Artist Feature: András Hargitai
András Hargitai is a electronic dub musician and AV artist from Budapest. His interest started in the 90s when he connected the audio output of his VCR to the video input. Seeing bars show up across his screen, he realized that a TV can just interpret an electromagnetic signal as visual. He consumed a lot of analog video art in his teens, but it wasn't till 2017 when he was tinkering using a modular system and occasionally connecting patches to oscilloscopes, that he discovered that LZX was creating video synthesizer modules for the eurorack format. The War of The Ants noise generator from LZX’s expedition series caught his eye, seeing as at the time his modular compositions used a lot of filters and noise. After months of reading about video synthesis and viewing community work, he was able to get one before they ended production. “I hadn't known that it was going to be the centre-piece of my highly acclaimed sci-fi AV show (Extrasolar) a few years later…”.
András views his process as an evocative form of action painting, shaping layers of textures, and reducing forms. “I focus on interaction - being a passive viewer of the work would miss some of the opportunities I consider important: gesture, voice and tactile control is frequently featured in those, as well as camera feedback”. András collaborates often, using a large variety of equipment and source depending on the project, this includes audio production, using special CRT's, oscilloscope screens, and frequency counters. In his personal projects, he found himself deeply interested in paintings of horizons and sky-scapes, with much of his work resembling those pieces. “Once you read about moving image generation with cathode-ray tubes, you start realising what an engineering marvel it is to "print" or "paint" with voltages…”.
Currently, András is working on a sci-fi performance, based around a novel. Occasionally he has been working on collaborative work for his instagram, working with analog photographers, painters or graphic artists. He calls this “educative pleasure” killing two birds with one stone. András Hargitai hopes to do a video synth workshop sometime this year, so he can bring focus away from his big projects and begin to experiment with LZX’s Stacker.
