1968-1990 Video Synth Video Share Circle

Category: Forum · Tags: history · Posts: 42

#1 — creatorlars · 2022-06-17

Let’s have some fun revisiting your influences (or maybe past work!) from the years roughly covered by the functional groups of LZX Industries gear. While it’s not easy to pin down, I usually consider the analog video synth era as starting with Eric Siegel’s Colorizer in 1968 and concluding with the release of the NewTek Video Toaster in 1990. The focus of our work has largely been in preserving and expanding upon the tools and techniques from this 22 year period. So let’s go back to the source years and review.

Rules

• One reply per day per person. Lets make sure no one gets drowned out.
• Any material is OK as long as they demonstrate some creative use of video tech: Video art pieces, commercials, music videos, live performance recordings, film clips, etc.

I will start us off! From 1971 to 1988.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAVkRlX96Os

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz6DszGdZIMYou’re it!

#2 — dryodryo · 2022-06-17

Super fun!

Here is the most complicated feedback system I’ve ever done. Dates from 1991, but didn’t use any digital tools. An excerpt from a 20 minute piece. There was some EAB Videolab stuff in the long version, but I didn’t like it and cut it out. This is all just analog video cameras, CCUs, monitors, and switchers. Music is prerecorded live performance on Buchla 200 system.

dr-yo.comhttps://www.dr-yo.com/video_coils_hfr.htmlAbstract video art, computer animation, and electronic music by Aaron F. Ross, also known as Dr. Yo.

Link: Coils of the Worm by Aaron F. Ross

#3 — sprthhfk · 2022-06-17

Not exactly a particular work, but this mini doc on the Vasulkas got me absolutely obsessed with video art in my early 20s. It wasn’t until about 5 years later that I discovered video synths were actually commercially attainable via LZX. RIP Woody!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ylow_1ytoiE

#4 — dryodryo · 2022-06-17

That Evil Acid thingy should have a strobe warning BTW

#5 — sean · 2022-06-17

Here are a couple fun ones from Gary Hill:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFXLkPAT6dg

.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiDMPNlLy9Q

edit: added descriptions from his catalogue raisonné.

#6 — phosphenes · 2022-06-17

Always loved the video effects on this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrle0x_DHBM

#7 — Z0NK0UT · 2022-06-17

Denise Gallant is important.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VdLVwDwm7s

#9 — 337is · 2022-06-17

Likely already familiar to most here, but this is a classic:

Spiral 5 PTL (Perhaps The Last)

1979 Live performances, real-time instruments: Dan Sandin, Tom DeFanti, and Mimi Shevitz Live recording of performance before a small studio audience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw9kY85DkfE

#10 — analogbrainsurgeon · 2022-06-17

Does anyone know what “new HD video synth” Denise was talking about at the end of the video? I’ve never seen anything with RGB sliders like what was shown around the time she mentioned that Rob was building a new synth.

#11 — 337is · 2022-06-17

Tossing another log on the Vasulka fire in case this gem has been missed by folx. This is from 1978:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wBu_q3cRrI

#12 — Z0NK0UT · 2022-06-17

I think Rob was posting about an HD colorizer on Facebook?

#13 — Dewb · 2022-06-17

Sneaking out of the date ranges a bit: James Whitney, 1957!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvWwlZSXaR0Here’s something from John Whitney post-1968:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrKgyY5aDvAAnd the Whitney brothers together, all the way back in 1943:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuZbgM8yxtY

#14 — jwsmithwick1 · 2022-06-17

I was going to share this! I feel like the band went to the people operating the Scanimate and said, “We want EVERYTHING!”. Personally, from a technical standpoint, this video is the gold standard.

#15 — rempesm · 2022-06-17

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpstpzBDJ7s

#16 — cata · 2022-06-18

Not exactly sure what was used in this but theres definitely still a lot of buried treasure in the Japanese Video Art scene from the 70s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oautz2QQNhg

#17 — dryodryo · 2022-06-18

My old professor, Michael Scroggins, making very creative use of the Grass Valley Group 1600 7-H switcher, which had three busses, each with wipes and flat colors, built in wipe modulation, and the all-important split T-bar. This piece is built up from many layers, performed live. In addition to the aforementioned T-bar jamming, we see camera feedback, live oil wipe projection (literal hand-waving), and finally slow motion in post. Music video commissioned by the late Jon Hassel, composer, jazz trumpeter, electronics wizard, pioneer of Fourth World tribal futurism. Hassel passed away almost a year ago.

#18 — dryodryo · 2022-06-18

The Earth Wind and Fire video is absolutely a masterpiece, an analog video tour de force… but let’s not overlook the costuming par excellence

#19 — dryodryo · 2022-06-18

337is wrote:

Spiral 5 PTL (Perhaps The Last)

When I went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the late 80’s, people put down my video feedback work as being cliche. I took classes in the IP and ZGRASS, but no one ever showed me any work like this. It was all boring technical explanation of what the boxes did. And there wasn’t any kind of vector graphics in the labs at all.

#20 — Agawell · 2022-06-18

there’s also this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eJPG205eBkwhich is a great documentary - if you are in the UK it’s available on iPlayer as part of the Arena series - there’s also a Delia Derbyshire episode…

#21 — creatorlars · 2022-06-18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj13Y_H6lDo

#22 — nerdware · 2022-06-18

Yes, 90 minutes of mind-blowing video art history. Never a dull moment. Incidently, I’d never heard of the Vasulkas before watching this. Now I know too much and I still want to know more. Highly recommended.

My own intro to video art came from a show I think was called Ghost in the Machine, on the UK’s Channel Four. No introductions or explanations were given. Just a gallery of some of the strangest and most wonderful TV I’ve seen.

Also worthy of note: the BBC’s Painting with Light series. I’d seen the Paintbox used on many TV shows, but it never featured in any of them before this. Somehow I only saw the Hockney episode, linked below. Looking at them now, I wonder why they only explored the “painting” aspect of this amazing tool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-JpI4egl2oI also recall seeing an artist on TV using a console to control a laser. The knobs were obviously for the frequencies of oscillators and modulation controls, but the whole thing reminded me less of desk and more of a spaceship “flightdeck”. Unfortunately I don’t recall his name. Now I’d love to know more.

#23 — Agawell · 2022-06-18

I wish I’d seen this when it was originally shown (1986) - I’d probably have included a load of it in my A-level art thesis (which I did on Hockney in 1988)

Hockney’s always liked stuff like this though - he was also the first major artist to exhibit ‘paintings’ on iPads (that he’d made on the iPads)

edit: Having just finished watching - it’s interesting that all 3 pictures he made are (at least to me) distinctively Hockney - and in the last you see the influence of Picasso… it’s not the instrument (or media) it’s the artist that makes the art!

#24 — nerdware · 2022-06-18

All the artists in that series do their own thing with the Paintbox. I don’t recall how or why I watched the Hockney episode and not the others, but I’m happy to find them on Youtube. Every artist finds their own unique voice in there, but I love how excited Hockney gets. His joy seems more obvious than other artists. Larry Rivers was also a lot of fun to watch.

Anyway, I remember enjoying the experience of watching it enormously. I was probably just too busy to even notice the others when they were broadcast. I don’t recall even realising it was a series.

There was also a 90 documentary about Hockney broadcast a few years ago. There were so many styles and media in there, but some, like the Paintbox, weren’t even mentioned, but at least the iPad stuff got sqeezed in there, however briefly.

I guess some artists, like Hockney and the Vasulkas, did so much that 90 minutes isn’t close to enough time to cover all of it well.

#25 — Dr_Rek · 2022-06-19

Pre video synth, but conceptually proto

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmejo9WL2gY

#26 — dryodryo · 2022-06-20

ZOMG I completely forgot P-Model existed

#27 — dryodryo · 2022-06-20

Another of my old professors, Bob Snyder, master of connecting the E-mu modular to the Sandin IP. Bob said the E-mu oscillators were stable enough to be used for video, which is pretty amazing. Over-engineering paid off.

Shame about the tracking error on this capture, but I’m still grateful it’s online.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLLOq5a9a1Q

#28 — killumina · 2022-06-20

Niche possibility but the right crowd-

Was anyone on this forum ever involved with Lumonics Light and Sound? I lived in South Florida and really enjoyed their setup and gallery, artists, and performances before it was moved to Colorado.

I wasn’t a “resident” but for the times i visited it seemed a great community and wish i could figure out something similar closer to Seattle (beyond the smattering of video artists in Portland and some laserists) Closest is the video artists i’ve met through Decibel festival/Scarecrow video.

#29 — dryodryo · 2022-06-22

Dean Winkler, Tom DeWitt, and Vibeke Sorensen, 1981

Remastered at 1080

#30 — sean · 2022-06-22

Some music video classics from Severed Heads/Stephen Jones:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVMiFfdcKJM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=havnNe7VWuw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvKicu4uxzI

#31 — creatorlars · 2022-06-23

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xHrfDl7JjQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twTJdYKDZyc

#32 — Gavin · 2022-06-23

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7UsnI_HQYMI’m very interested in the edge of this period just before the video toaster, where home computers are pushing to recreate these video art aesthetics and demoscene visuals are emerging.

#33 — creatorlars · 2022-06-24

I love this period too – you can really see the artists/coders pushing against their limitations in creative ways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4T7pIs--LA

#34 — cata · 2022-06-24

The video feedback effects in this are stunning. That coupled with the breathing samples makes this piece super meditative. Really one of my favorites

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kTgJ-pNeWQ

#35 — sean · 2022-07-31

Coming in right at the end of the window here — and mostly interesting in terms of compositing and design rather than “synthesis” per se — Tom Phillips & Peter Greenaway’s A TV Dante (1990) was BIG for me when I first saw it in the mid-90s. Love how it tells a narrative through layered speech, text, image, lecture, interview, etc. rather than dramatization or “realism.”

Didn’t see an easy way to embed it here, but it can be watched on Ubuweb. (Lots of great stuff over there, if you’re not already familiar with the site.)

#36 — Z0NK0UT · 2022-08-08

Found this one today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzm6HBSu9RU Details, including the BASIC program: http://www.riccardosinigaglia.com/sini/simbol.html

#38 — cata · 2022-08-26

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzTeTmfVq-Q ripped this one for the video homies

#39 — cinema.av · 2023-10-09

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sc-Q-ukt-Qpretty excited to see this up online… had always found the trailer, but never the actual documentary feature…

#40 — dryodryo · 2023-11-16

Can’t seem to edit my old post to update the link. But here’s a more stable link to the three-camera feedback piece I made in 1991

https://vimeo.com/874606273

#41 — FranzKappa · 2024-03-24

MUHAHAHA!!! Except for the ems spectron effekts,this video sucks b@//$

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDHjeiys3a0I’m breaking the rules here a little,but it’s a must see imo.Here’s the ems videosizer in action.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d4z26K5CKM

#42 — mbroers · 2025-05-20

Theres this 1984 movie ‘Blind Date’ where the blind lead actor gets a ‘compu vision’ device installed to see with sonar. Lots of great vintage video synth effects in the movie. Does anyone know what they used or how to get this kind of tracing effect with an LZX rig?

#43 — Z0NK0UT · 2025-05-20

Haha. I forgot about that absurd slasher. Lots of video feedback in that one. Contour would be our best edge extraction module for getting the outline/tracing effect.

#44 — mbroers · 2025-05-20

Thanks! I’ll check it out!