Rob Feulner

A combination of a Gieskes dirty mixer, VCR, Edirol V4, and what I assume was a Panasonic MX10. I remember Jason Bernagozzi of Signal Culture mentioning that the Edirol V4 has a one frame memory bank, I think we’re seeing it in action here.

I came across a VHS tape that had some Japanese soap operas, and I found myself kind of swept away by this short romantic scene.

I also recently acquired a Panasonic MX50. The Video Circuits community love the hell out of this unit so I figured it’s time I give it a try. One of its best features is the built-in TBC which makes it essential for pairing with circuit bent glitch-y machines, but I’m having a blast using the keying faders which give great white fills and strobes when mixed with negative feedback. I am still insanely hungover from a Halloween party last night and I still have corpse paint and an upside down cross drawn on my face and staring at a TV with flashing black and white strobe isn’t helping at all, but what the hell, here’s a new video.

I,R,R,E,V,E,R,S,I,B,L,E

Warning: Strobe and flashing lights.

A video about reaching the point of no return for humanity.

https://www.vox.com/2018/10/8/17948832/climate-change-global-warming-un-ipcc-report

We have just 12 years to make massive and unprecedented changes to global energy infrastructure to limit global warming to moderate levels, the United Nation’s climate science body said in a monumental new report released Sunday.

“There is no documented historic precedent” for the action needed at this moment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote in its 700-page report on the impacts of global warming of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.5 degrees Celsius.

From rising sea levels to more devastating droughts to more damaging storms, the report makes brutally clear that warming will make the world worse for us in the forms of famine, disease, economic tolls, and refugee crises. And there is a vast gulf between the devastation from 1.5°C, what’s considered the moderate level of average warming, and 2°C.

This is a video I recorded on the second day of the Muslim travel ban in January 2017, as the JFK protests were occurring. I spent the day feeling powerless in my Montreal apartment, but also inspired by those who were packing in the airports with signs and megaphones, the taxi drivers who refused to continue business as usual, the ACLU lawyers who were waiting in the Arrivals area to help those in need.

I revisited NO BAN this week, edited it further, fixed some colour issues and added a new title card and audio track. This may be a temporary post and I’m playing with the idea of “bigger plans” for the piece which will force me to take this iteration down.

Some glitching I’ve been doing with Chinese VHS tapes.

Télépresence is both a recurring event and artist collective birthed from the Video Circuits online community. The structure is loose, but the general idea is to share our works, techniques, and hardware with each other and the public, so the ideas of cathode ray artworks will live on even as the machines that create it die. The second edition of Télépresence will occur in New York on April 7th. Before I make a post pushing that, I thought I’d revisit the first edition in Montreal, 2017.

Poster by Paloma Kop.

The format was divided in two: an exhibition of hardware during the day followed by live A/V performances at night. The former had artists setting up and presenting their video synthesis/manipulation hardware. This allowed the artists to explain their methods and the public to be able to ask questions and play with electronics they might not ever have the chance to use again. Those presenting were: Jonas Bers, Colby Richardson, Kit Young, Christopher Konopka, Francois Létourneau, Phil Baljeu, and Rob Feulner (myself.) 

The following photos were taken by Paloma Kop:

Jonas Bers’ home built vector synthesis rig.

Close up of Jonas’ algorithmic video Rollercoaster Tycoon map.

Justine Durand experimenting with Jonas’ setup.

Showing VHS manipulation points on my messy table.

Some of my birds, I own them.

Christopher Konopka’s modular and feedback setup.

Kit Young’s section. The eye doctor-looking instrument on the top left is a rotating video camera lens for video feedback.

Phil Baljeu’s custom modular and vector setup.

Colby Richardson’s neat and minimal video feedback vortex.

Francois Létourneau‘s modular and quad-Commodore table.

Once the sun set and the projector beam cut through the darkness, some of these artists played solo A/V sets and others were paired with local musicians. Mike Mazzotta wandered around between sets with a dirty mixer glitch machine and a wireless video transmitter strapped to his chest. I know he would hate me saying this but it was very trip metal.

Here are the live sets in their proper order. All video excerpts were taken by Sonya Stefan. She helped us in booking La Lumière, a film co-op and screening room of which she is part. We couldn’t have done this without her.

Jonas Bers:

Justine Durand & Eduardo Noya:

Phil Baljeu:

Paloma Kop (formerly known as Nihil Minus) & Colby Richardson:

Kit Young & Wizard Of:

I can’t express just how great these sets were. The general vibe of the room after Jonas ended his set was “How can anybody top that?”, and the event seemed to just get better and better. I spent the night in awe. I spent the next day with the worst hangover I ever had after watching strobing videos for 12 hours.

Another video I made for the New York artist Spirit Night. Read more about it and the track on Fader.

Broken Memorex TV

The Grey Estates premiered a video I made for Spirit Night.

It chronicles a train journey from New York back to Montreal. Fitting into the the lyrical content, the video emblematic of the myth of “new beginnings”, the idea that life will be different if you pack up and start fresh. The reality is that wherever you go, you bring yourself along.

This video is intended as a loop, initially for installation but it’s a project that lost steam. I believe I built this out of four dubbed VHS tapes using footage from Herzog’s Fata Morgana. I recorded a session of two tapes mixed together, one about 15 seconds behind the other, both VCRs open so I was playing with the magnetic tape. By pulling on the tape I was able to warp the depth of field, and doing both at once gave a dizzying effect especially combined with the long tracking shot. I then mixed that tape with a third dub of the sequence, and then that tape with a fourth dub.

This was supposed to be footage for a music video I was making for Nick Malkin, but he objected to the use of any footage that had people/figures. His feeling was that their presence gave the video a political slant, which wasn’t the intention of the track and record he was releasing. At the time I didn’t agree with him, but I have since reused the footage to meditate on America’s oil drilling contracts with Egypt and the Middle East, the carcasses of decomposed animals a representation of depleted natural resources, so in that sense I owe Nick an apology because the footage can be easily interpreted as political.

Adult Swim posted the episode of Off the Air I remixed.

This was a really fun and interesting commission, seeing how I could turn a ready-made episode upside down. Lots of techniques and tools were used in the creation, from dirty mixers to circuit bent processors (Tachyons, BPMC), VHS ripping and video feedback smouldering. I also snuck some Space Ghost in there.

Amateur figure skating, circa mid-80s. Internal video feedback a combination of a Panasonic AVE5 running through an Edirol V4. I think I used the superimposition feature on the AVE5 colour in the skater. Recorded late December 2017.