But as far as working with signal, it was invention of generation that came at the end of 1960s and
beginning of 1970s, we both saw convincing processing thru Siegel. Eric Siegel made the piece called
Einstein, for the first time feedback in colorizing totally convincing statement, then I realized there's no
film for me anymore, this is the way from film because this is not a film, it's a moving image but it's a
totally different animal. And of course, from that perspective, then we discovered what was before, like
Whitney brothers filmmaking, which was already analogue computer, and then with electronic sound
which I was by that time quite familiar with. This made the base for future profession which carried
this whole period thru and we got into meeting the people that we could specify our desire and they
were able to execute it. They were these free agents of technology that either went thru Vietnam war or
refused to go. So we got this technological base, The whole called still hippie era, the end of hippie era,
and the whole period of 1970s was just ahead and it had built its own theaters, own scenes, own music,
so the culture continued from 60s till 70s. And after that of course it was no longer for us, we said this
is it, by the end of 70s, it was in 78 or 79 we went to some conference in upstate New York, we were
already in Buffalo of course by that time, we looked at each other, there were few pioneers, and we
said, it's over for us now...
So we developed into few other genres and the installations became more and more part of the gallery,
and it was driven by the interest of the gallery. And by that time it was rampart, there were people who
were working in the documentary, socially-conscious projects and the others that did experiments and it
was all integrated and we could all show it and all the genres were already established. Thru the 80s it
bumped thru and in the 90s it became sort of already property of the gallery and in that time the
interactivity came in the 80s.
Signal Modulation
Actually the entrance for me into it was first thru electronic sound, it was the first departure from
traditional instrumentation and composition. And so that I already discovered for myself, this
organization or structural understanding that are waveforms that represent tones or acoustical part and
then of course there is a certain organization or structure which then is interpreted by our ear as psychoacoustic.
And it gives you an idea that from these little signal modulated by various waves you can assemble the
whole sound of symphony orchestra, that was kind of miraculous for me. How can encoded simple
code of modulation in particular organization represent the world of important sound psychological
mediation. So it became full fledged interest of mine and then of course when I entered into the natural
of electronic sound extension which is electronic image I found that even more challenging, how can
you send time by time in meaning in this serial way, how can you really send a visual artifact which is a
frame, like film, painting and photography. How can it be done. It really challenged me and derayled
my interest in really what's called art, but for art coming from postwar generation in Europe I think that
challenge of war has preempted all the idea of surrealism or whatever and cubism and all this was for
me the great statement of the avant-garde in art. Because that avant-garde was an innovation, to really
stumble on new codification, and this is what I was assembling and appreciating and actually referred
to it as the interest and then as soon as I had chance to examine this new discipline I said O.K., this is
my priority I've got to see what is it in its substance. Instead of taking the tradition of television which
already give it to you and most of the artists accepted this as a vehicle for their ideology.
I found out that the vehicle or using medium as a vehicle for your ideology is unethical basically, you
just use the picture that exists and you point the camera on the world and then there is art maybe if you
encode it in some sort of the pretention like film is, in these two characters it's documentary which is
the representation of reality and then all the feature film is illusionary production. You have the actors
and they become protagonists in expanded theatre and you have proscenium which is the frame and
then you operate on the expanded amount of primitives, and you assemble the particular register and
then you can tell the story by for example montage, you know, there is the whole thesis on it. Bela
Balász he specified the first what it is when you walking straight and you cut and there is whole new
work, and then you say, what the hell, this never happens in theatre.
And the whole discussion about the truth and reality and all these things were already discussed very
well in Europe. So this illusionary part I thought was good for literature and poetry but not necessarily
should be brought into narrative telling through film and if it is still extendible I would probably
dedicate my life to it. But here I get this gift of electronic material and I had it and I could step by step
pursue it.
Signal Again (and Code)
So this area which open which kind of asked me, what is it, how do you define it, how do you name it,
how do you visualize it, and how do you compare it with the new code or the code that comes from the
acoustic understanding of the seriality from which you make either psychoacoustic space in your head
in sense of the sound or speaker environment, in which the sound, or electronic form of it just provides
the step thru from original to the representation. But that stepping between which is the serialization,
what's called the signal, contains this very different form, it's like a day and night or sound and silence.
It is something immaterial and it's something magnificent and challenging that code in which preserve
that kind of re-staging in your mind or in your environment that sends it again in this particular air.
Because the air becomes the carrier of the sound and eventually hits your ears and then brain takes it
over, and accepts it as legitimate. It's very interesting beginning of this electronization.
And the...code applies to the sent image, it's just the different frequency spectrum, it's much higher and
then the frame is actually assembled from the seriality as the sound is a different format little bit but it
still is a waveform that eventually symbolizes the state of the point once it travels, it's not really a point,
it's an infinite idea of a point but it's really line-drawn and that line contains the information which is
taken from the camera again which takes it line by line and delivers it to some kind of display device.
So this of course brings the whole different behavior load, it's same like in audio and suddenly you can
transfer these original codes to various organizational challenges in a sense of processing. So the idea
was already widely know and audio synthesizers built and established at least in unique steps, but they
already began to become systems with access to this autoration, and this idea of autoration is another
aspect and when I was still back in an old country before, I entered the military thru service, I already
stumbled into this by work and assignment in military which was radio telegraphist, I could listen to
these artifacts that came from ionosphere and troposphere reflections and with electrical pulse which is
organized on the ground, comes to the distance, I was working with this European defense system,
called Varšavský pakt, I was working on that network every night which was connecting about six
airforce centers, I was in Zvolen in Slovakia and every night we were sending, every hour just four
minutes of communication, sometimes the signals were inaudible by situation in the troposphere, some
were processed by it, like flenging and all the later artifacts which I found in audio were already there,
so I knew when I listened to my first experiences like Stockhausen which penetrated in curtain easily,
we already knew about German experiments and other and since I was keenly tuned, I was actually
prepared to...and Czechs right before I left it were already empire of media, we were exporting all
kinds of visual compositions, we understood synchronicity and audio automata, but in a way all
political, and very seldom you could see asking questions what is actually the medium, it was always
what is the impact, what is demonstration, what is illusion.
So these questions were up to me slowly later rationalize and take them as the basis for later interest in
looking into video and trying to find everything, how it is conceived, how it's organized, how the frame
is made the same time. It means you send out the frame and image, it's really fantastic idea, you don't
have a painting but you put in the frame, of course painting has its frame by termination of the canvas
but it's basically the same. You have horizontal and vertical fibres of the canvas and you just put it on
and put a frame on it and suddenly you have the ancient artifact which carries some kind of aeshtetic
formulation thru color and so on.
So in electronics we were trying to emulate the same result by have to have employ in different way
and it was to send signal which was continuity not only the image but also the timing comments, when
the line has to be drawn, and when the next line is drawn and then third line is drawn and fourth line is
drawn, and then goes on to full the whole frame. And that's what I was always obsessed is the
innovation that signal not only carries the picture but it also carries the frame and it eventually ends in
this cognitive unit of a frame which your brain willingly accepts. There is no trouble, your ear accepts
sound as “true representation”, whatever that is, but the mind accepts image in a “true representation”
...and re...as a form of reality or entertainment, it depends on the tradition of a content, and genre in
which it is contained and way it's told.
But now this new electronic material has certain affinity between each other, image and sound,
electronic image and electronic sound or transmitted sound they have exactly the same material, there's
a certain potential distributed in time. And it differs in certain aspects of frequencies and repetition but
there is a relationship that's generic and identical as far as the source. And so of course I am skipping
the whole idea of enviroment and light in film and photography and video and these are preconditions
for it but suddenly here thru synthesis and generation you skip it, the camera becomes secondary it's no
longer dominant instrument and instead of looking to the world and looking at people mostly or nature,
people love to look at people, and people are interested in people.
