Scratch Video a mutant hybrid of scratch DJ music and guerrilla TV

scratchvideo/design/structure

Using structures borrowed from hip hop and electronic music, scratch video has built up a visual vocabulary to emulate sounds with images. Cathy Schwichtenberg explains how images in "conceptual music videos" interpret the structure of music:

"Motion is meant to replicate rhythms. Firth (1988) points out that most music videos are edited to a song's rhythms, and this is especially true of conceptual videos. Through rhythmic editing, the video "expresses" tempos, riffs, and melodic structure, often in a montage of images." (Schwichtenberg 124)

Director Chris Cunningham makes music videos for people like Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and Bjork.

"The way I make music videos is to break it down the way a choreographer would break it down to a tempo so the whole thing evolves purely from music, rather than being a filmmaker who is working in music, imposing his ideas onto tracks. My ideas (are) determined completely by (the) structure." (Chamberlin 38)

In conceptual music videos, images are plugged into the structure of music (the rhythm, the beat, and the layers of sounds). Scratch video is either editing samples together to create the structure, or matching images to the structure of music in realtime. Scratch video uses distinct visual language, like the visual scratch, to create synch between motion and rhythm.

Copyright 2000© Hart Snider