Video Synthesizers As Real Time Performance Instruments
The history of video synthesis is tied in to a "real time performance" ethic. The equipment is usually expected to function on input camera signals the machine has never seen before, delivering a processed signal continuously and with a minimum of delay in response to the ever changing live video inputs. Following in the tradition of performance instruments of the audio synthesis world such as the Theremin, video synthesizers were designed with the expectation they would be played in live concert theatrical situations or set up in a studio ready to process a videotape from a playback VCR in real time while recording the results on a second VCR. Venues of these performances included "Electronic Visualization Events" in Chicago, The Kitchen in NYC, and museum installations. Video artist/performer Don Slepian designed, built and performed a foot-controlled Visual Instrument at the Centre Pompideau in Paris (1983) and the NY Open Center that combined genlocked early micro-computers Apple II Plus with the Chromaton 14 Video Synthesizer and channels of colorized video feedback.
Analog and early real time digital synthesizers existed before modern computer 3D modeling. Typical 3D renderers are not real time, as they concentrate on computing each frame from, for example, a recursive ray tracing algorithm, however long it takes. This distinguishes them from video synthesizers, which MUST deliver a new output frame by the time the last one has been shown, and repeat this performance continuously ( typically delivering a new frame regularly every 1/30 or 1/25 of a second ) . The real time constraint results in a difference in design philosophy between these two classes of systems.
Video synthesizers overlap with video special effects equipment used in real time network television broadcast and post-production situations. Many innovations in television broadcast equipment as well as computer graphics displays evolved from synthesizers developed in the video artists' community and these industries often support "electronic art projects" in this area to show appreciation of this history.
Read more about this topic: Video Synthesizer
Famous quotes containing the words video, real, time, performance and/or instruments:
“These people figured video was the Lords preferred means of communicating, the screen itself a kind of perpetually burning bush. Hes in the de-tails, Sublett had said once. You gotta watch for Him close.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for them and invent them because there is no way of doing without them.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)
“People who dont know how to keep themselves healthy ought to have the decency to get themselves buried, and not waste time about it.”
—Henrik Ibsen (18281906)
“Tennis is more than just a sport. Its an art, like the ballet. Or like a performance in the theater. When I step on the court I feel like Anna Pavlova. Or like Adelina Patti. Or even like Sarah Bernhardt. I see the footlights in front of me. I hear the whisperings of the audience. I feel an icy shudder. Win or die! Now or never! Its the crisis of my life.”
—Bill Tilden (18931953)
“Sound all the lofty instruments of war,
And by that music let us all embrace,
For, heaven to earth, some of us never shall
A second time do such a courtesy.”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)