Thursday, September 20, 2007

SKT 090: 2001




SKT 090: 2001-5:00-STEREO-VIDEO-2003 BY CASPAR STRACKE

SKT 090: 2001, is one of three video works produced
on an obsolete video medium.
(The CED: Capacitance Electronic Disc player)
It was the last technology in the tradition of Edison’s phonograph
to read information from a disc with a stylus.
This technology was in use for less than a decade and quickly
replaced by Pioneer’s Laser Disc Technology.The video was
recorded on an old slightly modified CED payer by RCA.
What makes this particular model a unique performer is its
highly individual and eccentric way of playing back the video.
The machine, 17 Years old, reads scratches on the disc not like
crackles on an audio record but chops a scene into fragments less
than a 1/4 sec long and re-assembles them by chance operation.
Considering its historical context, there is some irony involved in
this "accident" which is performed without human interaction.
This collage machine mimes deconstructive editing techniques
well-known in the video art from the Eighties.
The fragile unpredictable nature of the machine reproducing the
stored analogue information in such an illogical way produces a
machine autonomy that questions the way real-time is adapted
into film-time.CS
S