Video Weaver (1975) by Stephen Beck

Video Weavings is an homage to the ancient art of weaving. It is a reflection of the "warp and weft" of textiles in the horizontal and vertical scan of television. Video Weavings was the first digital video synthesizer designed, built and performed by Steve Beck. The first version of the Video Weaver was assembled as a "bread board" in 1973 using a "bread board" construction. It was first operational in December of 1973 at Beck's studio at the famous 1406 Euclid Avenue apartment building in the north Berkeley Hills. Using a series of cascoded 4 bit up/down counters synchronized to the NTSC vertical and horizontal scan, and clocked by the NTSC color subcarrier 3.57945 MHz, the Video Weaver operated in real time. The digital outputs were routed into the "quad" four channel analog colorizers in the BDVS (Beck Direct Video Synthesizer.) Control of the digital warp and weft and feedback counter paths was via a modified Texas Instruments hand held calculator. Later in 1976 Beck constructed a second Video Weaver using three wire wrap boards with 74C00 series CMOS digital ICs for lower power use. An Intel 80C51 single chip microcontroller was also added to the design for logic control, again via a modified Texas Instruments hand held calculator keyboard. In 1991 Beck was honored with an invitation to participate in the Ars Electronica exhibition "Pioneers of Electronic Art" in Linz Austria. Curated by prominent video artist Woody Vasulka and German scholar Peter Weibel, it was a glorious event, including interactive Laser Video Discs. An excellent catalog was also produced for the exhibition in Linz, Austria. For Ars Electronica Beck constructed a third "Video Weaver (Reincarnated)." This version condensed all of the digital logic ICs (over 300 of them!) into a single digital IC, the Xilinx FPGA (field programmable gate array). However Beck retained the quad analog RGB colorizers. Control of the Video Weaver digital parameters was via a large matrix switch array board. This mimics the warp and weft arrangements found on textile weaving looms. The Video Weaver Reincarnated was again exhibited as a nine screen video sculpture at the first Kwang-ju Biennale "InfoArts" at the invitation of video master Nam June Paik in 1995.

artist website