{"id":4772,"title":"ZBS Media Farm: Program Descriptions (1974, 1984)","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/program-descriptions-1974-1984","version":"847a1c1d0950cc9d86e304100aefac50ecb39b622142641aeb1ad24b6eb66043","modified":"2026-09-13T21:52:08.1989848+00:00","credits":[],"authorKeys":[],"subjects":["Groups"],"metadata":[{"label":"Group location","value":"Fort Edward, NY","url":null},{"label":"Group","value":"ZBS Media Farm","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022Program Descriptions (1974, 1984).\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/program-descriptions-1974-1984.","publication":"Program Descriptions (1974, 1984). .","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/4772.ris"},"links":[],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":15587},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":728}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"ZBS Media Farm Fort Edward, NY Founding members included Greg Shifrin and Pat Anderson. ZBS was created to support alternative radio and audio \u0022production, creation, inspiration, good vibes and self-development\u0022. -from Dumping Ground v. 2 ZBS AIR flyer 1974 ZBS Foundation is beginning an artist-in-residence program at our audio studio in upstate New York. With support from the New York State Council on the Arts, we are inviting ten artists to explore and experiment with the possibilities available in sound and audio production. ZBS is a group of 12 people who come from various media, crafts and technical backgrounds. We got together four years ago and built an audio production and recording studio on a 45 acre farm near Saratoga Springs. We have worked to develop a studio that has a wide range of possibilities and a lot of flexibility. The program extends from October 1, 1974 through July 1975. During this period we will invite one artist each month to spend 5 days in residence. The visiting artist will have the studio at his disposal on a 24-hour basis, and a staff available which includes an engineer (who designed and built the studio) and two experienced producers who have worked in radio and sound production for many years. In addition, there are a number of people who participate in the operation of the studio and who will be available to help in different ways. Each artist will receive travel expenses and room and board and all necessary audio tape will be provided. The idea of this nifty program is to encourage experimentation by artists in any field and to work out audio ideas which may have been unrealized because of the lack of technical facilities available. Artists who have not worked in audio production before are invited to participate in a situation which provides them with assistance from experienced personnel, with a view toward fulfilling the potential of cooperation between artists in sound and other media. Another possibility could be to use the period as a workshop in which to develop the audio segment of a mixed media short or long-term project. Another possibility could be nestling within your mind at this very moment. In fact, anything is possible, so rush right down to your brain and send us a proposal detailing your ideas for utilizing this facility. We have a fully-equipped 4-track studio with 12 input mixdown capabilities. The studio itself is 500 square feet of real space, including an adjacent isolation room and accessible space for additional recording areas. We have an extensive sound effects library ranging from every conceivable environmental effect to camels running in the Grand Atlas Mountains, actually recorded live in Morocco. We have portable hardware for outdoor work, and arrangements for additional equipment can be made upon request. Our equipment inventory includes the following: Tape Machines Ampex 440-4 track (1/2\u201D) Ampex 440-2 track Ampex 440-2 track Ampex AG500-2 Uher 4200 Teac A120OU - Revox A77 Nagra IV L Advent 201 Mixing Capability Phillips console MD12RF-4 12 line input Microphones 12 mic output built-in equalizers reverb and pan pots 57 step slide faders Microphones Condensers Dynamics Ribbons Shotgun Parabolic Hydrophones Manufacturers include: AKG, Beyer, Electrovoice RCA, Sennheiser, Shure, Sony 3 Phillips PRT-30ST Turntables Monitoring Altec 604 E, JBL, Advent, AR, Crown Amplifiers Headphones: Beyer, Sennheiser, Koss, AKG Signal Processing Equalizers: 4 Phillips shelving type, 2 Pultec EQP-1A full range, 2 Pultec MEQ-5 midrange, 1 Pultec HLF-3 sharp cut-off bandpass, 1 Soundcraftsmen Graphic 2 UREI LA3A compressor/limiters Sennheiser reverb Fisher spring reverb Martin Varispeed 111A Access to: ARP 2600 synthesizer ARP soloist synthesizer DBX noise reduction Phase and Frequency Shifters Plate reverb Noise gates Complete intermodular patching network for flexible equipment utilization. Artists are encouraged to bring along any additional hardware they can. So communicate with us in some manner as to what you would like to do, (try to relate it to the artist-in-residence program described above). Deadline for proposals is September 21, 1974. Proposals should be sent to A.I.R. ZBS Foundation. If you have any questions call or write, we love to talk about it. This program is made possible with support from the New York State Council on the Arts and is open to New York State residents only. ZBS Programs, from ZBS brochure, 1984 It was a dark and stormy night, and throughout New York State artists were looking for a place where they could record it. As the lightning crashed and the thunder roared, AUDIO ART was born. Later that night, after everything had settled itself a bit and most of the party had wound their way back home, a small group of hard-core hopefuls could be seen furiously building a way out. The idea was to encourage artists who want to work with audio and sound experimentation and to provide an audio studio and personnel for artists in every medium from all over New York State. Making use of these facilities have been some of the most inventive artists working in the state today. With Les Levine we developed the audio portion of a really spectacular piece of installation art. A game room filled with pinball machines and game machines of all kinds -dedicated to the Great American Loser. The sound of it is of a football stadium gone crazy, some maniac rooting section demoniacally urging the player on to failure. He is begged, importuned, taunted, and cajoled into losing. The almost haunting chant-like quality of the tape is very hypnotic and convoluted. The work was created utilizing the technique of overdubbing, by which small groups of people can become huge stadiums of screaming fans, and one or two dancers become giant armies on the march. A videotape soundtrack we did with Ed Emshwiller turned a few feet into many feet, the entire track consisting of feet - a beautiful sound -the sound of feet. Feet upon carpet, wood, asphalt, gravel, frosted grass, snow, water - multiple soft shoe shuffle feet - Crossings and Meetings. Jim Borden took us out in the forest to record monster freight trains. We used 12 microphones placed at 20 ft. intervals along the tracks. The result was truly impressive. At first there is nothing - only ambient sound (a wood in autumn), then slowly one perceives the far away train, closer and closer until it is roaring past you - finally rolling away into the distance again. Trains, boats, balloons. Nick Collins and Ron Kuivila sent transmitters aloft in helium balloons and adrift in boats on the river. Following the Hudson the transmitters trace a map of the waterway - the balloons trace a map of the air currents - all charted in sound. Bill Viola spent 5 days in an inner tube taking soundings from the dark depths of our gigantic frog pond. Recording deep below the surface at 4-hour periods during the days and nights, he plotted subtle variations in the underwater pond life. FIELD RECORDINGS 1 SINGING ROCK WORK 2 ANDRE AH MA 3 ANDRE #2 AH MA 4 FLUID 5 MOURNING MEN AND ARBITER 6 CARPENTER WORK SONG (NEONATAL) 7 TWO SICK MEN/HEALER 8 MISSION CAFETERIA SUNDAY NOON 9 CHILDREN IN COURTYARD LAUGHING 10 BEGGARS ON STREET 11 MEAL PREPARATION 12 MOANING MEN 13 CHASON Inspired by the UNESCO series of field recordings. Diego Cortez captured the peculiar tone and quality of audio tape as anthropological art. Using essentially just his voice and hands, he produced an entire environment, calling up an image that we immediately associate with the standard classical field recording; evoking the spirits of the ancestors of the primitives. Another classical interpretation which can be modulated and transformed is that of the poet reading his work. John Giorno has utilized some of the possibilities of our production studio (multi-track loops, reverse echoes, speed reverberation), to create a poetry of incredible power. A rare approach to dealing with the relationship between sound and film was undertaken by the incomparable Oscar-winning hot dog Frank Mouris. He experimented with recording the soundtrack before shooting his film. Because of the sound experiments new kinds of visual imagery suggested themselves. David Hykes made a film called \u201CMutual Exclusives\u201D and the source signal he used as a basis for the soundtrack was the sound of deaf children\u2019s voices. David did many extraordinary sound experiments developing his concepts of synchronous pitch refraction, polymetric silence and defining the shadow of sound in a piece called \u201CShadow Frequency.\u201D TRANSDUCER *** \u201Cany of various substances or devices, as a piezoelectric crystal or a photo electric cell, that convert input energy of one form into output energy of another. From the Latin transducere - to lead across, transfer \u201C Such artists as David Tudor, Phil Glass, Tim Clark, Jude Quintiere, George Kindler and John Driscoll deal with sound itself. The finalized work often appears as dance, opera, performance, installation, mixed-media piece. The early work always appears slightly off the wall -one of the facets of electronic or synthesized composition. These guys will transduce anything. We have recorded tubs of water, ponds and rivers, junkyards, flash bulbs, bridges, steel cables, cabbages, chickens, crickets, frogs and all manner of outdoor life, pigs, peas, popcorn, and people (awake and otherwise). All of this and more has become sound-music for people to perform, dance, sing, correlate other media with; it is treated, nursed, walloped, and electronically manipulated in every way possible - or - simply left alone. AUDIO ART What we hear inside our heads and the attempt to get it out of there intact - an interesting problem and one that AIR is uniquely suited to serve. Beth Anderson proposed to search for a sound she had heard in her dreams. Richard Hayman proposed nothing less than an attempt to record the dreams themselves. Richard, something of an expert on the subject of sleep, is an artist who works with dreams as a medium. There is evidence to show that when we move our eyes in sleep, we are following the action of our dreams. It turns out that the musculature of the ear moves during dreams also. We adapted a microphone in an ear mold and the attempt was made to discover whether this movement corresponded to what we hear in our dreams. Our dreams, our waking thoughts, our art, and reality -- a quadraphonic dimension. Presenting extraordinarily beautiful and subtle pieces, Laurie Anderson created quadrophonic stories with pictures and sound environments, that make you conscious of the space, not the walls that define the space. We worked on over eight hours of tape with Stan VanDerBeek experimenting with audio puns and pawdio uns, to be used in concert with his ongoing Cine Dreams design. We also made water tapes for use with a series of projections onto water-falls and walls of mist. Video artists such as Stan VanDerBeek, Bill Viola, William Wegman, Les Levine, and Ed Emshwiller have taught us a great deal, and the need that videotape makers have for good sound production cannot be overestimated. It is our hope that this program will help a little to better define and understand the importance of audio and its relationship to the video image. AUDIO PUN (o\u2019 de-o/-pun) n. A play on sounds, sometimes on different senses of the same sound and sometimes, on the similar sense or similar sound of different sounds. PAWDIO UNS (po\u2019 de-o/-unz) n. A play on paws or a reversal of a play on pause, as in applause or clapping of paws: 2. v. to make clumsy or grasping motions with the hands. Artists in every field are encouraged to participate in this program. Jim Burton was a painter before his developing interest in sound and the instruments of sound became his primary work. Alan Sondheim is a writer, with an interest in mathematics, as well as a videotape artist who worked with us on, among other things, recording the sound of photography, and defining ","offset":0,"nextOffset":12000,"totalCharacters":15587,"complete":false},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}