a frame or frames of a television picture and allow
for certain manipulations of that frame. These devices, costing upwards
of ten times my image processor, have finite operations that can be
quickly learnt by any operator. I believe that instruments should be
maximally open-ended in their possibilities and that human skill should
add significantly to those possibilities that are inherent in the technology
of the instrument, i.e. the more skill one acquires in operating my
image processor the better the final perceived image becomes. If an
instrument can also be open-ended technically (as mine is by accepting
multiple inputs from any other source one can imagine) then so much
the better. The only real problem would arise if television switched
to being an all digital affair, or the television display changed its
standard radically (to give higher resolution etc). Either of these
possibilities might occur in the future, though unlikely to happen quickly,
and would involve radical re-design.
One can see that the philosophy with which an artist utilizing video
approaches his medium is likely to be very different from the design
philosophy of most engineers and television producers. The artist starts
from the premise of what he would like to do rather than what is possible
in the current technological condition. He wants devices that give maximum
personal control over the medium rather than having to give instructions
to other people to do things. And he may well have a wider vision of
what is visually acceptable, technically, than most engineers and also
of what is acceptable, in terms of human meaning and relevance, than
most television producers working in broadcasting. Artists are making
significant technical as well as aesthetic advances in the development
of the video medium.
Reference
1. Beck, Stephen. 'Image Processing and Video Synthesis' in Video Art,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1976.
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