Ed Mellnik

1970 State University of NY at Buffalo - "A Boob in a Tube, A Nixon Video Ride" This installation was a maze in the dark with monitors in various parts of the dark tunnel playing Nixon speeches out of context. Visitors had to go thru sitting in a wheelchair. 1974 SUNY at Buffalo - "Emit-Non-Time" a live performance piece by Ed Mellnik and Allen Pierce. Each letter was a section of the composition of Electronic Music performed Live with video Art on screens around the room being performed live as well using video feedback, and a colorizer. 1975 US Embassy in Mexico City. Video sculpture and performance by Ed Mellnik. 1977 SW Oregon Museum of Science "Vertical Hold" a Video Sculpture and Live Performance of Video Art and Poetry by Ed Mellnik. 1979 Open Gallery, Eugene Oregon. "525 Lines" a Video Installation creating various perception tricks in time and space. A video tape delay created a troubling perception of oneself. 1980 NW Artists Workshop, Portland Oregon. "Reflections" A video installation by Ed Mellnik that expanded on the physical layout of space with the use of the actual video tape itself as a curtain. 1980 Oregon Arts Commission Fellow Grant 1981 Seattle Mayors Office - A Video Installation using a variation of the tape delay technique to create a time element to the piece. 1983-84 created a new video colorizer with Engineer Arlie Conner. The Chromatizer was an amazing piece of engineering. Seven were made. It included an outliner, color background generator, and three levels of keying color into gray levels. You have never seen pastels like this on an NTSC monitor. 1983 Portland Art Museum, An Evening with Ed Mellnik. 2002 Oregon Public Broadcasting - broadcast of "Oregon Naturally" a scenic in shot and edited in High Definition by Ed Mellnik. 1980 to Present - Owner and Chief Bottle washer of EMA Video Productions, Portland Oregon http://www.emavideo.com/Vid_Art.html It was the early '70s. I remember it was called the Abe-Paik Video Synthesizer. Housed at the Experimental TV Center in Binghamton NY, this place felt like a place where you could try anything. And many did. Some were dancers, others interested in toying with what at that time seemed very high tech. Sitting at the synthesizer, I felt right at home. It was mainly a gray scale keyer and colorizer. Added to that you had a little Black and White TV that was specially prepared with extra coils around the Picture tube neck, to allow for bending and twisting the TV raster when amplified audio signals were fed to the coils. Ralph Hocking and Sherry Miller Hocking must have had the incredible experience of being able to see the multitude of ways in which the system could be used. Everyone had a totally different approach to how the synthesizer would be applied. I felt it was like painting with electrons. I would set up many effects ahead of time and attempted to "play" the synthesizer in real time. This of course limited me in many ways since you were not always sure what was going to happen when a button was pushed or a knob turned. I would show up on Friday afternoon with my records and sometimes sidekicks. I would go across the street and get snacks to last the weekend and then lock the door. It was marathon time. All night and all weekend, like a mad scientist or light show artist I would attempt to create in real time, to the beat and emotion of whatever music I brought with me. There was something very organic about creating in real time. Later I realized that what they were was real time performances recorded for future playback. This was the era of psychedelic light shows and Cage performances.

I found my first visits to reflect a total insensitivity to color choice and use. Later I seemed to develop better or more pleasing combinations of color and contrast. This was in a way my undergrad work in Video Art. It was not political, it was emotional and compositional. Unlike a still, it had a time element with a beginning, a middle and an end. The experimental center had no element of judgement. Many of us were very lucky to have found it and I for one will always hold the experiences special and thank Ralph and Sherry and their funding sources for being there.