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The Artist that invented Computer
Animation Aapo Saask on the artist Ture Sjolander On an island aptly named
Magnetic Island off the coast of Australia, a Swedish artist lives in
exile. Just like so many others in today's media-landscape, he was first
praised and then brought to dust. However, he has left a lasting imprint
on the world. As early as the 1960's, he made the first electronic
animation. Had he been an inventor, he would have been celebrated as a
genius today, but because he is a predecessor in the world of art, things
are different. In that world, the great ones often have to die before they
are recognized.
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"the origins of video art"
pages: 116, 117, 118 and 181, 182 and 183.
A HISTORY of
VIDEO ART
by Chris
Meigh-Andrews
During the period between 1965 and 1975,
which could be considered as the defining period of video art, there was
significant research activity amongst artists working with video to
develop, modify or invent video imaging instruments or
synthesizers.
The first generation of video
artist/engineers include Ture Sjolander, Bror Wikstrom, Lars Weck, Eric
Seigel, Stephen Beck, Dan Sandin, Steve Rutt, and Bill and Louise Etra, in
addition to the well-documented collaborative work of Nam June Paik and
Shuya Abe.
The work of these pioneers is important
because, in addition to exploring the potential of video as a means of
creative expression, they developed a range of relatively accessible and
inexpensive image manipulation devices specifically for 'alternative'
video practice.
TURE SJOLANDER AND
MONUMENT
In September 1966 Swedish
artists Ture Sjolander ( 1937-, Sweden) and Bror Wikstrom broadcast Time,
a 30-minute transmission of electronically manipulated paintings on
National Swedish Television. Sjolander and Wikstrom had worked with TV
broadcast engineer Bengt Modin to construct a temporary video image
synthesizer which was used to distort and transform video line-scan
rasters by applying tones from waveform generators. The basic process
involved applying electronic distortions during the process of transfer of
photographic transparencies and film clips. According to Modin they
introduced the electronic transformations using two approaches. The
geometric distortion of the scanning raster of the video signal by
feeding various waveforms to the scanning coil, and video distortion by
the application of various electronic filters to the luminance
signal.
Sjolander had begun working with broadcast
television with the production of his first multimedia experiment The Role
of Photography, commissioned by the National Swedish Television in 1964,
which was broadcast the following year. With the broadcasting of Time, his
second project for Swedish television, Sjolander was well aware of the
significance of his work and importance of the artistic statement he was
making:
Time is the very first video art work
televised at that point in time for the reason to produce an historical
record as well as an evidence of original visual free art, made with the
electronic medium - manipulation of the electronic signal - and
exhibited/installed through the television, televised.
In 1967, Sjolander teamed up with Lars Weck
and, using a similar technological process, produced Monument, a programme
of electronically manipulated monochrome images of famous people and
cultural icons including the Mona Lisa, Charlie Chaplin, the Beatles,
Adolf Hitler and Pablo Picasso. (Separate text of this work as
below)
This programme was broadcast to a potential
audience of over 150 million people in France, Italy Sweden, Germany and
Switzerland in 1968, as well later in the USA. Subsequently, Sjolander
produced a Space in the Brain (1969) based on images provided by NASA,
extending his pioneering electronic imaging television work to include the
manipulation and distortion of colour video imagery. A Space in the Brain
was an attempt to deal with notions of space, both the inner worldof the
brain and the new televisual space created by electronic
imaging.
Sjolander, originally a painter and
photographer, had become increasingly dissatisfied with conventional
representation as a language of communication and began
experimenting with the manipulation of photographic images using
graphic and chemical means. For Sjolander, broadcast television
represented truly contemporary communication medium that should be
adopted as soon as possible by artists - a fluid transformation and
constant stream of ideas within the reach of millions.
The televised electronic images Sjolander
and his collaborators produced with Time, Monument and Space in the Brain
were further extended via other means. The television system was exploited
as a generator of imagery for further distribution processes including
silkscreen printing, posters, record covers, books and paintings that were
widely distributed and reproduced, although ironically signed and numbered
as if in limited editions.
It seems likely that these pioneering
broadcast experiments were influential on the subsequent work
of Nam June Paik and others. According to Ture Sjolander, Paik visited
Stockholm in the summer of 1966 and was shown still images from Time while
on a visit to the Elektron Musik Studion (EMS). Additionally, Sjolander is
in possession of a copy of a letter dated 12 March 1974 from Sherman Price
of Rutt Electrophysics in New York, acknowledging the significance of
Monument to the history of 'video animation', and requesting detailed
information about the circuitry employed to obtain the manipulated
imagery. In reply, Bengt Modin, the engineer who had worked with
Sjolander, provided Price with a circuit diagram and an explanation of
their technical approach to the project, claiming he 'no longer knew the
whereabouts of the artists involved'.
THE PAIK-ABE
SYNTHESIZER
The Paik-Abe Synthesizer, built in 1969 is
one of the earliest examples of a self-contained video image-processing
device. As we have seen, Ture Sjolander and his collaborators had brought
together video processing technology in temporary configuration to produce
their early broadcast experiments, Paik's synthesizer was a self-contained
unit built expressly and exclusively for the purpose. The instrument, or
video synthesizer, as it came to be known, enabled the artist to add
colour to a monochrome video image, and to distort the conventional TV
camera image. -.......
Extending a dialogue that they had begun in
Tokyo in 1964, electronic engineer Shuya Abe and Nam June Paik began
building a video synthesizer in 1969 at WGBH-TV in Boston, possibly
spurred on by the work of Sjolander in Sweden.
from Chris
Meigh-Andrews book,
A HISTORY OF VIDEO
ART, Publisher BERG, Oxford-New York. First Edition October
2006
representative video art
works
pages 181, 182 and
183
MONUMENT, TURE SJOLANDER AND
LARS WECK (WITH BENGT MODIN), 1967
( BLACK AND WHITE, SOUND, 10
MINUTES. COMMISSIONED AND BROADCAST BY NATIONAL SWEDISH TV,
1968)
Monument, characterized by Ture
Sjolander as a series of 'electronic paintings' is a free flowing
colage of electronically distorted and transformed icoic media images. Set
to a similarly improvised jazz and sound effects track, images of pop
stars, political and historical celebrities and media personalities,
culled from archive film footage and photographic stills have been
electronically manipulated - stretched, skewed, exploded, rippled and
rotated. The relentless flow of semi-abstracted monochromatic faces and
associated sounds seems to both celebrate and satirize the contemporary
visual culture of the time. In its fluid mix of visual information it
generalizes the television medium, draining it of its specific content and
momentary significance. It creates a kind of 'monument' to the ephemeral -
all this will pass, as it is passing before you now.
Archive film footage and
photographic stills of familiar faces and people, such as Lennon and
McCartney, Chaplin, Hitler, the Mona Lisa - the 'monument' of the world
culture - flicker and flash, stretch and ooze across the television
screen. In some moments the television medium is itself directly
referenced, the familiar screen shape presented and rescanned, images of
video feedback and, at one point, its vertical roll out of adjustment,
anticipate Joan Jonas's seminal tape, although for very different
purposes. The work anticipated a number of later videotapes, particularly
the distorted iconic images of Nam June Paik.
Gene Youngblood described the
psychological power and effect of these transformations i his influential
and visionary book Expanded Cinema (Youngblood 1970):
Images undergo transformations
at first subtle, like respiration, then increasingly violent until little
remains of the original icon. In this process, the images pass through
thousands of stages of semi-cohesion, making the viewer constantly aware
of his orientation to the picture. The transformations accur slowly and
with great speed, erasing perspectives, crossing psycological barriers. A
figure might stretch like a silly putty or become rippled in liquid
universe. Harsh basrelief effects accentuate physical dimensions with
great subtlety, so that one eye or ear might appear slightly unnatural.
And finally the image disintegrates into a constellation of shimmering
video phosphores.
Sjolander and his collaborators
at Sveriges Radio (the Swedish Broadcasting Company) in Stockholm had
worked together on a number of related projects since the mid-1960s,
beginning with The Role of Photography, Sjolander's first experiment with
electronic manipulations of the broadcast image in 1965. This project was
followed with the broadcast of Time (1966), a thirty-minute transmission
of 'electronic paintings' produced using the same temporarily configured
video image synthesizer that was later used to create
Monument.
The system that Sjolander and
his colleagues used involved the transfer of photographic images (film
footage and transparencies) to videotape using a 'flying-spot' telecine
machine. This process produced electronic images which they transformed
and manipulated by applying square and sine signals with a waveform
generator during the transfer stage, often using this process repeatedly
to apply greater levels of transformation.
For Sjolander and his
collaborator Lars Weck, the broadcasting of Monument was the epicentre of
an extended communication experiment in electronic image-making reaching
out to an audience of millions.
Kristian Romare, writing in a
book published as part of an extended series of artworks which included
publishing, posters, record covers and paintings after the broadcasting of
Monument, describes the scope of Sjolander and Weck,s vision and
aspirations for the new image-generating technique they had
pioneered:
see separate article Sjolander,s
CV on the Internet. www.monumentintime.homestead.com/
SCAN
MODULATION/RESCAN
In this process images are
produced using a television camera rescanning an oscilloscope or CRT
screen. The display images are manipulated (squeezed, stretched, rotated,
etc.) using magnetic or electronic modulation. The manipulated images,
rescanned by a second camera are then fed through an image processor. This
type of instrument was also used without an input camera feed, the
resultant images produced by manipulation of the raster. Examples of
this type of instrument include Ture Sjolander,s ' Temporary " Video
Synthesizer (1966-69), the Paik/Abe Synthesizer, and the Rutt/Etra Scan
Processor (1973).
----Original Message Follows---- From: Christopher Meigh Andrews To: turesjolander
Subject: RE:
Monument
Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2005 12:14:19 +0100 Ture, As you rightly say, there is a sense in which the American artists have written everybody else out of the history of video art. I would like to put some people (such as yourself) back in! I would like to use an image or two from the stills of Monument that I have found on the web, but they are very low resolution. Would you be willing to e-mail an image of greater resolution? (300dpi would be best- jpeg or tiff, if possible) also, i attach a little form so that you grant me the rights to reproduce the image in the book. Is this OK? if so, please fill it in and send it back to me. I would like to do more than simply paraphrase what Gene (Youngblood) has written in Expanded Cinema, which as you say is what M. Rush has done. Any chance that you can tell me a little bit more about your ideas with Monument and how it began? I will of course piece togther what I can from the web site, and from what Aapo Saask has written. I also will talk to Brian Hoey and Peter Donebauer. i also have the Biddick Farm catalogue from the exhibtion at Tyne & Wear, which has a little info. All best wishes to you- and i will certainly send your regards to Brian & Peter!!! Chris Dr. Chris Meigh-Andrews PhD (RCA) MA, HDCP Electronic & Digital Art Unit www.uclan.ac.uk/edau Tel: 01772-893204 Fax: 01772-892921 Mobile: 07855954298 |
Datoranimationens uppfinnare är svensk.
av Aapo Saask
På en ö lämpligt nog med namnet Magnetic Island - utanför Australiens kust bor en svensk konstnär i exil. Som så många andra i det moderna medielandskapet har han höjts till skyarna och sedan dragits ner i dyn. Men han har lämnat ett bestående intryck på världen. Han gjorde de första elektroniska animeringarna redan på sextiotalet.
Hade han varit uppfinnare hade han hyllats som geni redan idag. Men han är en föregångare inom konstvärlden och i den världen låter man gärna de riktigt stora dö innan de får sitt erkännande.
Vi vet alla hur Disneys kända tecknade filmer kom till tusentals teckningar som filmades i en sekvens. Så görs en del tecknade filmer än idag. Men elektronisk animering har öppnat en helt ny värld inom filmen. Och den har möjliggjort dataspel och otaliga grafiska möjligheter inom affärsverksamhet och vetenskap. Och Ture Sjölander var den förste att göra elektroniskt manipulerade bilder. Och svensk TV visade resultatet och blev världsberömt som medial föregångare. Ture Sjölander experimenterade bland annat med frågan om hur mycket ett människoporträtt kan förvrängas innan det förvandlas till oigenkännlighet, något som förebådar den fantastiska morftekniken som idag används.
Gene Youngblood, som, jämsides med Marshall McLuhan, var den tidens namnkunnigaste mediefilosof ägnar ett helt kapitel i sin bok Expanded Cinema, 1970, åt experimenten på SVT. Expanded Cinema betyder såväl överträdelser av konventioner som sinnesutvidgande gränsöverskridningar. Experimenten var kanske inte helt fullgångna, men de ligger internationellt sett långt före sin tid jämfört med idag mer namnkunniga konstnärers aktiviteter, som t.ex. Nam June Paik och Bill Viola.
De filmer som omnämns är Time från 1965 avd Ture Sjölander och Bror Wikström, Monument från 1968 av Ture Sjölander och Lars Weck och Space in the Brain från 1969 av Ture Sjölander, Sven Höglund och Bror Wikström. Medan de flesta av dagens namnkunniga konstnärer bleknar har Ture Sjölander härigenom gått till konsthistorien för att stanna.
Sundsvallsgrabben Ture flyttade ner till Stockholm i början på sextiotalet.
Han slog igenom stort genom öppningsutställningen på Galleri Karlsson 1964. Hans bildspråk upprörde och skapade en skandal som etablerade Galleri Karlsson som den nya trenden för de unga konstnärerna. 1968 skapade han lika mycket upprörda känslor när filmen Monument visades och han försökte förklara.
Under några år var han uppburen i Frankrike, Italien, England och USA. I Sverige var avunden bland de etablerade kanske för stor. Visserligen köpte såväl Moderna Museet och Nationalmuseum och flera andra, men de tekniker som Ture Sjölander arbetade med var dyra och efter otaliga konflikter fann han sig stå utan resurser.
Han fick i stället förmånen att samarbeta med storheter som Charles Chaplin och Greta Garbo. Kanske lärde han sig av dem att exil är den enda utvägen för att slippa bli krossad. Han flyttade till Australien - långt från ankdammen.
Sjölanders produktion består av fotografier, filmer, böcker, artiklar, textilier, TV-program, videoinstallationer, happenings, skulpturer, grafik, målningar och skulpturer. Men framförallt består den i ett ifrågasättande och skapande liv. Det är detta som får honom att framstå som en av 1900-talets största svenska konstnärer.
En annan banbrytare, Ralph Lundsten, säger i en intervju tidningen SEX, 5, " En tavla kunde på den tiden ( 1800-talet) i stort sett skapa revolution. Idag tittar man slött på alla tusen vernissager som finns. ´Jaha. Mmm. Så duktig han är´, och så gäspar man Om jag vore bildkonstnär idag skulle jag ägna mig åt datorns möjligheter om min ambition vore att göra något nyskapande."
Sherman Price, Rutt Electrophysics, skriver år 1974 till Sveriges Radio-TV:"´Video Synthesis´ is becoming a prominent technique in TV production here in the United States, and I think it will be interesting to give credit to your broadcasting system and personnel for achieving this historic innovation."
Det var Sjölanders banbrytande verk under sextiotalet som Price syftade på. Ingen på Sveriges Radio kunde då förutse vilken betydelse denna innovation skulle få för mediet och Sverige förlorade därigenom en möjlig tätposition i datautvecklingen. De yngre dataanimatörer som nu framgångsrikt lanserar svenska dataspel över världen vet inte heller att de har en inhemsk portalfigur. Om någon av er vill se animationens Gudfader så kan man finna en glimt av honom på Google.
En annan av Sveriges stora nutida uppfinnare, Håkan Lans, har ju förutom sitt välkända navigationssystem även uppfunnit datormusen och färggrafik. De senare uppfinningarna är det emellertid även många andra som gör anspråk på att ha varit först med. Vad gäller datoranimation är emellertid Ture Sjölander onekligen först. Det satt säkert många ingenjörer i sina källare och arbetade med samma saker, men Ture Sjölander var den förste som offentliggjorde resultaten. Han har inte sökt patent och han har inte tjänat pengar på det. Men han har gått till historien som en av 1900-talets stora banbrytare in konsten och kanske också inom tekniken.
Ture Sjölander har under de senaste decennierna huvudsakligen bott i Australien men även varit verksam i andra asiatiska länder som Papua Nya Guinea och Folkrepubliken Kina.
Efter några decenniers tystnad visades under våren 2004 Sjölanders epokgörande TV-experiment på Fylkingen. Under hösten kommer han att ställa ut målningar på Galleri Svenshög utanför Lund för att fira 40-årsjubileet av sin utställning på Lunds Konsthall. Vad han verkar säga är: Nu när Sture Johannesson har tagits till bröstet, varför inte jag. Jag vet svaret. Sture provocerade med sin anknytning till drogkulturen. Det kan man lättare förlåta. Men Ture Sjölander är en total provokation mot hela den etablerade konstvärlden.
Aapo Sääsk, 2004-08-14
Kro.kro kro kraxar kråkorna. "Vad menar ni människa håll dig till ditt staffli! Kunskap är kunskap och konst är konst och aldrig mötas de två!"
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THE GALLERY OF
THOUGHT
The Director
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Saask Aapo, Mr. Biography Financial assistance for the projects was granted by agencies such as World Bank/IFC, ITC/WTO, FAO, EC, EDF, ADB, the Swedish International Development Authority (Sida), the Swedish Fund for Industrial Co-operation (Swedfund), the Swedish Export Council, the Import Promotion Agency for Products from Developing Countries (IMPOD), the Swedish Board for Technical Development (NUTEK), the Swedish Council for Building Research (BFR), and the Industrial Fund of Sweden. Based on Mr. Sääsk’s recommendations and support, several agro-industrial projects have been established in Third World countries. Extended World Bank, ITC and FAO projects in Tropical Crops have been initiated and Mr. Sääsk’s views and advice solicited by international funding agencies and foreign Governments. Mr. Sääsk has also throughout his entire career, without charge, advised inventors and entrepreneurs, in Sweden and in Third World countries, in the areas of energy, food, water and business development. In later years, Mr. Sääsk has mainly worked with proprietary technology and has been engaged in mobilizing resources, co-ordinating development work and promoting technical research which resulted in formation of a number of companies. Education
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