Video with Charcoal

Video with Charcoal

Video with charcoal is a thread that I explored from 1980 probably through 1983. This cut shows a few of those experiments. A couple more are seen in Green River Blues. This grew out of sequencer work that was being done at the Experimental TV Center, by Ralph Hocking, and by others. I was also influenced by Ken Jacobs who, while I was at SUNY Binghamton, had us look at and explore his work that utilized Alfons Schilling's shutter experiments - all amazing work and you should get yourself to one of Jacob's performances if you have not seen this. Though many used the sequencer to create a subtle 3D space, or not so subltle spacial inversion (see Ralph Hocking's Slow Scan work), the charcoal pieces were never an attempt to create 3D per se, however small spaces are revealed. That these are performances they always end up feeling flawed.

A sequencer allows for real-time switching from patchable video sources. You can see use of the sequencer in a lot of what came out of the ETC.

The first two pieces are from the September 1982 ETC session, the last two are from an ETC session in November of the same year. The first piece is a self portrait, of which there are more than a few. The second cut, also included in Lonesome Blues, was more about the shifting video sync. It's a stand out but still belongs to this category. The last two cuts used the view onto Front Street from the ETC. Lucky for me there was some construction going on that day.

Except for the second piece, all other work is silent.