Phil Morton

Experimental video art by Phil Morton.

Phil Morton’s “SAIC Memo” video art work from 1981 features Timothy Leary, Jane Veeder and Jamie Fenton. The Sandin Image Processor, a patch-programmable analog computer optimized for realtime audio video processing and synthesis developed from 1971 - 1973, and The Bally Arcade Video Game System, a programable home video game console developed in 1974, are used to compute and process the material of this playful, critical and self-reflexive psychedelic cybernetic communication system.

13 minute video art piece by Phil Morton.

“Program #9” by Jane Veeder and Phil Morton is a collaborative Video Art work from 1979. “Program #9” is from a series of videos produced by Morton and Veeder under the name “the Electronic Visualization Center a television research satellite to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago”. Veeder and Morton traveled the continental United States in a mobile Media Art lab built into a customized General Motors van engaging in “Videotape presentations, live Video and Computer Graphics performances, workshops, and/or any useful format of collaboration."

Between 1976 and 1982, Jane Veeder traveled the western mountains of the United States with Phil Morton. On these road trips the two would shoot video of their surroundings using a portable video recorder. Some of these video recordings of the western mountain terrain were used to produce the televised video piece known as Program #7. Program #7 was produced as a part of a larger group of videos known as The Electronic Visualization Center: A Television Research Satellite to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Program #7 was televised on Chicago Public Television as a part of a program which ran work by independent video creators. Program #7 was created using a Sandin Image Processor and a Bally Home Computer. Graphics generated using a Bally Home Computer would be overlaid overtop of the video recorded by Veeder and Morton using the Sandin Image Processor. The Sandin Image Processor would also be used to add varying patterns to the image.

Short experimental animation from a trio of talented knob-twiddlers.

A joint effort by numerous video artists of the time, starring dancer Rylin Harris.

Short experimental film by Phil Morton and Guenther Tetz.

Short video art piece.

is an informal, offbeat lesson in the electronics and mechanics of television. Sandin demonstrates basic video procedures, including use of the camera and editing decks, and explains the transmission of the television signal.

A short, psychedelic film by Phil Morton.

This is a example of early video art using the color capability of the Sandin Analogue Image Processor - the "Color IP".

A quiet mediation on the sea (and what might lie beneath the surface?) from the late 70s.

The Second Electronic Visualization Event took place at The University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus in 1976. This documentation features Bob Snyder on EMU Synthesizer, Phil Morton on the Sandin Image Processor by Dan Sandin and Guenther Tetz on the GRASS (GRaphics Symbiosis System) by Tom DeFanti. In Morton's words these artists perform live realtime audio and video synthesis "using both analog and digital computers as 'visual instruments'..." Other artists credited with participation in the Electronic Visualization Events between 1975 and 1978 include Drew Browning, Larry Cuba, Barbara Latham, John Manning, Faramarz Rahbar, Ed Rankus, Michael Sterling, Barbara Sykes and Jane Veeder.

Phil Morton's General Motors video art work was created in 1976. Then based in Chicago, the late Phil Morton created this project as a playful and critical video response in conversation with a local General Motors dealership from whom he had purchased a van. Produced at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (where Morton founded the Video Area), this work includes "Phil Morton and Friends" such as Dan Sandin and Tom DeFanti who collaboratively developed the early Video Art scene in Chicago.

A short experimental film by Phil Morton.

(1972-1974)