Video History Project
Quotation marks find an exact phrase.

Tool Texts

31 records

  1. Thoughts on 3-D Tools

    Tom DeWitt recounts a career in 3-D imagery beginning in 1976 with Vibeke Sorensen on the stereo-pair video Hot Wax (transferred to film and shown at Anthology, 1978) and the creation of auto-stereoscopic parallax-barrier stereograms exhibited at SUNY Albany; he received a Guggenheim grant, discovered in 1984 a diffraction phenomenon enabling 3-D recording without two cameras, obtained a patent and later an NSF grant to study it. He worked at RPI under the student radio station and in the School of Humanities and Engineering, programmed particle systems in the Image Processing Lab through 1987, produced laser light shows, taught at Dutchess Community College using Amigas, and contributed Pulfrich 3-D computer graphics for Gerry Marks on a 1990 Rolling Stones project that used an Aspex PIPE for image processing.

  2. Towards A Primary Differentiation Between Film and Video Tools

    Essay argues that film and video, though contemporaneous technologically, differ primarily in phenomenology and ontology: theater versus home viewing, film's irreversible mechanical materiality versus video's reversible electronic parameterization, rather than in quantitative resolution. It compares formats (Super 8mm, 3/4" U‑Matic, HDTV and industrial scanners up to 10,000 lines versus ~500 for commercial TV), links representational differences to psychoanalytic and narratological operations and institutional practice (Chicago Institute of Art), and lists two works: Sleazy and the Year 3000 (1987; sound by Damaged Life; woman: Marlis Schmidt) and Debrisfilm (1989; digital guitar by David Smith).

  3. Two Texts Concerning Portable Video Tools

    Two short texts by Sherry Miller Hocking document the emergence of portable video and a chronology of portable videotape recorders; Early Portable Video (April 1992) describes Sony's mid-1960s 1/2" CV systems and portapak technology including a black-and-white camera, separate battery-operated 1/2" recorder, ten-pin cable, external microphone, 20-minute tape capacity and helical-scan recording, and notes artist and activist use and foundation support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts. The chronology (1999) lists 1965–1969 product introductions (Sony CV-2000, CV-2400, CV-2100/2200), EIAJ 1/2" standards in 1969, and Nam June Paik's early use in New York; appended material illustrates the CV portapak and product brochures.

  4. Union. Description of videotape Tools

    Union. Description of videotape Description of Union. With statement by Edgar Daniels from Filmmakers Newsletter.

  5. Video by Stephen Beck Tools

    Video by Stephen Beck Opening of exhibition at Video Free America. Video Weavings, Anima, Cycles were screened.

  6. Voltage Control and the Analog Synthesizer - from Experimental Television Center Studio System Manual Tools

    Experimental Television Center's Analog Synthesizer is a modular system producing control voltages and synthesized audio; outputs conform to a -5V to +5V standard (10V peak-to-peak) and the unit is compatible with commercial audio synthesis equipment. The studio manual documents two boxes of modules and their controls and jacks — negative and positive ramps, triangle, waveshape shaper, inverter, random, one-shot and pulse, comparators, mixers, dual VCAs, VCFs and a VCO — with operating ranges, VC/gain/bias/Q functions and typical patching techniques. The text includes signal classifications (bias, function, waveshape) and suggested patches for oscillation, gating, sampling, panning and filtering.