During the Winter semester 2009/2010 I led a class of 23 fourth semester motion design students at the Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule in an Analog Motion Graphics assignment to collaboratively re-create a vintage drive-in movie theater intermission film. The original intermission film was obtained from the Internet Archive. I transcribed the audio track into an eleven page screenplay which, together with the audio, was used as the basis of the assignment. Students were not shown the original film until the end of the semester at the final presentation.

Using the audio and text as a guide, each group of students pitched concepts for their favorite of the 25 different clips in the film and created approximately 60 seconds of material using Analog Motion techniques. Students often spoofed the informational/commercial messages in the film, offering a critical and at times farcical update to the dated language and cultural assumptions from the 1960s-era film.

A nice combination of slides and digital postproduction give this a vaguely 60s feel, reminiscent of The Thomas Crown Affair’s split-screen collages, while also functioning as a rebus for the lyrics.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The SCAN PROCESSOR STUDIES are a collection of works by Woody Vasulka & Brian O’Reilly.

The full work is of total approximate duration of 45 minutes, with sections of various lengths, textures, and dynamic qualities.

The project first started while Woody and I were working on different commissioned projects at the ZKM (Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe Germany). He and Steina on the exhibition MINDFRAMES and Garth Knox and myself on the DVD and performance SPECTRAL STRANDS: FOR VIOLA AND VISUALS. Woody, Steina, Garth and I spent many nights screening works for moving images, playing music, and cooking, enveloped in the huge ghost town mood the ZKM’s kitchen took on at night. During this time there were passionate discussions about video synthesizers (mainly my love for the Sandin Image Processor), and how Steina’s VIOLIN POWER had a huge influence on Garth’s and my new series of works.

The source materials were generated by Woody using a Rutt-Etra Scan Processor in the 1970’s and sat on a shelf for years, having been recently digitized. Woody came into my studio one day and asked me if I would be interested in using them to work on a collaboration, and the project began from there…

The works use sources excavated directly from the output of the Scan Processor, as well as further manipulations using Tom Demeyer’s ImX software, developed with input from Steina. Extensive editing and layering and additional augmentations were done using Phil Mortons IP. The Sound was generated (mostly) by custom software developed by Chandrasekhar Ramakrishnan and myself called NETHER GENERATOR, which sets up a number of complex real time feedback networks filtered and processed by various means.

SCAN PROCESSOR STUDIES was first exhibited as an installation in the ZKM’s MINDFRAMES exhibition.

The source materials from Woody’s original experiments with the Scan Processor have also been used in conjunction with further processing on my part to create the base materials for other works, including a three screen version of Woody’s piece GRAZING and the work LEVEL & DEGREE OF DARK.

– Brian O’Reilly, 2009

With its gorgeous closeups of unidentifiable analog technology malfunctioning combined with synchronized edits of fingers flicking switches and pushing buttons, this video creates a dark and compelling retro-future aesthetic. The futurism is pushed further by the parallel storyline of a female android who is ostensibly being assembled or programmed by all the retro junk. Particularly tasty are the shots which reveal the individual pixels of a computer screen as it displays the song’s lyrics (annunciated by a computer running MacinTalk). Complete with a surprise ending that even Max Ernst would like.

Oh, and check out Air’s website for a higher quality version of the video.