Icron

Using the image processor as it was intended as a performance instrument, Icron exploits the processor’s real-time capabilities: the image and soundtrack were generated through simultaneous improvisation, although the color was added later. The title of the piece is a neologism created by fusing "icon" with "chron" as a reference to the effect of temporal changes on images. Snyder combines iconographic elements of broadcast television with the structural features of music by deconstructing the face of a newscaster into scan lines. The newscaster’s speech is also re-modulated to produce a cartoonish effect that is equally humorous and sinister. Because the content of his discourse is obscured, only the rhetorical tics of authoritarian pronouncement remain.

This title is also available on Bob Snyder: Sound and Video 1975-1990.