This is a Television Receiver

(David Hall/1976/UK)

This is an avant-garde video piece in which newscaster Richard Baker, in close up, describes the functions of a television and the metaphysical paradoxes of the images and sounds onscreen. The section repeats but is now removed digitally as if the camera is recording a recording. This first iteration introduces a slight degradation of image and sound. There are two more iterations of the original each removed further than the last and producing increasingly degraded results. The second has Baker looking like a Sontaran from Dr. Who but his speech and image are still just about recognisable. The final iteration is a surreal, unintelligible warping of vision and sound. The degraded audio creates what sounds like a haunting wind, sound tracking the now alien dialogue of Baker who is no more than a visual stain of pixels across the screen. This is an excellent piece which queries the nature of representation and the manipulation of that representation to create new meaning.

This is a Television Receiver on Ubu

(5/5)