Radio Dada 

(2008) 

by Rosa Menkman. The video-images are constructed out of nothing but the image created by feedback. Music by Extraboy.

Rosa Menkman turned a high-end camera on a screen that was showing, in real time, what she was filming, creating a feedback loop. Then she glitched the video by changing its format and subsequently exporting it into animated gifs. Rosa Menkman (minimalistically) edited the video in Quicktime. She sent the file to Extraboy, who composed music for the video.

 

The composing process started with a hand held world radio. Extraboy scanned through frequencies and experimented with holding the radio in different parts of the room while touching different objects. Eventually he got the radio to oscillate noise in the tempo that he perceived in the video. The added synthesizer sounds were played live to further build on the non-digital sound and rhythm. This was later contrasted with drums which were digitally synthesized and processed through effects with a very digital sound to them. Just like with the video, the digital and analogue media and aesthetics of sound are mixed into one coherent whole.

 

Source: Rosa Menkman on Vimeo

 

 

Radio Dada, flicker / strobe, feedback, Video Art

Reading

Film as Film: Formal Experiment in Film 1910-1975 (1979) is a catalogue of an exhibition held at the Hayward Gallery in London from 3 May until 17 June 1979 on rare, essential and controversial avant-garde film history.

META/DATA: A Digital Poetics (2007) by pioneering digital artist Mark Amerika mixes (and remixes) personal memoir, net art theory, fictional narrative, satirical reportage, scholarly history, and network-infused language art. META/DATA is a playful, improvisatory, multitrack digital sampling of Amerika's writing from 1993 to 2005 that tells the early history of a net art world gone wild while simultaneously constructing a parallel poetics of net art that complements Amerika's own artistic practice. (The MIT Press)

 

SEE ALSO

Daihei Shibata (*1982) is a Japanese visual artist. He graduated from Chiba University, specializing in media design. Just after the graduation, he became a member of WOW inc., working in motion graphics, including video installation works, TV commercials, and short films. Daihei Shibata always tries to find new possibilities in visual expressions in wide range of fields.

Shutter Interface (1975) by Paul Sharits is a hypnotic work a quartet of 16mm projectors stand, figure-like, side by side on imposing pedestals facing a long wall. Four looped films of varying lengths are unspooled and respooled in jewel-like swathes of colour interspersed with single black frames, creating the flicker effect Paul Sharits was the first to explore in colour films. (Frieze Magazine)

Paul Sharits (2008) edited by Yann Beauvais. Known primarily for his experimental cinema and pictorial works, Paul Sharits developed an oeuvre that evolved around two central themes: one, closely related to music and the world of abstraction, the other, within the psychological and emotional arena of the figurative. This complete monograph, drawn from a recent exhibition, explores the connections between these two practices, and in addition provides a general introduction to a remarkable body of work. Illustrated throughout, the monograph also includes several essays, texts by Paul Sharits and interviews. (les presses du réel)

Blazes (1961) is a three-minute film directed by Robert Breer, a well-known avant-garde artist, animator, and film director. This short film displays Breer’s signature style: animation, playful abstraction, and fast-moving images. In Breer’s own words, Blazes is essentially "One hundred basic images switching positions for four thousands frames. A continuous explosion." Indeed, the film consists of stills resembling abstract paintings of basic shapes in basic colors, cut and combined in different ways and rhythms. (Kathleen Sun)

Yantra (1950-1958) by James Whitney constructed by punching grid patterns in 5" x 7" cards with a pin, and then painting through these pinholes onto other 5" x 7" cards images of rich complexity and dynamism. Yantra is a Sanskrit word meaning implement or machine. (...) This range of quasi-musical variations of implosions and explosions, light and dark, hard-edged pure textures and thick, irregular, hand-wrought solarized textures induces a contemplation of the self and reality, identity and universality. (William Moritz)