Eric
siegel's vsynths
ERIC SIEGEL
EVS Electronic Video Synthesizer (Analog), 1970
Dual Colorizer (Analog), 1971
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One if the early adventurers into the realm of video,
Eric Siegel was born in New York in 1944. He failed the
electronics course in high school but went on to invent
the PCS (Processing Chrominance Synthesizer) in 1968
which permits controlled colorizing of black and white
videotapes and the EVS (Electronic Video Synthesizer) in
1970, by means of which abstract forms, mostly
geometrical, can be created at will in color on a TV
screen without the use of a camera. The
"Einstine" tape, 1968, uses video feedback to
produce it's psychedelic effects, and was one of the
first video art tapes to use this technique. Siegel spent
half a year in India, studying Hindu medicine and making
videotapes. This picture was taken from a video tape made
at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York City, 1971. |
ERIC SIEGEL EVS
SYNTHESIZER
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The EVS Video synthesizer contains many components of
the Special Efficts Generator (SEC), with the additions
of a color encoder and free form patch matrix. Built in a
BIC-VERO rack with front panel knobs and switches, a
large horizontal plug matrix is present to patch together
video effects. The patch panels were pulled from IBM
style card sorters, with connections formed by
mini-banana plug cables in a rainbow of adorable colors.
In the front of the patch panels is a row of 16 white,
flat rocker switches. arranged horizontally to resemble a
piano keyboard. The matrix has 15 rows by 20 columns with
various inputs and outputs scattered throughout the
panel. The processing connections are carried back to the
main rack unit. All voltages at the patch matrix are 1
Volt P-P, allowing for the connection of any output to
any input. The outputs of the modules are low impedance
and can drive multiple inputs. The synthesizer box has
provisions for two video input sources, and a duplicate
set of video outputs. |
 |
In the rack of electronics sits:
1 - A power supply
for the modules
2 - Three voltage
controlled two-in-one-out video mixers. These can switch
at video rates, as well as mix the two video inputs depending on
the control signal input.
3 - A Horizontally
and a Vertically locked sawtooth generator with a square and
logarithmic waveform output. These can be used to form horizontal
or vertical patterns for use as a video or control source. The
oscillators can be independently voltage controlled and
"unlocked" to the horizontal or vertical timing source,
causing the patterns to "wobble" horizontally or
vertically.
4 - A Horizontally
and Vertically locked triangle/square waveform generator with
logical combinations of the H & V patterns. This forms 4
basic patterns a Horizontal bar, a Vertical bar, a square pattern
formed from the "Anding" of the H & V bars, and a
diamond pattern formed from the gating of the H & V triangle
waveforms. All four outputs are available simultaneously at the
patch panel. Size and position of the triangle/bars is controlled
from knobs on the front panel.
5 - Dual voltage
controlled oscillator/generators with dual video attenuators. The
voltage controlled oscillators can free-run or be locked to
horizontal or vertical sync. The frequency of oscillation is
selected through a rotary switch to switch the capacitive time
constant. The video attenuators linearly attennuate from input to
output, in response to the control input.
6 - The output
color encoder. The main color encoder of the Siegel colorizer is
contained here. It is a conventional "doubly balanced
modulator" to perform the hue and saturation generation from
the control inputs. In place of a conventional R-Y and B-Y
inputs, dual inputs are present on both modulators for inverting
and non-inverting phase shifts. The first modulator axis is
adjusted for orientation along the Red / Cyan axis, while the
second modulator is set 90 degrees in quadrature on the Green /
Magenta color axis. The modulator's outputs are summed together
and form the chrominamce signal. The chroma along with the color
burst is run to the output Proc Amp for combination, to form a
composite color video signal.
The substitution of luminance video with and without waveform
modulation helps to generate the unusual colorizing, with the hue
and saturation changes detetermined by the horizontal components
of the controlling waveforms. The overdriving of the dual
modulators with video signals has been described by Eric Siegel
as "Ultra-Phase Modulation."
7 - The output of
the colorizer goes to the Processing amplifier. The output Proc
Amp merges and cleans up (blanks) the synthesized video to a form
that is video compatible. It is here that the burst, sync and
blanking is formed and gated, and the luminance and chrominance
combined. Knobs are available to mix the Luma and Chroma
proportions for the two main video output.
ERIC SIEGEL COLORIZER
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The Eric Siegel Colorizer is a modulation based
colorizer that generates color images from monochrome
sources by adding a modulated subcarrier onto a black and
white video signal. It is a derivative of a Video
Processing Amplifier (Proc Amp) whose primary function is
to cleanse the composite video of signal aberrations. The
Proc Amp re-inserts the sync signal, adjusts the
brightness, contrast (gain) and edge enhancement of the
luminance component, while correcting the hue (phase) and
saturation (amplitude) of the chrominance component. The
Siegel colorizer modifies the functions of a Proc Amp by
generating a synthetic subcarrier. It is then added to
the luminance component of the input source which forms
color from a black and white picture. The black to white
excursions of the input signal shift the color hue. This
generates multitudes of colors that track the brightness
of the video. |
| A monochrome input signal is filtered of extraneous
3.58 Mhz components then detail enhanced and run to a
Chroma Phase Shift Modulator. The modulator links the
video brightness to a phase shift of the synthetic color
subcarrier, swinging it's output hue. The two stage phase
shift circuit enables greater than 360 degree rotations
in hue space, or "Ultra-Phase Modulation" of
the chroma. The degree of phasc shift and its polarity
are selected through the front panel. The starting hue
and saturation of the synthetic chroma along with
brightness and contrast of the output video, are adjusted
through front panel controls. |
 |
A few words from Woody Vasulka
"One of the most unusual personalities amongst the
builders was Eric Siegel. Eric was flying on those undefinable
wings of youthful divinity, propped up by willing muses. True,
his art involvement was brief, and he soon lapsed into relative
obscurity. A serious search found him again twenty years later.
From the child genius building electric boxes, to the socially
engaged utopian reformer, from a self-educated dyslexic to an
overland traveller from Europe to India, he had a keen sense of
opportunity. In no time he initiated and organized a group with
two of us called "The Perception". Howard Wise was the
umbrella and it went on feeding other artists long after we
departed to organize The Kitchen.
Our infatuation with Eric was probably conditioned by our coming
from Europe. Europeans have always been perplexed by the
unexplainable source of American talent: something springing up
from nowhere without history, right in the belly of the beast of
capitalism.
I always wonder why it took Eric to introduce this new image so
convincingly. Something extraordinary happened when we saw that
flaming face of Einstein at the end of the corridor. For us,
something ominous, for me, something finally free of film."
-W.V.
A few words from an interview by
Jud Yalkut
E.S.: For the last two years, out of necessity, I've been into
a hardware trip, and in this time I've developed two pieces of
video equipment, both of which were developed in San Francisco. I
thought that I would work better out there. The main project was
the Electronic Video Synthesizer. That's like the video
equivalent of a music synthesizer, where you have a program board
and you can start to set up a whole series of visual geometric
happenings in color on the video signaIs-the screen-and this is
designed for video compositions. At the kitchen last week (in
1973), I dlid a piece called Yantra Matitra with it, which was
quite favorably received. The other piece of equipment is the
colorizer. There have been, hy the way, business and technical
snags to getting out the EVS, but it is something that people
should he able to go out and get. On the EVS, you just have to
put in sync, and everything is composed right inside of the
synthesizer. But you can put in live cameras too, and do things
that involve pictures and synthesizer images.
So that's the EVS, and the other piece of equipment I've been
developing parallel to this is the Color Synthesizer. or Video
Colorizer, as people tend to want to call it. That takes black
and white video signals, from 1/2" tape, like people who
have been shooting with their portapaks, and it allows them to
synthetically color the picture. This doesn't work out so it well
for inteiwiews or straight types of photography, but it does work
out extremely well when you move into the more visual and
abstract things. And I found it also works out well with shots of
natural mountains, sky, water, trees, nature, things like that
colorize very well.
What do you think can be done to improve video as a
healing technique? To improve the vibrational food that people
get from it?
I think that depends whikely on the particular video artost who
produced the video, they have to expand themselves, they have to
go to the top of the mountain first, and then through their tapes
show everyone else the top of the mountain. I haven't met too
many who have, gotten to the top at all yet.
And also, as they say in Zen, when one goes to the
top of the mountain, after achieving nothing, one must return to
the marketplace.... Wasn't there, by the way, an earlier version
of the colortzer?
There were a few earlier versions, as a matter of fact. I would
put it another way: it has been under constant development and
has gotten to a stage now where I am totally satisfied with the
way it works. You see, all the previous ones that I made and that
other people have made have many problem areas; you couldn't get
the colors clean, within the areas and the borders; they would
always bleed into the next things and smear and oscillate.
Some people did like that effect and still do.
Yes, there are some people who want this wild type of smeary
effect, but I don't. I don't dig it at all, and electronically,
it is totally inaccurate, and I don't even agree with the
aesthetics of it. So, the way mine is right now, the colors are
very clean and totally within their borders and areas. At times
it looks like chromakey, where you see two pictures cut in so
neatly and cleanly that you're convinced that it is one picture.
Can we consider the synthesizer as a tool for the
transmission of energy?
Karma energy, in the logic sense. I think the synthesizer will
enable Western man to take advantage of the technology that he
has created and only put it to the use of pro-life, pro-spiritual
powers. I think that the synthesizer, used by people who have
advanced to higher levels of consciousness, whatever you wish to
call them, can be used in that way so that this can rub off to an
extent onto the people at home watching it.
We mentioned earlier the possibility of having an
interface between "electronic gurus" as we'll call
them, who can speak through this transmission to each other,
creating perhaps an energy field which is capable of enveloping a
larger number of people.
Hopefully yes. If this should continue, perhaps
with the energy that is transmitted being received by other video
gurus, so to speak. they would pick up on that and send a new
flow of more concentrated energy back out into the airwaves once
again, and start not an atomic chain reaction, but a psychic
chain reaction.
A psychic chain reaction which in this case is being
initiated totally by electronic means, by the direct electronic
interpolation of the performer-guru in reaction to his external
and internal environments.
E.S. Right. In other words, video, because there is this portable
equipment, because it is being used to make this segment which
will go out on the air now. Because there is this equipment, it
means that you don't have to make videotapes in the environment
that we're making them in now, and we're only isolated from the
horror city by hundreds of feet (Note: this interview was
conducted in Central Park.) and so the karma of New York City is
still upon us, and we can't escape that, and it will come through
on this tape. But this recorder that we're using can be taken out
where there is good karma to make recordings, and then the tapes
can be sent to places like New York where there's bad karma, and
good karma can be transmitted through the airwaves.
The synthesizer, too, is also basically a portable
piece of equipment and can be used to broadcast quality
transmission, or for 1/2", or for any type of equipment.
Yes, and as a matter of fact, it can he run on batteries. You can
take a battey-powered tape recorder, a sync generator. and a
video synthesizer, go up to the top of a mountain and do it. I
think that technology is flnally going to go into its second
phase of existence-to help mankind, not for war.
The Electronic Video Synthesizer was created to enhance the
interface between the Video artist and the people. Each human
being is enshelled in his own perception of reality. Rational
logical communications have their severe limitations. The
communications which take place on the aesthetic abstract level
deal with the inner tune of a being. It's like the DNA code of
the artist speaking to the world, since we all perceive different
worlds, in the same worlds, it becomes our necessity to find
witnesses, when we find the ultimate witness . . we find love.
The current trend towards religion and God is in a way a
frustrated attempt to find the ultimate witness. One can not do
without a witness. What you see on the screen is my attempt to
get a witness deeper into your being. -Eric Siegel, 1973
"Howard Wise was advancing a lot of money, he claims that it
was a total of $20,0OO - I can can only take him at his word- but
my fingers never touched $20.OO0. So there was this stress and
strain of "c'mon, you've been funded, are there any
results?" And at the end I felt that I'd been driven. I
didn't feel good any more. But I did finish it. Then I had to go
back to NYC with the finished synthesizer & Howard Wise had
some shows. I don't want to go into that because it was bad for
me. I was placed in a show but it was not clear to me what was
going on. So that was one of the exposures of the Video
Synthesizer. It sat in one of Howard Wise's offices, but what I
had accomplished with it was elementary. It demonstrated to
people that a video synthesizer was a viable piece of technology,
but I had not been to the point where I created an art work. I
really wanted to create moving mandalas like you can see from
India. The motivation for the synthesizer was to alter states of
consciousness. I did a few things with it but I lost interest in
the Video
Synthesizcr because it turned into a job."
Eric Siegel
January 2 , 1992
San Diego, California
This page has been largely taken from ARS ELECTRONICA 1992.
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