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Crinkle

Phil Morton

1974 00:09:51 United StatesEnglishB&WMono4:31/2" open reel video
Tags:
Image Processing, The Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive

Description

Featuring overlaying monologues, Phil Morton brings up a wide range of philosophical and mundane topics: self-exploration, evolution, personal values, frustration, exhaustion, spirituality, video making, etc. He discusses the capability of video as a tool for expansion of perception.

Video and media advancement is like a crinkle that provides both opportunities and challenges. On one hand, video arts can expand consciousness, but also open up a rabbit hole of self-reflection and perhaps self-criticism. The video is an ongoing juxtaposition of live-feed portrait video and constant influx of feedback. At times, the feedback appears like burning flame and portal toward the viewer, as if lighting up an urge to self-examination. The audiovisual elements are never clearly perceivable due to overlapping, as if uncovering a Jungian confrontation to the self-unconscious.

This crinkled situation of mental battle fostered by videos is supplemented by a brief sample of Nam June Paik’s interview in the middle, seemingly to echo with Paik’s sentiment: “I use technology in order to hate it properly,” which remains relevant to contemporary life.

–Gordon Dic-Lun Fung

For more information, visit the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive page. 

The date for this title is approximate. 

About Phil Morton

Phil Morton (1945-2003) received degrees in art education and fine arts from Penn State and Purdue. He began teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1969. Within a year, he had established the first video department in the country to offer both BA and MFA degrees in video production. In subsequent years Morton continued to expand the media resources and educational opportunities at the School of the Art Institute, establishing the Video Data Bank as a collection of videotaped presentations and interviews with artists in 1972.

In collaboration with Dan Sandin, Morton distributed plans for the Image Processor (IP), a modular video synthesizer based on the Moog audio synthesizer. In 1974, he established "P-Pi's" or the Pied Piper Interactioning System, a cable TV station in South Haven, Michigan. He was the sole proprietor of his own independent video production company, Greater Yellowstone News, which published, among other things, video news tapes of the wildlife and people of the Greater Yellowstone area, many of which were shown on Tom Weinberg's PBS program The '90s.

Many of the titles listed here are also part of the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive (PMMRA), which was established in 2007 by artist and scholar jonCates to coordinate and freely distribute Morton’s Media Art work and associated research under Morton’s COPY-IT-RIGHT license. In 2023, jonCates donated the PMMRA to Video Data Bank. In honor of Morton's COPY-IT-RIGHT philosophy, all titles on VDB's website are available to watch for free. Visit a title’s artwork page to view. For more information and to access the full list of available titles related to PMMRA, visit the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive Collection page. 

The titles listed on this page are videos produced by Morton. To view the list of titles only created and collected by Morton's students and collaborators, visit the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive artist page.