A while back I found this particular video on Youtube and I was thrilled; I didn't have much information about the artist, but this work alone was enough to be a great inspiration to me. A few months later, I realized that the video got removed and I was quite disappointed, but only until Mr. Chamberlain himself noticed the post on this blog and kindly wrote me an email about it. He gave me a little bit more insights about his work and very generously, he sent me a DVD copy including some of his video work from the same era.
He says that this video was produced at one of many residencies at the Experimental Television Center in Owego, NY. The center started up in late 70's as a grant funded research and production center for experimental video. The mandate of the center was to design and build equipment to be housed in a lab that was cheaply accessible to artists. They had very competitive prices and a lot of artists applied for this residency. David Jones designed and built most of the equipment which was during the hybrid analog/digital transition days. The totally synthetic imagery (no camera) of Chamberlain's work was produced by a system David Jones built for the center that basically converted analog waveforms from modified audio synth processors (8 analog inputs) into digital control signals (8 digital outputs). Apparently, he is still building as David Jones Design...video switching matrixes, etc.
Mr Chamberlain has been a musician for years, and he composed the music for all of his videos. He's also been teaching video art for the last 40 years and he even developed an electronic arts program at the university of Hawaii in 1991 where he is still today.
Mr. Chamberlain is quite aware of the VHS quality of the transfer for this work and to quote him: "The occasional Glitches resulting from old age actually match up with contemporary glitch aesthetics...sort of curious."
