I was always intrigued by the idea that the word “retro” doesn’t represent something with antiqueness to me. Since I haven’t lived in an era of listening to music on vinyl and using films to take pictures, those methods considered old are absolutely new to me. Interestingly, my experiences with retro concepts have been mind blowing, especially when I hear the fullness of sound from tangible vinyls instead of digitized signals from music streaming services. For this assignment, I wanted to test out my conception that old is not old after all.
My final work is a combination of processed videos and sounds. Both of those initial signals are what I actually recorded during my trip to Japan this past summer. The base video is a time-lapse video that shows my view of looking outward from a moving train. The starting audio is a voice memo that recorded sounds of a train station.
To take on my idea of using old systems, I processed my videos through a CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) TV. Inspired by Nam Jun Paik, a renowned media artist, I wanted to input HD time-lapsed videos into the TV to find out if the time-lapse component may smooth out and any color variations might happen due to the effects of picture-tubes. For the case of sounds, I tried out a new technique that I read about on the Internet called “amp slaving.” This method was used by old guitarists who wanted to take her favorite amp’s tone and make it louder. In my case, I connected four amps and didn’t give any stereo effects because I considered that my original sound already had too much noise. By using this method, I expected distortions to be added to my original signal. Below is the final video / sound that iterated a total of fifteen times.
As much as I feel accomplished by feeding signals from our era into a “retro” system and trying out a sound system approach used by past guitarists, I have learned very important lessons that I could have done to better my outcome.
- Video Processing
- Processing a video and filming it on camera results to a decrease in the video’s size dimension. Finding a method to retain its size rather than cropping out parts will result to a finer delivery of the full content.
- Sound Processing
- Feeding sound signals into amps repeatedly may cause noise that are difficult for easy-listening.
- Iterating initial sound signals made by professional artists are more likely to converge to a melodic sound than sounds from our everyday situations, which already have a combination of various sound disturbance.
Overall, I am glad to share the fact that an old system still has useful values when utilized as a feedback system. Also, incorporating my own signals into an assignment allowed me to appreciate my past experiences and to provide with a hint of what I felt at that time to other people. If chances allow, I would love to further research about how other human senses such as, smell and touch, can be processed recursively through variations in time and space via diverse systems.