----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- >The ETC move in 1979 was to a three story brick building downtown in the >village of Owego, directly on the river. When we were not looking at >oscillator waves and camera based modulations in the studio we could look >out the windows and see the Susquehanna River and in the winter the ice >on it slow move towards the Chesapeake Bay. > >Ralph and Sherry hosted an ³Odd Sundays ³gathering at their home. It >met most every other Sundays. David Jones and Paul Davis were regulars. >Paul had studied geology at Alfred University. He became involved in >microcomputers. Later in the 80¹s, as I understood it, he ran a company >in Ithaca that manufactured a microcomputer that was sold in some large >quantities in India. The ETC Odd Sunday afternoons were spent in software >development and hardware building. Evenings were wonderful dinners and >libations with lively discussions and arguments about mathematics versus >fingers as knowledge, machines for thinking, the sheer power and >intensity of image and sound experiences, the differences between those >writers, film people, and video people, making art with electronics and >art¹s electronic future. These were the kind of conversations that were >also taking place at the ETC Owego studio on the river with and among the >visiting artists. > >I do not know all of what came out of those Odd Sunday gatherings. I do >know that Ralph, David and Paul developed a computer interface box. One >of them a 12 (?) channel in and out, with knobs for fingers, and voltage >control in and out was built and then used at the ETC with the Cromemco >Z80 micro computer, a hacker/designers computer at the time. The system >could grab video stills as well as grids of video images. Hotspot dots >could be put on the image, reading gray levels and sending the gray level >info out as control voltages that could be connected to control >parameters on other video and sound processing tools. Also Ralph, David >and Paul worked on and David released a fantastic software product for >dot-matrix printers that used the Amiga computer. It was called Fine >Print. It controlled dot-matrix printers. They used physical hammer pins >to hit the ribbon. If the ribbon was properly worn out, the printer pin >hammers could be controlled to strike the ribbon anywhere from one to >sixteen times. The result was a digital print with continuous tones of 4 >shades of grey. The digital prints you could make with it were fabulous! >I made hundreds of prints with it. Ralph and Sherry made fantastic work >with it. > >Harland Snodgrass at the School of Art and Design at the NYSCC at Alfred >University was also working with David and Paul to get the Z80 there to >output drawings and computer animations. He was part of the Odd Sunday >activity. I still have the cardboard box interface unit and Z-80 that >David and Paul built together with Harland. Harland and his painting >class also built a Dan Sandin Video Image Processor. David and Paul >helped to get it through the last stages of building. It is still used in >the video program at Alfred and at the Institute for Electronic Arts. >Harland Snodgrass started the first, if not one of the very earliest >video arts programs in an art school in the United States. It would make >sense that that would happen in a College of Ceramics, ie: materials, >materials. > >In the early 1980¹s a number of we living in Owego at the time and in the >near vicinity formed the ³Tuesday Afternoon Building Club². The goal was >to build, under David Jones¹s guidance, new and more advanced video >processing prototypes that would become printed circuit boards. As >printed boards there could be multiples and we in the club would be able >to have the systems for our personal studios and the ETC would be able to >have a new generation of video systems in the studio. Mimi Martin was >building a colorizer, Barbara Buckner a computer interface, Neil Zusman a >keyer, I was building a realtime video frame buffer. I maybe be >forgetting some. What were you building Matt Schlanger? We got together >on many Tuesdays, ate ice cream sandwiches and soldered electronic parts >onto perforated boards. It was like jewelry making. David knew the >electronics. We were learning from him. We built our boxes. > >As I remember Matt Schlanger and Richard Brewster worked with David at >the ETC to layout the printed boards for the new processing systems. The >boards were printed and the new boxes were built for the ETC studio. I >built a second video buffer together with David that had printed boards. >One of the printed digital video buffers, the FB-1, was installed and >used in the ETC studio. The old hand wired video processing units were >retired as they became buggy. The ETC had new systems by the mid 1980s >that were in use until the day the studio was unplugged in 2011. A number >of the colorizers, keyers, oscillators and digital buffers that were >produced are presently in various artists¹and schools¹ studios. Also a >number of those systems have migrated to the Video Arts program and the >Institute for Electronic Arts (IEA) at the School of Art and Design, >NYSCC at Alfred University, Alfred NY. Also a number of those printed >board video systems are in use and available at the recently emerged >Signal Culture video studio in Owego. Thank you Jason and Debora >Bernagozzi, Hank Rudolph and David Jones for the new Signal Culture Owego >program and artist residencies. The IEA Alfred, founded in 1997 and the >Signal Culture Owego founded in 2012 continue the rich history and >heritage of emerging electronic technology and artist collaborations and >development. > >More later. > >The importance of the ETC artists exhibition video art opportunities, >communities of engagement, state wise, nationally and internationallyŠ > >The critical writings of ETC artists work Š > >The numerous significant supporters at the New York State Council of the >Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Arts Council, >and the Ohio Arts Council. > > >Bests, >Peer Bode > > > > > >_______________________________________________ >empyre forum >empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au >http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
_______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
