100% Synthetic is a DVD collection focused on audiovisual works in which all sounds / images are synthesized using analog / digital technologies, but whose origins are not concrete sounds or images from the physical world that are processed / manipulated—the material is, as per the title, 100% synthetic.
Rosa MenkmanThis is a video taken inside an Unity mod I made, the dithering effect is the result of setting the lighting of the scene in extreme settings. The shadowing then started to dither randomly.
Kadet Kuhne * & Christopher O’Leary †Voids is made from custom software that generates animated lines that fluctuate according to simple noise algorithms. The piece results in a structured but flowing atmosphere, twisting and interlocking layers that grow and recede in a seamless loop. The monochromatic aesthetic features a constant tension between positive and negative space, evoking windows and architecture of the built environment. These structures are accompanied by feedback sweeps and pulses made with no-input mixing to accentuate the rising and falling of the lines, and spacious ambient layers to emphasize the abstract voids and fissures.
Asha TamirisaAd Nauseum uses analog video synthesis in tandem with software designed in MaxMSP to generate thunderous textural and rhythmic audiovisual activity.
MaralieQuantum Froth is a meditation on fluctuating states and dimensions. Both the audio and video were generated by a synthesizer designed in MaxMSP and further manipulated with effects designed to be used in virtuality reality. The resulting footage is a testament to the shape-shifting that occurs when matter (or the observer) is forced to reckon with previously unaccounted for dimensions.
Amnon WolmanThe name Circular Intersection chosen, as usual, from a list of road-signs, was fortuitous. It describes how I feel about the difference between synthetic and not synthetic. It seems to me like a continuum and I find it hard to identify a point in which something is either one or the other. If I synthesize a violin sound and convince you that it is a violin, is it synthesized?
Yoshi Sodeoka † & MYMK *Bonfires by Yoshi Sodeoka is a video work inspired by traditional art techniques, especially watercolours and ink drawings. It was produced using generative digital animation techniques, with electronic soundscapes by Brazilian electronic music producer MYMK. The project seeks to look at the live process of how watercolours or ink drawings are created — a process of trial and error, experimentation, erasure and layering, in which forays into empty space are built up into complex patterns. The works in the collection explore this process without making clear distinction between code based and ink-and-paper processes, emphasising the similarities and the differences between techniques. Blotches, smears and lines appear, build up and disappear, the distinction between accident and intent is not obvious — how far are the relationships between forms coincidental and how far are they planned?
Blevin Blectum * & Alexander Dupuis †Organic/mechanical hybrids appear in Bevin's cyborgian inner rhythms and Alex's cellular feedback - the flapping wings of a polyphasic avitron built from automata and deteriorating drives.
Derek Holzer“Undulating Signal Object” was created during my residency at the Radio Belgrade Electronic Studio during May 2018, using their newly-restored EMS Synthi 100 modular synthesizer from 1972. The video integrates my Vector Synthesis Pure Data code, the analog waveforms, filters, and spring reverb processing of the Synthi 100, and the quite painterly line quality of the analog Vectrex game console (1982) in a synesthetic feedback situation.
The phrase “signal object” refers to the work of video pioneer Woody Vasulka, who in the early 1970’ss wrote extensively about the formal aspects of abstract video images as almost-sculptural objects constructed of electronic signals, and the possible manipulations of that signal which work beneath the level of the frame, which was previously considered the most basic atomic unit of cinematographic montage up to that point.
To record this video, it was necessary to film (“rescan”) the screen of the Vectrex itself, just as was done during the earliest experiments by Vasulka, Nam June Paik, Dan Sandin, Bill Etra, and others in the 70’s, since none of the electronic waves and frequencies involved in this process are valid video signals in any way otherwise.
I send much gratitude to Svetlana Maras for the opportunity to work with the Synthi 100.
Mark CetiliaFour Ships Passing is an exploration in generative audiovisual synthesis using feedback loops between analog synthesis modules that create and manipulate sound and image, circuit-bent video processing tools, and digitally generated control voltages. Each of the four parts are taken from hours of material generated over the course of an intensive two weeks of patching in early June 2018, then digitally edited and composited to create a seamless whole from these fleeting moments, passing like ships in the night.
Sabrina Ratté † & Roger Tellier Craig *Immeuble-Villas is an ongoing series of abstract interior spaces where electronic textures and architectural elements are subtly animated. The series references Le Corbusier’s standardization of apartment buildings.
MSHRWave Guide Edifice began as a musical composition. The audio was generated using MSHR analog synthesizers in feedback systems of varying stability. The resulting sonic structures served as psychic blueprints for the digital sculptures. The forms were sculpted with a blend of intuitive, procedural and algorithmic approaches.
Andy OrtmannAll images generated on the Sandin Image Processor (2010). Eight years later I edited the raw footage down to what we have here and composed a soundtrack to accompany the video. All sounds generated from my hybrid modular electronic system. The video was cut down in an hour or so, the audio was meticulously patched and stitched together over a period of two weeks.
Matthew Underwood & William ContinoDisparate objects move across the space as they seem to be seeking harmony and cohesion. Control of this tiny electronic world seems at times impossible, and yet this is the perfect place to be. We look on trying to understand how gravity, light and sound operate inside the piece. How would it be to enter into this imaginary broken landscape?
William designed these objects on his computer and orchestrated the first animations. These files were passed on to Matthew who iteratively processed and layered the moving images.
The aesthetic of this video comes out of our deep dialogue with the image-making processes of printmaking.
Stephen Vitiello * & Andrew Deutsch †There was a single window in her kitchen. Outside, ivy and flowers (yellow) and the light (green) streamed through the window. I was about five years. Plants, colors, the fabrics of her clothes and furniture, black and white TV, pins, jewelry, coins (she worked for a bank), minute steak, salt and pepper. She passed away when I was 14, a stroke, she smoked. Cigarettes made her blood sticky, a clot in her brain released while she was asleep. Painless, her flowers grew again. Memories - 45 years of imagination - synthetic brain work.