{"id":5546,"title":"Walter Wright and his Amazing Video Machine","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/walter-wright-and-his-amazing-video-machine","version":"f338b45be1f465d78ee93a096f216d61328dbdb9d18fcf515cf69bb65922f191","modified":"2026-09-13T21:52:04.437436+00:00","credits":[{"role":"Author","name":"Charles Hagen"},{"role":"Author","name":"Laddy Kite"}],"authorKeys":["Hagen, Charles","Laddy Kite"],"subjects":["Texts by Author"],"metadata":[{"label":"Publication","value":"Afterimage","url":null},{"label":"Publisher","value":"Visual Studies Workshop","url":null},{"label":"Date","value":"April 1975","url":null},{"label":"Place","value":"Rochester, New York","url":null},{"label":"Volume","value":"2","url":null},{"label":"Issue","value":"10","url":null},{"label":"ETC archive","value":"ETC0399","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022Walter Wright and his Amazing Video Machine.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/walter-wright-and-his-amazing-video-machine.","publication":"Charles Hagen; Laddy Kite. Walter Wright and his Amazing Video Machine. Afterimage. vol. 2, no. 10. Visual Studies Workshop. April 1975.","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/5546.ris"},"links":[{"label":"Scanned document","url":"https://archive.org/details/ETC0399","relationship":"linked document; contents not retrieved","contentType":"application/pdf"}],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":27403},{"name":"abstract","source":"recorded publication abstract","generated":false,"characters":145},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":708},{"name":"archive_summary","source":"existing ETC archive summaries: ETC0399","generated":false,"characters":145}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"Walter Wright is one of a growing number of video artists working with synthesized imagery--video which has been electronically transformed and manipulated to produce a wide variety of visual effects. Wright, who is currently artist-in-residence at the Experimental Television Center in Binghamton, N.Y., for the last several months has been traveling throughout New York state with a portable synthesizer, demonstrating the machine and giving workshops in its use. Wright was in Rochester to conduct one such workshop, sponsored by Portable Channel, Rochester\u0027s community video center. During the course of the week-long session, Wright, assisted by Chuck Heuer of Portable Channel, explained the workings of the synthesizer and helped participants explore its capabilities for processing images. The workshop culminated with a live public performance by Wright using the machine. We interviewed Wright at the Portable Channel facilities during his stay in Rochester. Q: How did you come to be here at Portable Channel? WW: This is part of a New York State Council on the Arts program, which is also part of the Experimental Television Center\u0027s program. It\u0027s an individual project within the television center. My particular project is taking the synthesizer around to various locations and letting people play with it, just for exposure at the moment. It started off just as a workshop and a kind of \u0022hands on\u0022 experience. We\u0027ve been going to public schools, community colleges--literally anyone who would take us. And now there are more people who want to take us than we can deal with, so we\u0027re going to restructure it next year, I think, and deal mainly with the SUNY (State University of New York) system. We run on a very small amount of money, which is all eaten up at this point. We got to Portable Channel through the kind of rural communications network that\u0027s been set up between various video centers. When we conceived of this project and tried to find places to go, we just phoned up a bunch of people and said, \u0022Can we land on you for a few days and do a workshop?\u0022 Most of them said, \u0022Great! Sure!\u0022 and we scheduled a date. Some of the others came from meeting people at conferences and things like that. Like the high school people--they\u0027d say, \u0022Well gosh, we\u0027ve never seen anything like this before. I think the kids would be interested. Why don\u0027t you bring it up for a day?\u0022 Some of the community college dates have come through some of the people who are teaching in the college, and working independently in video. Q: What\u0027s been the response of people that you\u0027ve been able to introduce to the synthesizer? WW: Well, most of them respond very positively. A lot of people can\u0027t figure out what to do with it--\u0022It\u0027s very pretty, but what does it do?\u0022 or \u0022Why do you do it?\u0022 or \u0022What does it mean?\u0022 or \u0022What is it for?\u0022 --that\u0027s kind of the standard response. But most people respond very positively to it. I\u0027ve had very few negative responses, but then that may just be due to the fact that I went there because people wanted me there anyway. Q: You mentioned that this system is a portable one, and that you have one at Binghamton that is more or less studio oriented ... WW: It becomes studio oriented as all the cables become patched into it. It\u0027s on wheels, and we have moved that system around--we took it to Albany with us. Both systems are essentially portable, but we always have to have at least one at Binghamton for the program that\u0027s going on there. Q: What exactly is the program at Binghamton, and who takes part in that? WW: We started off as a public access facility in a way much like Portable Channel, with the exception that we just dumped stuff on people. We provided individual instruction, but no kind of formalized workshop scheme. No money was paid into the program; we had no income. We just dumped portapacks out in the streets so people could tape record themselves playing billiards in the basement in the nude or whatever they wanted to do. We gave out tape and the tape disappeared, and the equipment got broken. After the community-access phase, which was about three years ago when everybody was into social reform through video, the Council cut back the funds a little bit. We decided at the same time that the expenditure of energy was not going towards developing television as an art form and we thought we\u0027d like to move more in that direction, since that\u0027s the title of the center and kind of the thing we work on ourselves. So right now we are an open studio, like the fourth \u0022National Center for Television.\u0022 We\u0027re an open studio for anyone in New York State. We have to restrict it that way, because we\u0027re funded by the State Council. We work on a reverse priority basis--in the other national centers if you\u0027re an unknown artist you come at the top of the list, and if you\u0027re a known artist you can go work at WNET-TV, in New York. So we kind of specialize in local people. Our State Council report usually consists of about half a dozen pages at the end of the program indicating the number of people who have come in and worked with our equipment. Sometimes it\u0027s up into the hundreds of people--a lot of local people and people from around the state, about half and half, I would say. We kind of restrict the use of the machine with our resident people to allow other people to come in. Q: Who are some of the people working at the Center? WW: There are three full-time staff members: Ralph Hocking, the director, who sometimes takes his salary, more often doesn\u0027t; Sherry Miller, who\u0027s the coordinator and does take a salary and looks after administration and all that stuff; and Davey Jones, the technician, who also takes a salary. And we\u0027ve added a few people: I\u0027m there as a relatively full-time person now, funded under this separate project as artist-in-residence, and we\u0027ve taken on another technician, Don MacArthur, who\u0027s working on timebase correction, digital circuitry and something way out there in development. Q: So if a small group or individual came to work there at the Center, they would first establish a date through Sherry. Are technicians and people there who could assist them? WW: We don\u0027t really provide assistance, since Davey\u0027s busy most of the time repairing equipment. Most of the people, if they don\u0027t have any prior experience, are given a run-through on the machines. We try to work out an arrangement with them where they can come twice--maybe for a couple of days the first time, just to run through the equipment and get to know it. Again, this is another difference from WNET. We don\u0027t have engineers, like WNET, that are going to work for them. So our technician is not working for you when you\u0027re there; people are available to answer questions as they walk by, but you\u0027re on your own--which is upsetting to some people and not upsetting to others. Q: Is your synthesizer basically homemade? WW: Parts of it are homemade. The colorizer unit itself was designed by Shuya Abe. There are similar units at WGBH-TV in Boston and WNET-TV in New York. KQED-TV in San Francisco has one, and there are a couple of others floating around in California, and maybe a couple of others floating around on the East Coast, too. Shuya has never made it a commercial product or anything like that. He manufactures them on the side. So that\u0027s not really a homebuilt unit. The rest of it is like the \u0022wobulator.\u0022 Q: How did you become involved with synthesizer imagery yourself? WW: I left Toronto after becoming disillusioned with architecture. I was also into computer design at the time--like design methods using computers. I met some people who were doing computer graphics in film before the bottom fell out of that, and I thought I would like to do computer graphics in film. So I went to New York and I hunted around and I came across a firm called Computer Image, who made television commercials. I went to work for them as a computer animator. Now, they don\u0027t really have a computer--they worked directly in videotape--so that\u0027s how I landed up in videotape. We were located a block and a half away from WNET lab and I started making tapes and showing them, and people found out about Dolphin (which is the name of the production facility there). Eventually Emshwiller landed up there and did his Thermo-genesis and Scape-mates things during weekends. I was his animator and that kind of got it all together. One day Russell Conner, from the Council, came to me and said, \u0022Look, you\u0027re one of the few synthesizer operators around. Go to Binghamton.\u0022 So I went to Binghamton. Q: When was that? WW: That would be three years ago. I ended up in Binghamton with some funding from the Council and an impermanent position--sat around and drank Scotch with Ralph for about six months and discussed television and art. I fought with the machine for about a year or two before I got it together to make tapes and do workshops and things like that. So from there I got out of making tapes and more into the live stuff and into the development of the systems along with our technicians. I\u0027m tending toward using live stuff as an instrument. Post .....That would make 1/2 stu.... Q: Right now I think time base correctors are up around the $10,000 range. WW: Well, there are some that are cheaper--$1600. Q: But a $400 time-base corrector would be a big improvement. WW: Yeah. That\u0027s one of the aims of the Center next year: to try to develop the technology, as a means of providing access to the media. Trying in terms of that, and in terms of extending the image process in black and white and in color--and also in terms of the synthesizers. We\u0027re about where Moog was eight years ago. David just completed work on a unit that he and I have been collaborating on for about a year and a half now. It\u0027s the first voltage-control video synthesizer--which is exactly where Moog was eight years ago, when they took electronic music from the Princeton studio and started to produce voltage-control modules so that you could set up control functions, memories and things like that. That\u0027s where we\u0027re at right now. Q: Do you forsee the day when artists working in video will be able to reach mass audiences, perhaps through cable systems or something like that? Or do you think that would even be desirable? WW: I don\u0027t know. I suppose some artists would love to reach the larger audience, in terms of a power trip. I\u0027m not too sure of the audience. It might go the same way as the difference between commercial film and experimental film. Maybe the video artist will work to a relatively limited audience. Still, I don\u0027t see the major commercial networks running half-hour abstract synthesizer tapes. Certainly commercial AM radio is not running explorations in electronic music right now. So it would probably be a limited audience. One of the problems is that cable would probably be a good place for people to work, but the cable systems seem to be in a continuous process of redefinition--a little like university curriculums. We used to be on cable every Thursday night for an hour in Binghamton, until the cable station ran out of budget and discontinued all local production. Now they get everything out of a can. But people like Woodstock Video Company are the cable, in a sense, a couple of nights a week. Q: When you were doing your weekly cablecasts, what kind of feedback from the community did you get? WW: None. Q: Do you see that more as a response to your particular programming or a response to the cablecasting? WW: It was kind of a community response to cable, I think. People only saw it when they flipped by it on their dial. Most of the time they only ran time, temperature, and advertisements for Phil\u0027s Chicken House. Q: Top Value Television (TVTV) has been very successful in getting some network exposure for 1/2-in. programming. For example, the 1968 Democratic Convention, \u0022Lord of the Universe\u0022 and, more recently, \u0022Gerald Ford\u0027s America.\u0022 Do you see that as an indication of things to come?","offset":0,"nextOffset":12000,"totalCharacters":27403,"complete":false},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}