Art Punks
Jan 01, 1978Art Punks is a song directly attacking the antics of famous conceptual body artists of the day.
Music
Ernest Gusella
Recently added
Playing Catch and Playing Catch Again
Jan 01, 1974
Dude Defending A Stare-Case
Jan 01, 1974
What Under the Sun?
Jan 01, 1984What Under The Sun? is a private view of Mexico and it's history up to the present, loosely based on Bernal Diaz's account of Cortez's Conquest of the Aztecs. The work was initiated by a desire to apply electronic stream of consciousness techniques, as utilized in previous works, to a more specific topic, in this case Mexican history. The work is composed of six chapters, each conveying some aspect of Mexico's history or its psyche.
Connecticut Papoose
Jan 01, 1981CONNECTICUT PAPOOSE is conceived a surrealist tract, with references to Lautremont, Tristan Tzara, Andre Breton and to surrealist images of sleeping and dreaming. Throughout the tape, unrelated images and ideas are juxtaposed as they might be in a surrealist painting by Magritte. The voice over operates as a kind of stream of consciousness guide through the underworld labyrinth of the human mind (with all its vicissitudes). Lines from poets are combined with skewed observations on contemporary culture. Performances of musical and artistic content coccur within abnormal contexts. Images and sounds themselves also distorted and manipulated by electronic processes to produce a distancing and alienation from reality.
No Commercial Potential is composed of 19 separate video performance works. Each piece utilizes some aspect of video processing; From the playful to the aggressive, Gusella's early works in the medium are notable. The sounds are both natural (zoom lens being manipulated in 'Wolfzooming') and electronic, or a combination of both, as in the hypnotic 'Neo Plastic Key'.
Exquisite Corpse
Jan 01, 1978The "exquisite corpse" named in the title of this piece refers to a favorite game of the Surrealists, played by passing a folded sheet of paper among a group; each person draws one section of a body on the folded segment without looking at the other sides. What was done with pen and paper, Gusella accomplishes electronically using the VideoLab. Utilizing quick, voltage-controlled live switching between two cameras, Gusella approximates composite images. For examples, his torso appears to combine with a close-up of his face. The perceptual effect is mesmerizing and disorienting.
The Commission
Jan 01, 1983This work is Woody's first entry into the narrative sphere, whereby the "story" is continually undermined with the aid of various anti-narrative strategies: In each of the eleven segments of this "electronic opera", different effects are used. Fascinated with the remarkable personality of infamous violinist Niccola Paganini and his complicated relationship to Hector Berlioz (played by artists Ernie Gusella and Robert Ashley, respectively), the author meditates over the intricacies of artistic geniality as connected not only with fame but also with the necessity of painful survival under the pressures of the art market.
Art Punks
Jan 01, 1978Art Punks is a song directly attacking the antics of famous conceptual body artists of the day.
Music
Iris
Jan 01, 1979Playing Catch and Playing Catch Again
Jan 01, 1974Dude Defending A Stare-Case
Jan 01, 1974The Commission
Jan 01, 1983This work is Woody's first entry into the narrative sphere, whereby the "story" is continually undermined with the aid of various anti-narrative strategies: In each of the eleven segments of this "electronic opera", different effects are used. Fascinated with the remarkable personality of infamous violinist Niccola Paganini and his complicated relationship to Hector Berlioz (played by artists Ernie Gusella and Robert Ashley, respectively), the author meditates over the intricacies of artistic geniality as connected not only with fame but also with the necessity of painful survival under the pressures of the art market.
No Commercial Potential is composed of 19 separate video performance works. Each piece utilizes some aspect of video processing; From the playful to the aggressive, Gusella's early works in the medium are notable. The sounds are both natural (zoom lens being manipulated in 'Wolfzooming') and electronic, or a combination of both, as in the hypnotic 'Neo Plastic Key'.
Bending Diogenes
Jan 01, 1983Bending Diogenes is a lamentation on modern "siphilization," with its promises and dreams for a bigger and better life. It questions modern man's motives and conditions, while introducing the teachings of Diogenes, the founder of the Cynic School of Philosophy, of ancient Greece.
What Under the Sun?
Jan 01, 1984What Under The Sun? is a private view of Mexico and it's history up to the present, loosely based on Bernal Diaz's account of Cortez's Conquest of the Aztecs. The work was initiated by a desire to apply electronic stream of consciousness techniques, as utilized in previous works, to a more specific topic, in this case Mexican history. The work is composed of six chapters, each conveying some aspect of Mexico's history or its psyche.
Connecticut Papoose
Jan 01, 1981CONNECTICUT PAPOOSE is conceived a surrealist tract, with references to Lautremont, Tristan Tzara, Andre Breton and to surrealist images of sleeping and dreaming. Throughout the tape, unrelated images and ideas are juxtaposed as they might be in a surrealist painting by Magritte. The voice over operates as a kind of stream of consciousness guide through the underworld labyrinth of the human mind (with all its vicissitudes). Lines from poets are combined with skewed observations on contemporary culture. Performances of musical and artistic content coccur within abnormal contexts. Images and sounds themselves also distorted and manipulated by electronic processes to produce a distancing and alienation from reality.
Arrows
Aug 22, 1978Paste yourself up to look like a Cubist painting, chant a rose is a rose is a rose through a synthesizer, and before you know it all your friends will begin to avoid you.
Nihon Kara Kita
Apr 20, 1976A sutra with a slant, with backing vocals by the Zen Tabernacle Choir. This tape depicts and describes how Japan economically bamboozled the United States in retaliation for dropping the A-Bomb. Very popular with all of my Japanese friends.
Video-Taping
Jan 01, 1974Gusella's title creates a pun on the term video "tape" by using a split screen in which one half is the electronic negative of the other. Gusella set up a glass sheet and suspended it from light poles. The glass was covered with black or white tape. As he slowly removes the obscuring tape from one half of the screen, his ghostly negative image emerges, further confusing the viewer. Electronically constructed using a VideoLab - a voltage controllable, multi-channel switcher, keyer, and colorizer built by Bill Hearn - the tape relies on the use of a luminance keyer to "cut out" specfic brightness levels (determined by voltage) from one video signal and replace them with a video signal from a second camera. Keying is a video effect seen commonly on television weather reports, in which the images of the map displayed behind the announcer are electronically matted into the image.
Facial Treatments #2 and #4
Jan 01, 1977Exquisite Corpse
Jan 01, 1978The "exquisite corpse" named in the title of this piece refers to a favorite game of the Surrealists, played by passing a folded sheet of paper among a group; each person draws one section of a body on the folded segment without looking at the other sides. What was done with pen and paper, Gusella accomplishes electronically using the VideoLab. Utilizing quick, voltage-controlled live switching between two cameras, Gusella approximates composite images. For examples, his torso appears to combine with a close-up of his face. The perceptual effect is mesmerizing and disorienting.
