This website documents my journey, as an artist and technician through the bizarre and compelling medium of FEEDBACK.
2024 New work ---- CLICK IMAGE ---- for more info
A note from the past:
April 1, 2018
Part of the impetus I felt when I first started to explore video feedback was the sense of power it gave me to control
this visual medium that had the whole world hypnotized. I hated commercial television and everything that it stood for.
I was shocked and disgusted to learn how many sophisticated manipulation techniques were employed in one commercial break
and how all the content was shaped by marketing, public relations and propaganda. As I discovered psychology, hypnosis, the works of Marshall McLuhan and
others I embarked on my own mission of discovery with this medium and felt I was liberating myself from my addiction to commercial
television. I watched the internet grow up around me and saw potential for further personal liberation but also the
potential for more sophisticated psychological domination by political and commercial forces. I am a child of the 70s.
Never was much of a hacker. More of a twisted TV kid really. It's been almost 20 years since I first pointed a camera
at a TV and I have little more of value to offer you then this: PSYCHEDELIC ATTACK is the name of my video feedback noise/drone
project. Words lie. Visual narratives lie. Very soon synthetic video will be indistinguishable from authentic. I
offer you the only salvation I have found. Complex evolving visual patterns that strobe at illusion and hallucination
inducing frequencies simultaneously translated into audible textures too complex to follow consciously. The stimuli will
overwhelm and become indistinguishable from your brains attempts to associate and project meaning. The stimuli will
beckon you to muster your best attention to perceive it as it changes and grows. Chase it as if it were a wild animal
running through the brush. Chase it like an exhausted starving person chases their last chance to live.
Saturday August 17, 2024 - Sixth Edmonton Noise Festival - I had a fantastic time this year! It was great
to see all my comrades. Special thanks to Abram for all the hard work you put into this event. It all went very smoothly.
Hanging out and talking with you and Lixin was a highlight of the trip.
Wednesday March 27, 2024 - Teflon Spine 9 - Thanks to everyone that came out and to all the performers and volunteers.
BIG thanks to Ethan for organizing these Teflon Spine shows. Love you man! Great to see Mike Cantalon aka Bad Feng Shui and
Colin Hendry aka Broken Sleep of OG Y2K Mediacore status! Cool we all got to hang out with Jim from Redgate too.
Thanks for coming!
I set up a lot of weird gear for this one.
For visuals, a 100 picture slide show of video feedback stills + a custom made holding slide keyed into a video mixer
for no-input mixing video feedback. For Psychedelic Attack performance 2 no-input audio mixers feeding back on themselves then into
a third audio mixer also feeding back on its self. Ghetto blaster TV set with custom made free-style video camera housing and mount for video
feedback plus another video camera on a lighting standing stand pointing at a table mounted TV set with feedback going through MetaMirrors
Kaleidoscope software controlled with a Leapmotion gesture interface.
Tuesday March 19, 2024 - the night of the Vernal Equinox brings the 3d annual KHA Equinoctial Experiment.
This year we are bringing the mighty Merlyn Chipman, legendary figure of the west coast underground and Illuminated Master of the Feedback Loop.
In addition to audiovisual arcana of unique ilk, Merlyn will provide insights and inspiration:
Merlyn Chipman, Feedback Artist
"Modern Conjuring with Feedback (beyond screams from the void). [Or how to harvest angelic forms to manifest in print, 3D and textile mediums.]"
Alongside this will be the incessant throbbing clatter and warp of THRUMS - reprising Snakeskin Crackle with a new suite of process and techniques. (Machine learning! Spatialization of timbre! Clamour! Bang! Thump!)
We run our shows by donation and give all the money to visiting artists, there are no tickets, the venue is small, the sound is large.
We end things early enough to escape to larger land masses. -Wayne Mercier
Laser Deck
Randy Stiefel and I burnt this video feedback design of mine onto my Pin Tail Landyacht using Randy's laser
plotter over at Maker Labs! Super stoked with the results! There are some things I would do differently on
the next design. Randy and I are both looking forward to burning more decks!
Here is what the deck looked like after we took it out of the laser plotter and sanded it.
Tape saturated sounds, from international talents for an afternoon into an evening. Originally a
Live in person event located at The James Black Gallery, it was reconfigured during this time to an
Online format for your pleasure.
Click here for full description and artist bios.
(Click the Tape Heads image above for full description and artist bios)
Click the link below to see progress on my on-going installation project:
Pleased to be doing visuals for Softness - Vancouver Low Frequency Festival 2019 around the corner from
my beloved Redgate at the The James Black Gallery in Vancouver BC on Saturday, May 11.
Neuztec
NuezTec was such a good time! Special thanks to Kikino Myster Shulba, David Bodrug, Chris
Rozek and Sara Gold. Great to hang out with artists from the islands Brian Stubbs,
Maxwell Patterson, Padre and my Vancouver peeps as well. I had a few people come up to me after
the show and compliment my performance. This made up for last weekend.
Here is a video of my set.
Poor Mans Speed Ball
This weekend was Big to me. I did all the things. Visuals for every set. Video and audio recording. A
noise set. Special thanks especially to Sian Macleod and also to Liam McIvor and Shawn.
Such an honor to collaborate with such talented artists. Very happy to report that the
audio recordings off the board + my video to the projectors look/sound good enough to
release. Sian and I will update contributing artists before anything goes live.
Poor Man's Speed Ball demanded a great deal of my energy this weekend. I definitely over
extended my self and ran out of spoons half way through. It was TOTALLY WORTH IT! My PSYCHEDELIC
ATTACK set certainly suffered. I can say with confidence and objectivity that it was the worst set
of the night. Lesson learned. Better to do a few things well and relax then bomb in front of an audience.
The FIRST Loop Coma party showcasing some of Vancouver's local deejays. This is also a bit of a tear jerker as
we say bye bye to our beloved Spencer before he migrates to Chi-city.
NERVOUS OPERATORJOEL JOHNOVERLANDGOOMATT TECSON
Mark Hosler was cool. I enjoyed talking with him. His set was amazing. It is such an honor and a pleasure to make live interpretive
visuals for bleeps and bloops of this caliber! Thanks to Mark Hosler for coming to Red Gate and to Fans of Nothing and Happiness
Under Capitalism for bringing him out. Thanks especially to Jim Carrico for inviting me to do visuals.
What an adventure! Edmonton Noise Fest was awesome! Made some new friends. Heard some crazy sounds. Spread the namshub
of PSYCHEDELIC ATTACK to a new region of brain hosts. Took out the drivers side CV joint in the minivan and still made mine
and Whip of the UFOs set! Then fixed it and still made my lift op shift at Skookum Festival. Listened to Electric Wizard
for the entire 10 hour drive back. Hahaha. Special thanks to Sian Macleod for the couch. OMG, Joellicorn, you saved our asses
so excellently! Thanks for putting us up (and putting up with us). Without your help we wouldn't have made it.
Thanks also to Mark Meloche for throwing a great event and inviting us, and to Gary James Joynes for making me sound so good.
The last Hexistential was the best visuals gig I had last year. The performers were all top notch and my interpretation of their sounds with colour was flawless.
it will be held at the Redgate Review Stage which is the perfect venue for this work. I am really looking forward to this. I will be doing visuals and performing
solo as Psychedelic Attack.
BYOG2 on May 2, 2018 was another success. DJ Seedy came out of retirement and surprised us all with strange tracks
in a play list curated to fill in between live sets. Public Disturbance started the live sets with a harsh noise
cover of 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall that actually did remind one of glass breaking over and over again. Stay
tuned for my upload of that set with accompanying visuals. Followed by Giorgio Magnanensi then PSYCHEDELIC ATTACK.
After that everyone just started playing one by one until we were all drowning in a mud bath of sound that lasted
for hours. Scott Thomas Chalmers and Caleb Blagdon finished off the night like last time. I got good feedback
from people. The consensus seems to be that Vancouver could use a night like this. I'm considering making BYOG
a regular event. I am going to miss Redgate's 855 east Hastings location. I have had a lot of good times here.
This was a great memory to leave this place with. I shared creative expression with some new friends and some old
friends that haven’t seen each other in many years.
BYOG on April 4, 2018 was a success! Much tallent was shared and enjoyed! Thanks to all who came. My video
recordings did not work out unfortunately. But, I did record over an hour of interesting audio. I have separated
the recording into tracks. When I have confirmation regarding who played in each track and have all the permissions
perhaps we can release some of it.
February 24, 2015:
I woke up too early this morning. Thinking about an experiment I wanted to try. Then I did it. Theres a feeling I
remember getting on those rare moments, years ago, while making video feedback and rocking out so hard the poor old telly
just died. The psycho-delic/tronic experience was just too much for the components to endure. Quite literally, a show
stopper. It was a wonderful feeling of triumph. If other people were watching, they'd freak out. It was the stuff
underground legends are made of. Today I had that feeling. Today I cloned MetaMirrors and daisy-chained the clones,
each one with a different kaleidoscope group fed into one another. It worked! The results were unimaginable! Nested
digital kaleidoscopes defining the edges of a fractal fluid oozing out of TV Killer, my trusty old video camera, onto
the illuminated screen. Whirlpools of living rainbow gasoline puddle mutating my fingers into tendrils descending in
scale down an oscillating mandalic fractal. But only for a minute. Until the computer choked on it! No sparks or smoke,
nothing fried. No need to carve another notch on TV Killer. But it felt good! Today is going to be a good day.
Here are some old recordings of performances, installations and experiments from my youtube channel. New links to
come soon...
