Ron Hays, video synthesizers, and Earth, Wind & Fire

David Pescovitz 2:55 pm Mon May 7, 2012

In 1966, pioneering video artist Nam June Paik was an artist in residence at Boston's public broadcasting station WGBH. Paik and engineer Shuya Abe created the Paik-Abe video synthesizer, a fantastic device that generated triply visuals with a colorizer and modulators. In the years that followed, WGBH formed the New Television Workshop to support the "creation and broadcast of experimental works by artists." One of those artists who produced work with the Paik-Abe synthesizer was Ron Hays, who made the lovely piece Genesis (1981) above (music by Ragnar Grippe), recently featured on the MOP Radionic Workshop. Hays went on to commercial success with his music video for Earth, Wind & Fire's "Let's Groove" (1981), seen below. The effects Hays made for that video, using the analog Scanimate video synthesizer, were truly cutting edge. For the time, people. For the time.

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