Abstract

The Experimental Television Center loft dwells in a studio in Owego, New York, surrounded by vibrating monitors, pulsing LEDs, digital potentiometers.Through anecdotes and observations I will discuss the history, theory, and operational procedures of the Experimental Television Center, showing how different artists fuse concept and process using the unique prototype, hybrid, and conventional systems available there.

Sitting in the Experimental Television Center loft studio in Owego, New York, surrounded by vibrating monitors, pulsing LEDs, digital potentiameters. Outside the window, the river flows wide and deep, its movement barely perceptible; and outside the other window, the main street of this quaint, mountain village is quiet now, at night. I play the images through the sequencers, slightly realligning the start points. As they begin to weave I tune the voltage controls, breathing their frequency and intensity, until the ebb and flow of color and light match my own patterns of inhale-exhale. Suddenly a bat appears and swoops toward a screen, almost crashes, blinded by the unnatural light. It swirls high and low around me. I know it’s shrieking, my unconscious feels what my ears can’t hear. It’s joined by another, I drown the loft with lights; they disappear back into the wall. I’m making a tape called “Crazy Dog.” The images were recorded without looking through the camera, now these analog and digital processing systems are free to collage and abstract than further. I drive the decks and software, shift gears, steer loosely to allow accidents. This is a tape created after visiting Auschwitz; a hysterical wail about destruction and despair. I turn off the lights, but the panic remains.

ISEA Archives Video Channel:

• Shalom Gorewitz (Jamaica/USA, born 1949) is an American visual artist. Gorewitz was among the first generation of artists who used early video technology as an expressive medium. Since the late 1960s, he has created videos that “transform recorded reality through an expressionistic manipulation of images and sound”. His artworks often “confront the political conflicts, personal losses, and spiritual rituals of contemporary life”. Gorewitz has also made documentary videos. [source: Wikipedia]  gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/shalom-gorewitz