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

scratchvideo/design/structure/video_scratching

Video scratching disrupts the linear movement of traditional film and television. Scratching creates anticipation; actions move back and forth until they are allowed to play out. People appear to "dance" to the beat of music, when a VJ is scratching the motion of samples. Trigger software such as VJamm is best used to scratch images only. To attain continuity of image and sound, an editor can match the two in a studio, or a VJ can play with a scratch DJ in realtime.

Adding images to the sounds of vinyl scratching doesn't have to be done using samples. Syd Garon and Eric Henry, the co-directors of the Wave Twisters film, scratch with DIY images they created. Their "turntable of death" scene matches up an image to Q-Bert's scratching. Syd Garon went straight to the source: "I actually went to Q-Bert's house and filmed him scratching that part of the song and I put a dot on his record." To match up sound and image perfectly, "I took the record into my footage, and copied the way the dot moved on the record". So, if the cartoon turntable of death was a real record, it would play the scratch exactly. "I don't know what it's called", says Wave Twister's Eric Henry, "I would say lip synch, but I guess it's called scratch synch." (Snider 47)

The whole concept of video scratch may be transformed by Austrian artist Gebhard Sengmuller, and his invention Vinyl Video™. Half art prank, half real technology, Sengmuller wants to fill in a blank in consumer technology. Creating a process to record and playback video onto a vinyl record, just like audio, is for Sengmuller a way to show what could have existed before video tape was invented. The images are only at 12 frames a second, rather than traditional video's 30 fps, so the quality is poor. The possibility for improving the technology exists --- his early work was with only 4 frames a second. Sengmuller wasn't originally thinking in terms of scratching with his records, but he is offering to work with VJs who will beta test his equipment.

Copyright 2000© Hart Snider