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Video-Taping

Ernest Gusella

1974 00:02:41 United States None B&W Silent 4:3 Video

Description

Gusella's title creates a pun on the term video "tape" by using a split screen in which one half is the electronic negative of the other. Gusella set up a glass sheet and suspended it from light poles. The glass was covered with black or white tape. As he slowly removes the obscuring tape from one half of the screen, his ghostly negative image emerges, further confusing the viewer. Electronically constructed using a VideoLab - a voltage controllable, multi-channel switcher, keyer, and colorizer built by Bill Hearn - the tape relies on the use of a luminance keyer to "cut out" specfic brightness levels (determined by voltage) from one video signal and replace them with a video signal from a second camera. Keying is a video effect seen commonly on television weather reports, in which the images of the map displayed behind the announcer are electronically matted into the image.

This title is only available on Surveying the First Decade: Volume 2.

About Ernest Gusella

Born in Calgary in Alberta, Canada in 1941, Ernest Gusella studied classical music as a child and received a BA and MFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute. Gusella was introduced to the video movement after moving to New York City in 1969. There he became friends with Woody and Steina Vasulka, founders of The Kitchen; and Nam June Paik, the "grandfather of video art." Between 1971 and 1974 Gusella produced a series of abstract videotapes generated by the signal from an audio synthesizer. In 1974 he began a series of dadaist rituals in front of the camera that utilized electronic manipulation of sound and image. In addition to producing his own tapes, Ernest Gusella worked throughout the decade as a camera operator and audio and special effects technician for video artists and musicians such as Sara Hornbacher, Doris Chase, Shegeko Kubota, Nam June Paik, Count Basie, and Benny Powell.