Illuminatin' Sweeney (1974)
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Synopsis by Brian Whitener
Skip Sweeney arrived early on the video scene and became known for his sometimes elaborate experiments with video feedback. In this 1975 piece, Sweeney has synced a complex series of feedback tapes, colorized at some point along the way, with music from an early synthesizer. The image's repetitious and mathematical form recalls the films of Jordan Belson while the sound and image linkage reminds one of other early music videos. Although the machine built to process the feedback was a combination of a video synthesizer and a Moog audio synthesizer, it is unclear if this machine was also used to create the soundtrack or if the soundtrack and the video image were derived from the same source. Illuminatin' Sweeny is interesting also for its extension of the jazz concept of improvisation into video art.
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video-art