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VAMP at Tate Britain 2006
The performers for
this event are:
Simon Desorgher on VCS4,
flute and electronics
Peter Donebauer on his Videoakalos
synthesiser &other visual inputs
Richard Monkhouse on his Vector Pattern Generator
Michael Ormiston on Mongolian horse-head fiddle with
Mongolian overtone singing
with thanks to Mike Ray and Andy Macrae for
technical support.
As the context for this performance is linked to
"Analogue", an exhibition of early video, we have where possible in
the context of a live performance tried to keep the creative aspects of the
performance to older analogue equipment & processes rather than digital
ones, resulting in a different look & feel.
The central piece that makes this
performance possible is the Videokalos
Image Processing Synthesiser conceived back in
1974 by Peter Donebauer, and designed and built as a collaboration with Richard Monkhouse
over the following two years. A key technical and aesthetic issue at that
time, which has equal relevance today, is the nature of the interface between
the creator/performer of moving imagery and the technology. The Videokalos was designed to be used "live", in
real time, by one person "playing" it, equivalent to a musical
instrument. It allows an individual the control of complex visual imagery
performed at the same speed as the human body and its nervous system - a
revolutionary step for the production of moving images. It is an analogue
device and works with both monochrome and red, green
and blue video signals that it takes in and processes and combines to produce
a final output. It provides the core electrical elements of a video studio in
a box as well as vision mixing and colour generation and overlays - for more
details see www.donebauer.net
This performance will also feature Simon's legendary
(and unique) vintage EMS VCS4 synthesiser.
Built in 1969, it has recently been overhauled by ex- EMS engineer, Robin
Wood, but it is showing its age after years of active creative music-making.
Essentially two VCS3s were built into a base frame and linked together with
the addition of a keyboard: the base frame contained other newly created
music circuits - a "random staircase generator", a
"sub-harmonic generator", a small mixer with inputs for live
instruments and a system to cue live instrumentalists
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A key visual source to the Videokalos is Richard's analogue Quartic vector pattern generator
that he can play in real time. Generating moving line images of mathematical
purity, in this performance its output is re-scanned by one or more analogue
video cameras, resulting sometimes in forms and motion that point to the
connection of mathematics to our natural world. The performer can manipulate
forty parameters that continuously change the moving image, allowing precise
real-time control. We will use some pre-recorded analogue visual sources, but
digitally recorded as this makes no real difference to the viewer and they
are much more stable technically in a live performance situation. Peter is
also a great user of visual feedback loops; these are equivalent to the
feedback between the performers themselves and they have a common basis with
the "complexity" of natural processes.
VAMP - The Video And Music
Performers were formed in the late Seventies and the core
consisted of Peter Donebauer
and Richard Monkhouse (video) with Simon Desorgher
and Lawrence Casserley
(audio). This was a development from Peter and Simon working together for
several years producing recorded videotape pieces in studio situations. VAMP
believe they were the first group in the world to perform integrated video
and audio in a touring situation in 1978, and that potential resulted from
the construction of the Videokalos
image processing synthesiser that Peter had designed and built in
collaboration with Richard Monkhouse in the
mid-seventies. This is a retrospective performance very similar to those done
at that time.
Peter had developed an aesthetic combining video and
music that he saw as a progression on from earlier pioneers in the nineteenth
century, who imagined colour moving in time that they called "colour
music". Those earliest artist/inventors built "colour organs"
that projected moving abstract light onto screens. In the twentieth century
the effect of projected colour was developed by abstract artists and
filmmakers in Europe and the USA, and later by producers of
"light-shows", but Peter felt video really made possible for the
first time the creation or performance of controlled moving colour in real
time, equivalent to music.
So, in essence, the video players here
act as members of a music group, but produce and mix imagery instead of
sound. Both visual and audio performers hear and see ones another's real-time
outputs and interact accordingly. This differed radically from existing light
shows, as with VAMP the vision and sound had equal musical/artistic
equivalence and interaction in real-time performance, and neither necessarily
leads or illustrates the other. Such an interaction became
possible because of the visual instruments built by Peter and Richard, see
below, and pre-dated the development of VJ's with their digital equipment by
some 10 or more years.
There are no electrical or programmed
links between the sound and vision as one often gets with automated computer
programs that throw up imagery to follow the sound being input. The links are
in the psyches of the performers and meaning is created there and in their
mutual interactions, directly equivalent to a group of musicians playing
together. The performance is a "structured improvisation".
"Free improvisations" can work with music, but real time visual
instruments, particularly vintage analogue ones, are still very recent and
therefore somewhat limited compared with musical instruments with their
hundreds of years of development behind them. So in practice the visual
palette selected sets some initial parameters, along with a choice of a
suitable "palette" of sounds and then follows an exploration/rehearsal
around the mutual possibilities available. A theme and "time
structure" evolves for each piece that forms the basis for a
performance. We will also use some pre-recorded visuals for this show as part
of the visual palette.
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