1.27.2024

Some Wobbulated Video Outtakes for River Styx Program

 In the 80's and 90's I had a number of artist residencies at The Experimental Television Center in Oswego, NY where I had the opportunity to utilize their custom built Paik-Abe Wobbulator unit. It's easier to watch a few video examples than to explain the analog processing FX in detail, but suffice to say that the Wobbulator allows distortion of a CRT's horizontal and vertical deflection raster, as well as adding a third special deflection coil (termed an "S" coil) which creates a sort of S rotational wobble to the raster. One thing to note is that with such signal distortion, the only means to record the Wobbulator's FX is via RESCAN of the CRT with another camera - a traditional analog video processing / recording technique.

Although many video artists have used the Wobbulator in more extreme raster distortion modes, my typical use of it has been to create slow waves, shifts, wobbles to the image. This is then keyed on top of the original footage to achieve the desired dream-like effect. Below you can view a "ghost walking up hill" segment originally processed at ETC (perhaps around 1986?) followed by a recent re-processing addition using the Phosphortron app (described in the previous post).




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