[-empyre-] old media cycles to new: Signal Culture and Jason Bernagozzi

[Renate Terese Ferro]

Dear Jason , I have taken bits of your post and responded in CAPS.
Apologies for that but you bring up so many points I just did not want to
miss anything.  I have also alluded to one of Ben's older posts from last
night: 

Jason Wrote: "The residency programs at Signal Culture are designed with
several philosophies in mind. First and foremost is the idea that old
media is still new media, and that each media device is imbued with a
specific language. We are aware that the relentless tide of new
technologies often tout more "quality" in the process or image, but we are
more interested in the "qualities" inherent to a specific device...But
this notion of old media is new media goes beyond that. When media devices
from several ages talk to one another, what kind of dialogue forms?"

Ben Wrote: "I think of tradition as a way of thinking about the world that
emphasizes what has stayed the same. Novelty is a way of thinking about
the world that emphasizes what has changed. Realism is somewhere in
between, where we accept that at some level of description nothing
changes, but at other levels of description nothing stays the same. More
and more, I find myself not seeing through the lens of novelty, but
through the lens of tradition."
 

 AS I MENTIONED IN THE POST BEFORE THE TRANSLATION OF OLD TECHNOLOGY AND
ITS INHERENT QUALITIES  INTO NEW INSPIRES CONCEPTUAL IDEAS FOR ME.  ON
FRIDAY HERE AT CORNELL, TIM MURRAY, CURATOR OF THE ROSE GOLDSEN ARCHIVE OF
NEW MEDIA ART, HOSTED A CONVERSATION IN DIGITAL PRESERVATION WITH RICHARD
RINEHART, THE DIRECTOR AND CHIEF CURATOR OF THE SAMEK ART MUSUEM AT
BUCKNELL UNIVERSITY IN PENNSYLVANIA.  THERE ARE  CHALLENGES THAT PRESENT
THEMSELVES TO CURATORS AND OTHERS WHO ARE HAVE A STAKE IN PRESERVING THE
TRANSLATION AND EVOLUTION OF A WORK OF ART ESPECIALLY WHEN  ONE MEDIA
FORMAT OR LANGUAGE NEEDS TO BE TRANSLATED OR EMULATED TO ANOTHER FOR
PRESERVATION PURPOSES.  AS YOU SAID THE NATURE OF THESE TRANSLATIONS ARE
EMBEDDED IN THE VERY NATURE OF THE MEDIUM;THEY HAVE TO BE TO LIVE ON.  AT
CORNELL RINEHART DISCUSSED SOMETHING THAT I DO NOT THINK WE THINK ABOUT
VERY OFTEN AS ARTISTS. THE PERSONAL MEMORY OF EACH ARTIST CAN GRASP THIS
TRANSLATION IN VERY LOGICAL AND CONCRETE WAYS AND OFTEN DOES SO TO INSPIRE
NEW WORK, BUT HOW DOES THE SOCIAL MEMORY OF THOSE OF INSTITUTIONS LIKE A
MUSEUM OR AN ARCHIVE OR PERHAPS A RESIDENCY CENTER ARCHIVE  THE VERY
EPHEMERAL NATURE OF THESE "QUALITIES" AND THE INTENT OF THE CREATOR OR
ARTIST? 

Jason wrote: . One of our founders is Hank Rudolph, who worked with
training of residents at the Experimental Television Center for over 25
years. The notion of a real time system fundamentally changed our
perceptions of media, and a large part of Signal Culture is working with
video and audio in real time using a hybrid of old and new analog and
digital processes. In terms of innovation, we believe that it can come
through re-evaluation of what has been made. Steina Vasulka always
maintained that in order to get everything you needed out of a media
"instrument" you needed to play it over the period of a decade. Too often
we are asked to shed our media processes for the new. We choose to keep
those processes and include the new.

YOU ARE SO LUCKY TO HAVE HANK RUDOLPH ON YOUR TEAM.  HANK FACILITATED MY
RESIDENCY AT ETC IN 2006 OR 2007 I THINK IT WAS.  I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE
DOING TUTORIALS ON JITTER BUT THE AURA OF THE ANALOG VIDEO SYNTHESIZERS
AND COLORIZERS WERE JUST TOO ENTICING TO LEAVE ALONE.  THANKFULLY THAT
EXPERIMENTATION LED TO TWO LARGER PROJECTS THAT LED ME TO TRANSLATE OLD
ANALOG FOOTAGE FROM SUPER 8 FILM INTO DIGITAL FOOTAGE CAPTURING THE
PHYSICAL QUALITIES OF THE OLD INTO THE DIGITAL NEW.  THE SCRATCHES OF THE
SUPER 8 FILM AND THE NOISE OF THE OLD PROJECTOR BECAME AN INTEGRAL PART OF
THE SURFACE AND SOUND OF THE DIGITAL VERSION.

A good example of this was the construction of our raster manipulation
device (aka the Wobbulator) this past summer. We came to make this device
because we knew how valuable it was at the Experimental Television Center.
However, there are some major issues with the original design. First, the
S-Coil needed to be driven by a hefty McIntosh tube amplifier because the
short circuit created by this coil would either blow amplifiers or in
worse case scenarios cause them to burst into flames, according to Andrew
Deutsch. The second major design issue was needing to get a late 60's
color TV yoke large enough to fit over the electron gun circuit board to
drive the horizontal and vertical deflection.
We did not have the money to buy these parts, the McIntosh amps are a
collector's item and feature an auto forming transformer that let it run
heavy loads without a problem. So, after some consultation with Dave Jones
we figured out some new designs for this old media device that would allow
it to be run using new peripherals.
The reason this re-investigation is exciting is that through these
redesigns we were able to prove that not only can we create a wobbulator
from a color CRT, but we can turn it into a real video instrument with
over 12 potential processes to localize and further process the image into
a raster animation instrument with variable raster collapse ramping. Based
on these findings, we will be constructing this instrument this summer and
adding it to the Signal Culture system.

THE KNOWLEDGE THAT IS NEEDED TO SUSTAIN SOME OF THE DEVICES YOU SPEAK
ABOUT ABOVE NEED KNOWLEDGABLE ENGINEERS AND TINKERERS WHO HAVE A GOOD
WORKING KNOWLEDGE AND HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY.  YOU ARE LUCKY TO HAVE DAVE
JONES RIGHT DOWN THE STREET.  I HAVE TO SAY THOUGH THAT SOMETIMES THE
TECHNICAL FOR ME OVERPOWERS THE IDEA OR THE CONCEPT THAT IS AT HAND OTHER
TIMES INSPIRING NEW PRODUCTION. THERE IS A DELICATE BALANCE BETWEEN TOOLS
AND CONCEPT THAT BEN AND MURAT ALSO BROUGHT INTO OUR CONVERSATION EARLIER.
 CAN YOU TALK ABOUT HOW THAT IS PLAYING OUT IN THE SIGNAL CULTURE
LANDSCAPE TODAY AND HOW YOU DEFINE A "CULTURE" THAT IS CONDUCIVE TO BOTH?

THANKS AGAIN JASON FOR YOUR GENEROSITY IN SHARING WHAT'S GOING ON AT
SIGNAL CULTURE.  LOOKING FORWARD TO MORE.

Renate







Renate Ferro
Visiting Assistant Professor of Art,Cornell University
Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office:  306
Ithaca, NY  14853
Email:   <rferro at cornell.edu <mailto:rtf9 at cornell.edu>>
URL:  http://www.renateferro.net <http://www.renateferro.net/>
      http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net
<http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net/>
Lab:  http://www.tinkerfactory.net <http://www.tinkerfactory.net/>

Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space
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On 2/7/15, 11:06 AM, "Jason Bernagozzi" <jason at seeinginvideo.com> wrote:

>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------