{"id":4630,"title":"A Manner of Speaking: An Interview with Gary Hill","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/manner-speaking-interview-gary-hill","version":"b8c9f8f917655f0e203277f59e5bc8c176617a8452f46d56ecaf396191c1f190","modified":"2026-09-13T21:52:00.9234479+00:00","credits":[{"role":"Author","name":"Lucinda Furlong"}],"authorKeys":["Furlong, Lucinda"],"subjects":["Interviews"],"metadata":[{"label":"Publication","value":"Afterimage","url":null},{"label":"Publisher","value":"Visual Studies Workshop","url":null},{"label":"Date","value":"March 1983","url":null},{"label":"Place","value":"Rochester, New York","url":null},{"label":"Volume","value":"10","url":null},{"label":"Issue","value":"8","url":null},{"label":"ETC archive","value":"ETC0348","url":null},{"label":"Interviewee","value":"Gary Hill","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022A Manner of Speaking: An Interview with Gary Hill.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/manner-speaking-interview-gary-hill.","publication":"Lucinda Furlong. A Manner of Speaking: An Interview with Gary Hill. Afterimage. vol. 10, no. 8. Visual Studies Workshop. March 1983.","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/4630.ris"},"links":[{"label":"Scanned document","url":"https://archive.org/details/ETC0348","relationship":"linked document; contents not retrieved","contentType":"application/pdf"}],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":57776},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":837}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"Although he is better known for his videotapes and installations, Gary Hill has also been prolific as a sculptor. Born in Santa Monica, Calif. in 1951, Hill moved east in 1969, and in the early \u002770s began making videotapes at Woodstock (N.Y.) Community Video. Like many artists in the late \u002760s and early 70s, Hill\u0027s earliest tapes reflected a highly experimental approach in which the capabilities of various electronic imaging tools were explored. For the most part, this kind of video was visual in orientation, and Hill\u0027s work was no exception, drawing as it did on conventions of abstract expressionist painting. Eventually dissatisfied with the limitations of such an approach, Hill began to make tapes that integrated the audio and video components so tightly that sound became almost visually apprehensible. This concern-in which the immaterial is somehow made physical-is central to all of Hill\u0027s video installations and tapes, and to some extent, is derived from his background as a sculptor. In his most recent work, however, language and thought rather than electronics-are the immaterial entities that are given form. Hill\u0027s tapes since 1980 are of two types: short, descriptive, often convoluted passages which are sparely \u0022illustrated\u0022 by abstract black and white imagery; and extended monologues that directly address the viewer, to which video is rapidly edited to the beat of Hill\u0027s voice. Though they differ greatly in tone, these tapes reveal Hill\u0027s exacting-almost obsessive-weighing of image and language as carriers of meaning. At the same time, they are richly evocative pieces that variously resemble poems, stories, and soliloquies. Hill\u0027s installations, too, bespeak his interest in setting up dichotomies between sight and sound, language and image. Hill has received production grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and PBS-station WNET in New York. In 1981, he was awarded a video artists\u0027 fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation. A 1982 recipient of the United States/Japan Exchange fellowship, Hill will travel to Japan next fall. This summer he will be teaching video at Bard College\u0027s recently established M.F.A. program in video. The following interview was edited from transcripts of two meetings in Barrytown, N.Y. on Oct. 28, 1982 and Jan. 5, 1983. The interview incorporates Hill\u0027s additions and revisions. -Lucinda Furlong Lucinda Furlong: You worked in sculpture for a long time before you became interested in video. Gary Hill: I got into sculpture in 1969, when I was 15, while I was still in high school in Redondo Beach. I had always been interested in art, and the brother of a friend of mine-Tony Parks-was a sculptor. He welded. I saw him working and was immediately drawn to the process. I had a summer job at a hamburger stand on the beach-a surfer\u0027s dream-so I saved money to buy welding tanks and started welding. Soon after that I was set up making sculpture in all my spare time, except for a little surfing. It\u0027s not that easy to give up. Even though I had vague notions about the avant-garde, I really wasn\u0027t aware of American art. I was looking at Giacometti and Picasso. Picasso was a god to me. I had lots of support from my friends and parents, in particular my high-school teacher, Mr. Pelster, who just let me do my thing. He was a big reason why I even finished high school. I didn\u0027t see much point in it, and almost quit. When I got out, I saw a pamphlet for the Art Students\u0027 League in Woodstock, N.Y., which described it as an idyllic artists\u0027 colony. I came out for a month on a scholarship, but I didn\u0027t do sculpture. I just drew and painted, made thousands of drawings. Then I went back to California to go to a community college-partially for a draft deferment-but decided I would get out another way, and college definitely was not for me. I quit in about two weeks. My teacher at the League-Bruce Dorfman-had invited me to work independently with him. So I packed my belongings and hopped in a driveaway car. I experienced my first fall, first snow, first being cold-as-shit, first super struggle. I didn\u0027t stay in that situation very long, though. I got jobs. Actually, I\u0027ve been pretty lucky in terms of being able to do my work with very little struggle. About that time, I began to see art in New York, and the thing that really overwhelmed me was a show at the Met called \u00221940-1970.\u0022 It was the New York School. I was knocked out, and went through a lot of different attitudes in my own work. I still used the same materials, but I went from making cage-like structures with human forms-almost Bosch-like-to abstract biomorphic shapes mixed with geometric shapes. Pretty soon it was all geometric. I started using wire mesh, spray paint, welding armatures for shaped canvases which were incorporated into the work. I would make shapes, pile them into a corner, and then work with them later. It was like being my own factory. I went through a complete cycle of color. I slowly started to add color to the metal. I got very extreme using fluorescents, and later I toned down to metallics, essentially monochromatic, and finally back to the natural color of the material-copper-coated steel welding rods. I started improvising large constructions in the exhibition space, usually working off a wall and down to the floor into a kind of sprawl. I was working a lot with more patterns, and the sheer density of layers and shapes. Experimenting, burying myself in the process, working all the time. It wasn\u0027t intellectual. It was more like-how far can I take this material as a worker? LF: How did you get involved with video? GH: I got into sound first. I discovered the sculptures generated interesting sounds, lots of different timbres. The overall texture seemed to mirror what I was seeing. I worked a lot with loops and multi-track audio tapes, which later became an integral part of the sculpture. Getting into video isn\u0027t so smooth in retrospect. I think at the time I was getting frustrated with sculpture. I needed a change. I was drawn more and more into working with sound. Around that time, Woodstock Community Video had been established. I walked up the stairs, knocked on the door, and said, \u0022Gee, I\u0027d like to try that. Can I take out a Portapak?\u0022 So I did a performance/environment piece with a friend, Jim Collins. For four or five nights in a row, we painted colored rectangles in the town of Woodstock-all over everything, stores, private property, public property. They slowly appeared,\u0027til we got caught. I did a little-not really a documentary ... I just went out and talked about it with people, about what they thought. Should there be more colored rectangles? Should they go away? I really enjoyed the whole process, the experiential aspect of that little thing up there next to my eye. It seemed like there was a high energy connection to whatever I was looking at. I guess I became obsessed with that electronic buzz [laughs]. It was like a synapse with the rest of the world in a removed way, yet attached at the same time. So I exchanged work at Woodstock Community Video-- recording town board meetings, or whatever Ken Marsh [the former director] wanted-- in exchange for using the equipment. Sooner or later I got a job there, because NYSCA [the New York State Council on the Arts], which had been heavily oriented toward community video, switched to the art route--in video at least. LF: When was that? GH: Around 1973-74. I was given a salaried position as the TV lab coordinator, helping people to use the equipment. They had a few devices-a broken genlock unit and a keyer-put away because they didn\u0027t really work. So I asked Ken Marsh if I could come in late at night and see what I could make them do. I totally got into that. Everything half worked. The keyers would put out really harsh, broken edges. I don\u0027t know what the genlock put out, but there was always something. I had monitors all over this little studio-rescanning everything, starting and stopping the tape, manipulating it with my hands. Everything was open. It was a very free feeling. Discovering how to manipulate this material was amazing. I can remember being totally naked, lying on the floor with a tripod over my head pointing a camera down on my mouth and another camera lying on my stomach. I would make kind of a primal sound with my breathing, raising the camera on my stomach so that it would reveal my head from the bottom view, making this sound. This was all somehow mixed through a special effects generator. In a manner of speaking, I was practically fucking the equipment. Some time around then I made Rock City Road [1974-75]. LF: Were you colorizing the tapes? GH: There was no colorizer there at first, but Ken was friends with Eric Siegel, and he got a Siegel colorizer fairly soon. About the same time, I found out about the Experimental Television Center [now in Owego, N.Y.]. I didn\u0027t know about the equipment there; I just had heard that they had all these possibilities. With the tools I was using in Woodstock I saw an infinity of image-making possibilities, and they had a whole set that was much more sophisticated.... So I went up there and met Walter Wright [artist-in-residence at the Experimental Television Center from 1973-75], and became very good friends with him. We did some multi-media performances together called \u0022Synergism\u0022 [1975-6], with Sara Cook, a dancer in Woodstock. Then we started fantasizing about having our own machines, but it didn\u0027t really happen until 1976. Ken thought that Woodstock Community Video was going to be a media-organization-in-residence at Bard College. Everyone involved moved over to Rhinebeck, but it fell through at the last minute. So for a short time Barbara Buckner, Steven Colpan, and me all lived together as artists-in-residence. There we were in this big house and we weren\u0027t using all the rooms. I made Ken a deal-I asked if I could have David Jones come down to build some equipment, and I would pay extra rent [Jones, a video tool designer and builder, is now affiliated with the Experimental Television Center]. LF: What did he build? GH: First we put together four input amps and an output amplifier. The main thing Walter and I wanted was a multichannel colorizer. Ironically enough, we never got to that. David had designed an analog-to-digital converter, which led to other things, culminating in a small frame buffer with a resolution of 64 by 64. One day I came home and David was gone. He had left the equipment on, and there was this digitally stored image on the screen of him smiling and waving. Suddenly colorizing seemed superficial, next to having access and control over the architecture of the frame in real time. LF: Is that around the time you made Windows? GH: No, the first tape I made using any digital processing was Bathing [1977], which was all done through the analog-to-digital converter. [In Bathing, a color tape shot in real time is intercut with stills rescanned with a color camera and digitized. Different placements of color and gray level are derived from rearranging the digital-to-analog output.] I\u0027d record something, take the circuit board out, resolder the wires, and try it again until I got the images I wanted. It\u0027s just another way of working. It\u0027s like when I started at Woodstock Community Video: you mess around with the innards, where all this stuff really happens. It was a process of trial and error. Since I wasn\u0027t working so much with preconceived images, \u0022control\u0022 wasn\u0027t a problem. There were always surprises-images that happened outside of control, things you wouldn\u0027t dream or think of. LF: How did the converter change the image visually? GH: Radically. It remaps the gray levels of an image and it also remaps the color you\u0027re mixing with it. If it had any imposed framework, Bathing was centered around vague ideas of painting, taking traditional subject matter-a bather-and exploring it with the notion that any one frame ","offset":0,"nextOffset":12000,"totalCharacters":57776,"complete":false},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}