From 24 January to 5 February 2022 my interactive audiovisual work Pure Speculation was installed at Tight Quarters gallery in San Francisco.
For five channels of analog video and two channels of live-rendered sound, it explores the relationship between concrete materiality and geometric abstraction through the lens of the composite video signal.
The relic of a bygone televisual era, composite video involves combining the luminance and chrominance information from an analog video camera into a single signal destined to be decoded by a cathode-ray tube television. The TV renders it by repeatedly scanning electron beams through a phosphorescent screen.
This process is inherently musical. It consists of periodic oscillations of coordinated frequencies — for North American CRTs, 15.734 KHz for the horizontal scan rate and 59.94 Hz for the vertical field.
I tap into these pre-existent patterns and mobilize them to compositional ends, generating geometric figures that are proportional ratios — in musical terms, harmonies — of the fundamental scanning frequencies inherent in the technology.
When placed in counterpoint to the natural reflective properties of the site’s window display, video feedback gives rise to landscapes of geometric echos.
In this sense, the orientation of the work’s gaze is an integral element of its compositional structure. This may be generalized for installations of such a kind in which processes of reflection constitute the generative idea.
