Analogue Video Synthesizer 2: Dematerialisation and Cybernetics (#criticalwriting #RL)
Tearing colour into categorisation is quite laborious and tedious. First, it ruins its joy by using dense theories to slice them up. Second, it betrays the ontology of ‘colours are merely to shine’ [1]. However, I do believe, humans are a machine with a complex system and are endowed with binary as well as abstract abilities. We must not forget that the system is a pretext of our existence and no matter how much we try to detach ourselves from it, we are going back to the system. The system is our nature.
It happens to me when I see colours of analogue video synthesizer. The colours give me an odd transcendental feeling that makes me wonder how I can perceive those colours? If they are synthetics, how can they be generated without showing any particle shifting? How should I call those colours? I try to call out information in my brain, but it seems there is no suitable experience for those colours; I reluctantly declare them as a fledgling existence. I was forced to synthesise more colours as the machine was dictating my sense. It makes me slightly uncomfortable for perceiving synthetics colours since they have the power to deceive and manipulate our senses, but what frightens me is that the synthesizer’s colours distort the overflow of memory and leave remnants arbitrarily.
Regarding synthesizer, colour is no longer natural but synthetic; thus, it is valid to build a broad colour classification as long as there is human intervention in the process. In this analysis, semiotics and hermeneutics approach will be confined for following reasons: 1) they will burden the initial ontology of colour 2) they require distance by supposing art as a singular entity, but in analogue video synthesizers both artworks and artist are integrated, 3) colour in the sense of analogue video art is more intentional and has no meaning. By putting these three reasons into the account, my interpretation will prioritise materiality while presuming time in chronological due to the characteristic of video art as a time-based media art. New colours- old colours, and new perceptions- old perceptions will be deciphered in the chronological system.
The materiality is crucial in our sensory experience since color’s formation and perception are strictly related to physical reality. Materiality enhances our understanding of analogue synthesizer, which is not as close as the film production process. Colour-image in analogue video synthesizer is processed without knowing the relationship between recorded image, editing, and results; it is different from the film that we are obliged to know the recorded image for adjusting syntax editing and images’ logical sequence. Analogue video relies on electromagnetic waves, the direction of the signal, the raster at the cathode, to the oscillator circuit in which all processes are closed — we cannot see and guess the results. We can solely depend on its constituent components to influence the final output.
Since humans are a complex system, synthesizer then adopts the human sensing system by amputating the eye’s functions to create a new reality. Its physical experience is provided through modular devices such as a keyer to change luminance and decide the range between two video sources, colour mixer and encoder, oscillator to convert electrical voltage, and camera as one of the optical input sources. The signal becomes the primary material in video synthesizer processing. The signal, when it was understood as video material, has an inherent character to energy (electromagnetic wave) that can be converted to other forms, circulated, and entered into a feedback system. The system will respond to the sensation of the incoming signal and will be configured since:
- the signal has a source (the signal can be generated from electronic devices or converted from other optical sources such as cameras),
- has a route (the signal can circulate through circuits),
- binds to time because the signal in the video synthesizer is always continuous (frequency, amplitude, phase),
- it has an output (recording).
The signal becomes fundamental to the development of the first synthesizer — Siegel’s PCS. Siegel relied on the monochrome signal generated by input sources such as a camera to be separated in a closed circuit. This signal was modulated in the subcarrier chrominance phase to add synthetic colours using luminance. Signal entered channel settings: luminance, chrominance, and hue with grayscale coding to produce a rainbow colour effect. PCS could produce a synthesis of a new colour that can be added to the input source. If the PCS signal has a tenuous time, Siegel’s latest synthesizer, EVS, can combine signals in the CRT to be processed into images in real-time. Signals were combined using a mixer, through which the light and dark values can be changed to the second signal.
At this stage, the image results were strongly tied to the physical relationship between the signal and the information to be perceived (colour) and build a spatial relationship between those based on the light’s values in the channel arrangement (trichromacy). Artists can also create their physical reality from their actions to interfere, distort, destroy, and disrupt it, which can be seen clearly in the images of synthesizers that are hard to construct into a logical syntactic arrangement. The colours produced from the synthesizer are successfully projected onto the screen and dematerialises electromagnetic waves into an abstract visual representation. This process would not exist without the synthesizer materials that integrate the two objects’ perceptions through information redundancy units.
Not only optical, but machines also syndicate information processing systems that can be comprehended in the cybernetics system[2]. Cybernetics emphasises feedback information and takes information as a data unit. In humans, information or stimulus signals are processed by considering the stages in the brain: 1) stimuli, 2) neuron, 3) encoding, 4) memory. The stimulus input from sensory organs is converted to electromagnetic signals and processed in the brain through a series of “natural” algorithms. After the information is processed, the attention filter will decide how important the incoming signal is and modulates it many times. Neurons that are sensitive to visual signal stimulation horizontally respond to signals from the attention filter. To process information, the signal must be saved to storage (memory) after it is explicitly coded (encoding).
This encoding stage constructs our perception while information is sorted according to the known or newly formed. For instance, optical input can be coded to what shape is formed and its color; geometric shapes will always have angles, and red is the most vibrant colour. After the information is stored, it will be retained until humans take it through memory. When we remember, for example, in a formal concept, we will have remained that the diagonal shape is always associated with the vertical form, colour television is RGB, and so on, with a note of this memory already had or did not contain subjective experiences. This model shows that information processing is not linear, but it is a feedback system.
A similar information system also applies to analogue video synthesizers. Between signal receptors and effectors (oscillators), various devices have a function that resembles a human information process system like neurons whose function is to combine images into a form. The information that went into the primary information system is contained effector functions like the human retina, which also has a proprioceptive effector. Proprioceptors work to detect the light location and calculate the number of incoming signals (Balslev, 2012). Without knowing the position of light and the number of incoming signals, it will be difficult to send information to the brain. The effector problem arises in the third part of the ‘Einstine’ Psychedelavision in Color. PCS failed to detect the signal so that the electron beam failed to be stored in the synthesizer. Siegel manipulated this error on his second synthesizer, EVS. EVS used three mixers at the same time to monitor signal location, merge and modulate.
Furthermore, the incoming information will be encoded in the form of memory. It can be delayed or stored for future use — this is what Wiener called ‘the analogue of memory’ (1961, p.43). In the Vasulka’s C-Trend , the analogue of memory function deploys when Scan Processor processed recorded image of road traffic to be reshaped, compressed, stored, and divided into two segments for deformation, while the sound of street recordings remains unchanged (reality). Scan Processor divided the image into two categories: the image content (traffic) and the frame, which transforms into an object (Spielmann, 2004). The visual information is removed from the frame, and the frame is exposed to horizontal and vertical emptying, making it possible to be deflected. Vasulka used raster manipulation and line deflection for both images. This manipulation produced black and white areas; black areas were neutral areas due to lack of voltage, while white areas contained energy that can be increased or suppressed. In the white area, Woody Vasulka raised the voltage to increase the brightness level, lift the image, and record it magnetically to produce 3D objects. The processed images were later organised into the objects we can see today: free and deformed, but still maintain the relationship between the synthetics and the real world by using the sound of the road.
In short, the analogue of memory unlocks the relation of a new reality and builds a chronological circle based on cybernetic feedback; therefore, the real-time in analogue video synthesizer is not linear but chronological fluid. In the sampling process of C-Trend, the chronological time is drawn into a circle, while the image in the storage machine is pulled out to be combined rhythmically. On the other hand, the visual information that has been encoded leaves a residue throughout the machine’s body, then it is transported to humans through our gaze experience. The residue can remain and be stored as post-cybernetics memory for future information processes. However, in this process, the analogue of memory becomes a burden. Its residue integrates human memory to technical memory so that the memory becomes limited and creates a perception bias.
The residuals will be experienced by anyone who sees at Siegel, Beck, Paik, and Vasulka’s videos. By seeing them, we are faced with a post-cybernetics dilemma that makes us digging the optical residuals of previous experience. Sadly, these images are regarded as ambiguous by the eye, and their visual information is required to be constructed (we called this experience: wishful seeing). Peculiar yet playful colours of synthesizers are such as a dream or to be exact a machinic fantasy; they penetrate our conscious sense and memory in the brain trying to find the remnants of associating images whereas the residual data continue to be stored on the machine. Either we realise or not, we are racing with residual information and are bound by time. Nonetheless, it must be understood that the colours we perceive will always be a fact, even though they have been naturally seen, even though they are virtual (fantasy, in Deleuzian terminology).
The colour is a fact as the eyes process, and the brain provides information about it. There is a truth in it that can be seen, but as a fact, I never remember the colours of these images, and it makes me perplexed since I am trying to grasp with my memory. Retina begins to track the pattern of unfamiliar color-image in front of me, yet no suitable information is provided by my brain. It is just like there is a kind of a ‘dead zone’ that drives me to create a new memory. As long as the eyes seek recognition, memory needs to be created, and this attempt requires an in-depth exploration into the past where there is a higher level of image connected to the present. Now, I, who is gazing at the synthesizer (present), will wander consciously into the past to create both present and future. I am once again trapped in a chronological circle and ask you to recall the information flux from synthesizers to humans: system-code-memory-results. The process is bound by chronological time as in memory, the time we live in is a form of space between the past and the future, which penetrates the present in the form of memory. We will dive deeper into memory, leaving the actual present to the virtual/ fantasy/dream to seek evidence of the eye’s recognition of the ambiguity unknown to us. Thus, when we look at Beck’s bright colour nodes, multiple overlapping coloured loops in overlapping images in Electronic Opera, and melted colours by emptying the frame in C-Trend, we will automatically be shackled into the virtual image of the past, trying to remember, associating our senses, so that the image, through the fragment of the past virtual image, can be recognised and perceived. The process also allows us to be thrown into the future to predict and navigate our world. Therefore, the chronological circle requires ‘present memory’ of virtual images that coexist with virtual images of the future.
The colour-image of analogue video synthesizer or so-called virtual image which lives in liquid time is chronologically rotating in a cybernetics circle. At any time, we can invoke through memory or a dream to recognise and perceive the image as a whole existence. We do not have to think whether the image is a real image given by the world or not because its existence is being present before our eyes and memory. As for image-time relation, we are valid to categorise them as a dream image — the image produced in a time fluid, not merely from the past memory, but also future and dream. When we stare too long at the video art of analogue synthesizers and dive too deep in memory, we will dream or fantasise about many images’ possibilities. We cut off existing connections and wander in reverie. The colour-image of a video synthesizer exists to mislead us into a peculiar dream.
_______rafikalifi
[1] According to Heidegger in The Origin of the Work of Art (1950), “color shines and only wants to shine. When we analyze it in rational terms by measuring its wavelengths, it is gone.”
[2] Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive in the present day” (1961, 132). In the cybernetics context, “man is an information device”.
References:
Balslev, D., Himmelbach, M., Karnath, H. O., Borchers, S., & Odoj, B. (2012). Eye proprioception used for visual localization only if in conflict with the oculomotor plan. Journal of Neuroscience, 32(25), 8569–8573.
Wiener, N. (1961). Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. MIT press.
