Punting the River Styx in Cambridge, UK - Wobbulator, Feedback and OBS FX - Part 2

Continuation of previous post: using OBS, overlayed (source) footage with Wobbulated version of same, including feedback camera processing and additional layers of pre-recorded material. Also, layered in processed footage from a custom video circuit developed during Sean Hollowell's Intro to Video Circuits class (at Polyphase Portal). 

Here are some more samples of resulting processed footage:

Punting the River Styx in Cambridge, UK - Wobbulator, Feedback and OBS FX

I finally got the kinks worked out of my system configuration and now can overlay recorded (source) footage with Wobbulated version of same (sometimes luma keyed), layer in other pre-recorded material (flames, fog), and also include feedback camera processing. 

Here are some samples of resulting processed footage:

Fire and Water - Wobbulator and OBS

As part of my ongoing process of OBS discovery and use, I recently was able to configure my system flow to support both my Wobbulator rescan feed AND the original feed being sourced to the Wobbulator. There is a slight delay of a frame or two perhaps, but most importantly this allows synchronized key overly effects to be recorded. 

As a note, I've found the Camo Studio app (for Mac) to be extremely useful in processing the video feed from my rescan camera (a Hi8 camcorder). It allows full control over frame resolution and frame rate, signal parameters such as luma, gamma, saturation, sharpness, as well as adjustment of zoom and relative placement/offset of the raster image. This latter function makes it easy to align the camera rescan manually - to center it and zoom to eliminate the CRT borders as desired.

So for your enjoyment below are a few samples of my "go to" rowing video clip showing various FXs and overlays.

Wobbulating the Spirit Realm

In this post, I will be sharing some (raw) wobulator-processed found footage of Golden Butoh (Daidogei) Dance Troupe from Japan. Selections will be included in my River Styx video program. Not sure yet if these figures are writhing Demons or Celestial Dancers - or both simultaneously?

A Wobbulator of My Own - Part 2

So once the Wobbulator unit itself has been constructed and successfully tested, that's only the first step in the larger journey... as discussed in the (previously posted) Wobbulator documentary by Blaire Neil, the device's coils need high power (at least 75 Watts per channel) audio to control the individual deflection coils (H,V, "S" coils). So that means the setup requires at least 3 separately controllable channels of audio power amplification (in my case, I made use of a pair of Sony home entertainment system receivers/amps found on EBay). And you need three sources of audio control. I decided to make use of a software emulation of a Eurorack setup, customized with three channels of oscillators and output gain controls. (The free PD software is "VCV Rack 2".)  These VCV synthesized signals are fed out of my computer via a set of USB audio interfaces (Behringer U-Control units), to the audio power amps, and thence to the Wobbulator coils inputs. Of course, you also need a camera to rescan the Wobbulator's screen. (I found an old Hi8 camcorder on Ebay that does the trick. But there are a lot of video recording possibilities - the only limitation being the ability to manually focus and zoom!)

Below are a couple of examples from my Wobbulator at work in my studio. I have tuned the "H" coil frequency to create accentuated scaliness, and the "S" coil frequency to create the raster wobble.

A Wobbulator of My Own!

 Last fall I participated in a hands-on DIY workshop to build a personal Wobbulator. (The workshop was organized and run by the artist Jen Kutler who patiently provided instructions, as well as the required raw materials such as special coil wire and "S" coil armature. All each participant had to do was bring in two functioning B&W analog TV sets - one for the final Wobbulator and one for cannibalized coil parts.)

Below is some workshop footage of me winding my "S" coil and an initial test of the finished Wobbulator. Also, a short documentary on the Paik-Abe Wobbulator.

Wobbulator setup in studio with power amps, rescan video camera, and MIDI controller for adjustment of oscillators' frequencies and strength.

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).

Would-be Wobbulator

The video below (from which IOS app, I sadly now forget - perhaps Kino Glitch?) is the closest I've been able to achieve to a simple H axis wobbulator raster FX performed in the digital realm.

Compare this to an actual Wobbulator raster FX (Nixon portrait) posted previously.

ETC Sample Footage: Ghost Walker

This is an example of footage I compiled and processed at ETC under the topic heading of 'Dreamtime'. It seems very hallucinatory or perhaps like a shamanic journey vision. The source footage was recorded at Storm King Art Park. Processing included the greytone 'wobbled' imagery rescanned from the Paik-Abe Wobbulator and keyed over the original. In this preset, the Wobulator control signals were set to create only a slight ripple in the horizontal scanlines, rather than creating a fully distorted 3D 'wrapped raster' effect. (This effect would be almost impossible to generate via today's digital apps.)

After A Long Pandemic Pause

After a long pandemic pause, I'm back to posting new stuff on my Image Maya blog. You might ask what have I been doing? Actually, I've spent the time quite resourcefully pulling together a complete system to digitize all of my library of video tapes that have languished in a cupboard for way too long... My tape library starts back in the early 1980's with my first 1/2" Beta portable unit (from CTL Electronics in lower Manhattan (my old Tribeca loft neighborhood). After a handful of well-used Beta portables, I jumped in the Hi8 bandwagon - smaller, lighter weight, better quality (?). Then off to digital DV land when that format became available. Meanwhile, as a vidiot producing video art work in the 80's and early 90's, I did all my Master productions on an industrial A/B roll 3/4" U-matic system. 

Needless to say, I faced hundreds of hours of video inventory from my travels around the world to digitize. On top of that, I had over 60 3/4" reels of image processed footage from my residencies at the Experimental Television Center (ETC). These are what I consider to be the 'crown jewels' from the days of analog video processing using tools such as the Jones Colorizer, the Paik-Abe Wobbulator, and other signal processing and keying devices. At the time, the only digital device available at ETC was an one-of-a-kind Jones Frame Buffer (which did just that - buffered a set of video frames for looping, freeze framing, and delaying). Of course, key to the whole production process was using video cameras to rescan off of monitors which allowed for multiple levels of processing effects (way beyond simple feedback). In the case of the Wobbulator, a raster distortion device manipulating H & V frequencies of a CRT display, the only way to actually make use of its range of processing effects was by rescan. (In any case, in hindsight there was a whole lot of glitchy / processed stuff one could easily do in the analog  realm that have no direct analog in digital software-based processing. Exhibit A: the Wobbulator, which became my favorite tool.)

The process in the ETC studio for me involved selecting source footage from my video library and passing that thru the various hot-patched processing devices, and finally back to tape. Because of the analog nature of the controls, real time modifications and tweaking (playing around with settings and patches) was the norm. So typically once a record tape got rolling, a long 5-15 minute 'play' session would resulted. Fine. But of course, unlike many other video folks engaged in image processing triggered by music or electronic sounds (think of early Mudd Club visual music stuff), I was interested not in the durational / abstract / generational element of the process, but rather in generating 15-30 second, perhaps 2 minute long processed segments to incorporate into my video narratives.

With that as background, I decided the shutdown provided me a window of time to digitize my source videos before the inevitable wear of time made the tapes unplayable physically, either due to tape decay or unavailability of obsolescent decks to play such. I calculated that I'd need around 6TB of storage for all of my material, stored at DV's equivalent to pre-HD analog resolution: 720x480. And lots of time - as digitizing tapes is by its very nature 'real time'. Plus, I wanted to create a tape index of locations, subjects, and scenes to make finding interesting material possible in the virtual haystack. (I have started by using EXCEL spreadsheets, with a goal of creating a true relational database... sooner than later...)

And of course, every video deck I owned needed repair servicing after being idle in the closet for 20+ years. Or I had to buy something off EBAY...

So all of that has been taking time.

But that's not all - I've also been working on a series of digital glitch animations based upon my Tibetan Buddhist art. But more on that in a later posting.

For now, I want to post several short video excepts from some of the ETC processed footage. 

Paik-Abe Wobbulator

Image of an experimental color CRT Wobbulator being built at Signal Culture labs.

Wobbulated still image of Nixon

Animation of a sequence of still Wobbulated images