Eric Siegel
Eric Siegel was this divine child, that in the age of like 11 or 12 could build a TV camera,...he was a
free agent and technologist. He was a fragile person, I don't know if you know anything about him, he
was gay and illegitimate member of the society, but he was gifted and talented in electronics since
childhood, but he had larger dimension than just to fix equipment or build it, he actually also made art
with it, and I must say in the long run he was very gifted, and even if he's from the category of
mindhood I call American primitive. They may have intellectual ambitions but internalized, there is no
acquired. So he was interested in it and he attached to it certain ...so it also feels like ending and nonphysical
communication, or sending...without television, so it was some utopian or drug induced in a
way also activity behind, so the time it was very fluent to accept ...reality, and codes and processing
and sending and receiving, and philosophy, and he was all very much into it, so he belonged to this
category of art, that he made everything from processing to documentary work, travelogues and going
to Asia...
So he built one of the first synthesizers?
He was in competition in time with Steve Beck and I don't think we have a complete...it was very
parallel so it's very hard actually to say ...we have this thing when he is introducing his synthesizer, and
Steve beck was probably very close.
And they both were the new Americans as I call them because they dealt with this synthesis as far as
time and energy, it was not like Paik, it was called electromagnetic object, it was higher classified,
eventually he went into...Paik was actually very familiar with technology but he had these limits, he
probably almost willingly stopped further exploration when he hit his own ability to produce. Because
if he would go into the total digital stuff like...he couldn't call it be comfortable with it. But later he
started to acquire anyway because he eventually never did produce much, he always had eventually
somebody at the camera, he was happening kind of person. He had camera and used it to bring
claviatura, so it's a different idea about the world and the art.
But these Americans they knew every line, what does it mean, how we deal with sync and blanking and
frame and all and they just found the whole thing for me like when I learned what it is and I understood
there's something that separates these two eras, that there's something that happens in total confinement
and then you have to deal with that structure in a content, not only structure in an image but you have
to incorporate it's own artifacts and generate them for its own source, which are sources of its own
organization. So this was natural evolutionary and so we didn't have to invent anything, we had to
learn everything to some degree, but then we just looked for the artifacts that you can discover by
continuous involvement, in that exploration, by formulating it and expanding it, so that was our world.
It was the time of 70s for us.
And then Eric Siegel also built colorizer that you used?
He worked very early in colorizing and it was actually on request of Howard Wise, and he asked him if
now if you can do it all in black and white, could you do it in color? And he understood what the color
was and so he built colorizer, but at that time few other people built colorizers also, George Brown had
his own and many others all over the place because once you ask for the color, it's a technological part
of the signal, once you control that part of the signal, you can assign color to the certain level of the
gray scale and that's what all they did. So that was the parallel evolution of the tools. It was not one or
two, it was a small army of designers.
So was there a communication between different centers, like New York and California?
Yes, exactly, we even exchanged tapes and we could compare things and we had theaters to show...for
us it was the golden era, of communication, non-commercialization, idealist groups anti-social or antiwar
and anti-conservativism and all kinds of rules were broken and all kinds of a new things came. And
the religion came to pre-computer precision of electronic signal processing and understanding, within
the same decade, into digital, you know.
The 70s was just absolutely significant time which we owned, now it's basically some kind of summary
or application and of course there are some challenges that came with composition, but no longer
structuralist work. And Steina actually composes the pictures, you know, multi-screen, and I haven't yet
started my challenge which I never may start...
Binghamton
But I made the work I wanted to do like in this curatorship and I thought I am still interested in couple
of curatorships to do with Binghamton group, some features with those people because their method of
work deserves to conclude the era... they still run a studio for independent artists, did you see that
place, did you go there?
But we have enough from them from that important period. But they are now breeding the bread, this
new generation, this real-time performing, they started to do this Djing and Vjing and these all things
and there are few successes...Matthew Schlenger?, he has house and child and it's probably impossible
to come back to the life in the art full time...and other ones, Bainbridge, ...and there are others, Ralf and
Sherry they have some image material...and in this new generation there are about five people that I
find worth it also, Pere Bode, there's a couple of things that I really like and it all comes from
Binghamton school.
Chicago
And then there are people from Chicago...Phil Morton, he's integrated in everything but he's actually an
essayist, he's really a media person that deals with signal as transmission, also certain interactivity but
it's the concept of the net and broadcast and social criticism and individualism so he has a category of
his own for himself and it's really very interesting work. It's very interesting work and it's not
appreciated, nobody has found him yet.
West Coast – Video Free America
Actually West Coast, there was this Video Free America, it was good, at the beginning they both did
processing, theatre and some dramatic work and documentary work and then just it went away, in a
way. ...all the aspects are basically contained in the computer...and you have to make a special effort to
do something that computer doesn't offer but no one can do it because no one has the traditional tools
of video and I am just about throwing it out myself, but it's kind of interesting...
George Brown
Actually we found him for service shop, ...it was this oriental person....he was strange man who offered
to do experimental work he was very bright, because he understood also, ...he was a strange guy, he
came just from Vietnam where he did probably some electronic work. He was probably of Hungarian
descendants, but as soon as we explained what we wanted, his first tool was significant, because we
asked him to separate fields for us because normally video comes in succession of two fields, which
combine themselves into a frame as you know. But we wanted to separate them in two different entities
so we could see each field. So he built the switcher that would separate the fields and...you probably
know the piece called Noisefields, that's the typical thing that you switch, the same camera that goes
thru two channels of colorizing which he built but we just that and then it comes back in the mixer and
it puts these fields together and then it becomes composite signal again but each field has a different
character.
But that's something that video does anyway that it shows you 60 phases of motion, but usually thru
camera we have no access to it individually. You have to deconstruct it, so basically what he built was
the box that was able to make A and B output and from a stream of single video you got two separate
fields so that you could treat them separately and combine them again. Which no one else had interest
in, except once we found a technician in a studio and he said, wait a minute, this tool, because we
brought it in, this tool is very interesting for the technicians actually to see every field, but nobody has
ever asked for it, it was very unique and we still have it and it is very modern because it was already
digital. Not as an image but as programming. We could program it by switches and it does cycles of A
and B and I did originally built it or design it for inserting frames, and I see the visual stream as a
composition of various fields, mostly coloured, and so it was first like a provocative device,
simple.
It was on ours backs. But I only asked him that it should contain these functions, I forgot to tell him
about one more function which was that Schilling inspiration, if you cross them, instead of just separate
them but it never got to that face but remember, this is all parallel knowledge or know-how of Alfons
who would understand. He was also very attracted by this idea that you can flicker fields. But he was
strictly into stereoscopy, this was his obsession. He was fully obsessed at that time.
But this I thought would, that was our kindship that we both built some kind of instruments and I built
also something for him, what he called Spider. I always give him credit because we were mutually
inspired.
But then I went completely into electronics which separated me completely from the real world. And
then, what was the real challenge, he also built a simple oscillator that would drift the images with but
it was to o simple to claim an invention.
But then he built this six-layer keyer which is extraordinary instrument, it was digital as far as again
timing and layering of images, which was analogue, but the prioritizing and the control systems were
completely digital and it could be operated by computer. I had an interface that we never came to a
complete control of the computer and then it had interface of course with any pulse system and we used
a lot of audio equipment to control it.
Rutt-Etra
And at the same time we already had of course Rutt-Etra, which was an analogue device which I partly
built, I could not afford the complete unit to buy, but we started to build it at the same time, in the same
decade when we started to build this Jeffrey Schier, what we called later Articulator. And it was the
major project and it still has its myth because it was for that time to build it with a student, it was just
something unheart of, only Chicago people had the know-how at that time, but there were not that far,
they wouldn't go that far, because they had the computers, big computers and were not drawn into this.
But then the DIC, digital image computer by Sandin was suggested and he did some experiments but he
didn't fully implement it in the system. So I don't know how far they went into digital design until they
just into the software...but I am sure some of the testimony is somewhere and we could combine it once
we have this information.
Sandin and search engine idea
...all the loose ends about everybody...like Sandin should have complete information system, so we
could compare with other people, finally compare this state of history, how history treats this kind
of...what are the influences...we really need this search engine that does these search names, time,
space when they met, concepts, images, projects, fundings, see, this kind of engine has to exist. I
thought this is going to happen to this OASIS but handled as unorganized...i made a little model, that
would probably be useful, I took the article by Marita Sturken who wrote this nice study about funding,
from Afterimage, and I extracted exactly the concept and in fact each of the search individual, ...some
kind of page of information, and then I wanted to find just someone who would experiment either with
the sphere or cube or structure that would let you see the vectors in which people became...and then
you could create islands around it ...in the same vector system...and create whole new history. There's
one person in Albuquerque that used to help ...but it can be done....this is only list of about sixty
people. . . that's the terminal part of history...if it's modular enough to survive the update, then it should
be probably used, anyway...i was hoping that history has its own gods that can care of it, but now all
the gods of history are dead, like when Nietzsche completed his life, the theater of gods was also
dead...o.k., more questions, let's take a break....