Bob Snyder is a Chicago-based composer, video artist, and author who has been experimenting with sound and video synthesis since the 1960s. As a musician, his interest has always been in the relationship between music and visual imagery. In Snyder’s work, music is the central generative source of meaning, although he also creates a dialogue between the sound and images of nature and architecture.
Interview by Rafael Franca.
Solstice is a music video illustrating the feelings inspired by this holiday song written by a young man I met in Atlanta, Georgia, Andy Ditzler. My students and I, at the San Francisco Art Institute, concocted the visuals to accompany the tune and the result should evaluate all those suffereng from blues of every shade and intensity.
A structure of Lawrence Weiner.
Photography: Moved Pictures; Computer Graphics: K. Hassett; “A New Pair of Shoes”, “Ships at Sea”, “Sailors and Shoes” Music: Ned Sublette, ASCAP; Lyrics: Lawrence Weiner, BMI
This title is also available on Lawrence Weiner: There are Things that Move Outside of Motion.
Songs of Praise for the Heart Beyond Cure is a fourteen-minute experimental video that unfolds through a series of short episodes. "To describe Cooper Battersby and Emily Vey Duke's new video as ironic doesn't do it justice.
Songs of Praise for the Heart Beyond Cure is a fourteen-minute experimental video that unfolds through a series of short episodes. "To describe Cooper Battersby and Emily Vey Duke's new video as ironic doesn't do it justice.
[This] is my first attempt to construct a video piece using one set of generative intervals for both sound and color. All of the color in the piece is orchestrated in brightness ‘octaves’ corresponding to the registration of the pitches in the soundtrack. Each hue from a circle of twelve corresponds to one of the pitches of a tempered scale. The articulation of the piece consists of a series of loudness and brightness ripples which move across the piece in speed relationships derived from the hue and pitch proportions.
Short for "Probably The Last" (of the series), Spiral PTL uses the image processor like a musical instrument to create variations on a spiral, transforming its basic form into an ever-moving gyro. The movement is synchronous with an audio track that varies from electronic buzzes and Space Age voices to the quiet sounds of running water.
Patti Smith asked if I would do a short film to accompany the release of her version of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. As neither of us are fans of the music video format or industry, we approached the project as a short film, with no lip sync, that would simply try to get at the heart of her version of the song. I shot in Super 8 film and pulled a few things from my archive. The film is a domestic portrait of Patti and her son, Jackson. William Blake was invited in the form of a plaster cast of his death mask.
A Spy is a gender-bending and thought-provoking mixture of pure visual pleasure with disturbing undercurrents. As Reeve lip-syncs to a Doors song (“I am a spy in the house of love. I know the dream that you’re dreaming of, I know your deepest secret fear...”), we see a new manifestation of Jesus walking in a video field of pulsing rainbows, amoebic forms, and B-movie girls in black panties — suggesting the desires we try to hide from ourselves and others.
An alternative music video featuring R.E.M., and directed by Jem Cohen. A poetic and passionate indictment of a world where out-of-control military budgets are paid for at the expense of the impoverished.
Also available on the Jem Cohen compilations Just Hold Still and Jem Cohen: Early Works
An alternative music video featuring R.E.M., and directed by Jem Cohen. A poetic and passionate indictment of a world where out-of-control military budgets are paid for at the expense of the impoverished.
Also available on the Jem Cohen compilations Just Hold Still and Jem Cohen: Early Works
Why is this injured man driving around and around a shopping center parking lot? Just what is his Target? An atmospheric mystery tale that hints at a sad story.
“Christopher Wilcha’s fascinating feature-length video reminds us how seldom we’re allowed to see certain businesses operating from the inside. Wilcha, a 22-year-old college graduate and alternative-rock enthusiast, was hired by the Columbia Record and Tape Club—apparently as a fluke—to help launch a whole new niche-marketing division, which brought him face-to-face with the contradictory meanings of the term ‘alternative’ once it’s been embraced by the mass market.
Tired of underworld and overworld alike, Isis escourts her favorite son on their final curtain call down the Nile, leaving a neon wake of shattered tombs and sparkling sarcophagi.
Forti uses the camera as a research tool to record the movements of three grizzly bears pacing anxiously behind the bars of their cage in the Brooklyn Zoo. The collected visual information becomes part of the basis for Forti's movements in Solo No. 1.
These are the dancing bodies in an agitated rapture: prelude to trance, invocation of the gods, consecration of intermittence. Here our point of view sparkles under the spell and trance of things gathered, fallen, yielding, pluvial, Mesoamerican wind, goddess breath, breeze of sticks. percussive woods.
This tape was produced by Artists TV Network, documenting a symposium that included composer John Cage, choreographer Merce Cunningham, writer Richard Kostelanetz, and video artist Nam June Paik with art critic Dore Ashton serving as moderator. This freewheeling symposium taped before a live audience ranges from individual reminiscences to discussion of then-current art community concerns about music, literature, theater, art, dance, video, and technology.
“Drawing on the ancient Nahuatl concept of the animating soul or life force, Tonalli engages the ritualistic powers of the cinema, summoning fire, flowers, and many moons into a frenetic and mesmerizing in-camera collage. Here, amid thickly swirling images and textured abstractions, the gods of creation and fertility manifest, dissolving into iridescent colors and dense, corporeal rhythms.” NYFF59
Tour Without End is an experimental hybrid feature-length video work that casts real-life musicians, artists, and actors as fictional bands on tour; the piece evolves into a cross-generational commentary on contemporary culture and politics in the Trump era. Shot over the course of four years between 2014-18 at over 15 DIY music spaces in and around NYC, Tour Without End functions as a time capsule — made more apparent by the shuttering of many of its locations due to NYC’s rapid gentrification.
The work’s multitude of characters are legendary performers in the downtown NYC arts scene, including: The Wooster Group founder Kate Valk, Jim Fletcher (New York City Players), Lizzi Bougatsos (Gang Gang Dance), Kathleen Hanna (The Julie Ruin), Brontez Purnell (The Younger Lovers), Eileen Myles, Alexandra Drewchin (Eartheater), Nicole Eisenman, K8 Hardy, Johanna Fateman (Le Tigre) Shannon Funchess (Light Asylum), JD Samson (MEN), Gary Indiana, Kembra Pfahler (Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black), Rachel Mason, Tom McGrath, Matthew Asti (MGMT), Becca Blackwell, Christen Clifford, Alessandra Genovese (Crush), Rogelio Ramos (Love Pig), Kenya Robinson (Cheeky LaShae), and Neon Music (Youth Quake).
A structure of Lawrence Weiner.
Player: Alice Zimmerman; Computer Graphics: K. Hassett; Sound clips from “Postcards from Heaven,” “Ships at Sea,” “Sailors and Shoes”; Music: Ned Sublette, ASCAP; Lyrics: Lawrence Weiner, BMI
This title is also available on Lawrence Weiner: There are Things that Move Outside of Motion.
At sunset a large orchestra, a choir and a group of young people position themselves against the backdrop of a mountain landscape. The musicians play the first section of Mahler's 8th Symphony, moving in precise choreography. Then, almost unnoticed, groups of them start disappearing in the dying light. Soon the landscape and the sound similarly dissolve into twilight.
Showcasing a solo organ recital, Victor Solo features seven sets of organ works. A narrator, possibly the organ player, announces work titles before each set. The video then displays superimposed views of the organist and the interior of the cathedral. Each set features a different angle of the organist and the architecture. Fitting to the tranquil chorale and preludes, the video artist gives minimal treatment with image processing.
Electronic musician and sound artist Stephen Vitiello (b.1964) creates sonic installations that function to give a physical form or space to audio. In this interview, Vitiello discusses his beginnings as a film student, and his transition from music to fine art through his investment in storytelling aspects of soundtracks. As a teacher, artist, and long-time curator at Electronic Arts Intermix, Vitiello’s insights and anecdotes offer up sentimental reflection and hard-learned life lessons, as well as perspective on the historic landscape of music and art in the 1980s and 90s. By discussing his partnerships with Tony Oursler, Jem Cohen, and Nam June Paik, Vitello provides entry into the myriad influences and collaborations that have shaped his working process and artistic career.
Shot with my students at the San Francisco Art Institute, this colorful drama with song and dance numbers (plus burlesque acts) follows the libidinous poisoning of Vatican personnel by an otherworldly intruder. The cast is mostly young and vibrant and the songs staged as opulently as possible on a $400 budget. Anyone interested in these collaborative productions will find a lot to gawk at in this backstage romance with pagan overtures galore.
An experimental video for electro-feminist-performance-artists Le Tigre, the early eighties MTV aesthetic unpacks a thoroughly current obsession: the hidden erotics of office supplies.
This title is also available on Elisabeth Subrin Videoworks.
