Scrub Study

Scrub Study

C. Spencer Yeh
2009, 7:05 min, color, sound

Description

Scrub Study explores relationships among artist, voice and image, with technology as intermediary. This composited multi-channel video is based around a direct head-and-shoulders view of the artist performing various autodidactic extended techniques. The source footage has been fed into a non-linear video editor, which plays scattered frames of video and audio as the artist, operating the computer mouse, "scrubs" the digital playhead over the clip. In this way, the artist's physical manipulation of his own vocal chords is distorted by another layer of manual and digital interfacing between hand, mouse, input, software, and output, with a level of implied "live" performance defined by the mousing hand's muscle memory versus the chance of imprecision. The effect is uncanny, as the acoustic voice becomes a seemingly randomized, almost percussive digital stream, and the artist's movements display a particularly computerized, jerky character. As a multi-channel composite, the scrubbed sources are variously displayed side-by-side, as four-square panels, and superimposed full-frame, creating a blippy audiovisual arrangement of chance harmony and dissonance.