A sound piece by Stacey Ho
A slow scan demonstration/performance by Hank Bull and Alex Muir

Networks, Distance, So Much I Want To Say is the first of a series of sound pieces produced by Stacey Ho, current artist in residence at VIVO Media Arts.

As part of her residency, Ho is developing a podcast stemming from her research into the Crista Dahl Media Library and Archive. Sampling artworks, documents, and interviews, this project understands that cultural history is mediated by technology, active in the present moment, and informed by the experiences of many people and communities.

Ho’s interest in slow scan television’s (SSTV)* use by a network of artists’ centres experimenting with communication technology since the 70s functions as a starting point. But rather than centering on the now obsolete but then innovative aspects of SSTV technology, Networks, Distance, So Much I Want To Say instead constructs a narrative with audio snippets extracted from documentation of past events and the testimony of contemporary respondents. The voices become an instrument tracing a shifting vernacular,  exposing the dilemmas and fissures of media representation.

Following a communal listening of Ho’s piece, Hank Bull – an innovator in radio, telecommunications, performance and social practices – will present clips from Wiencouver IV, a live exchange of Telephone Music and Slow Scan video between Vienna and Vancouver that took place in 1983. Organized during the visit of Robert Adrian as artist in residence at the Western Front, Wiencouver IV featured live bands, performance art and computer graphics.

This event will be documented by a recently resurrected slow scan robot: a very rare opportunity to be part of a demonstration of the original hardware by Hank Bull and Alex Muir.

* “A prerequisite for slow scan television (SSTV) is a Robot digital scan converter which grabs single frames from a video source and converts them into 8 second sequences of audio tones that can then be sent along a telephone line to another converter“ (Slow Scan Video, VideoGuide vol.1 n.3 issue 3, 1978)