<Full Circle>

In the 1970s, Gary Hill, one of the second generation of video pioneers in the United States, developed a series of experiments in which he used sound signals to generate images on the cathode ray tube monitor. At the time, the possibility of real-time “translation” offered by electronic technology inspired many artists.

Full Circle is a single-channel video that combines three images on a single screen. The work presents a performance that is simultaneously vocal, sculptural and videographic. A close-up shows the artist’s hands bending a copper-clad metal rod into the approximate shape of a circle, while his voice attempts to stabilise the sound [o]. A sine wave oscillator visually translates the vocal frequencies, providing a test image of the constancy of the sound, which remains regular despite the physical effort required by his action. Originally used to test the distortion of audio signals produced by high fidelity equipment, here it enters a feedback loop that intimately links the body and technology and involves the physical creation of a form, vocal emission, conductive materials (such as copper) and the abstract visualisation of sound. “This work tries to make manifest the perhaps irreconcilable space between the body as physicality and conceptual models built upon the ephemeral, yet also physical, media” , explains the artist.

Trained as a sculptor, Gay Hill first saw video as a way of exploiting the sonority of his material. His work was soon enriched by fundamental research into vocalisation and language. In contrast to linear, cinematic time, he sees video feedback as a process analogous to that of thought, in which “vocalisation was a way to physically mark the time of the body through utterance – the speaking voice acting as a kind of motor generating images.”  

In Full Circle, the artist establishes an equivalence between the performative act and the closed circuit of video. He shows the fragile synchronisation between voice and gesture within the electronic information network. The third image captures the action in a wide shot: it has been stylised in the form of a black-and-white negative to achieve a graphic abstraction. In this way, the electronic image, the antithesis of the documentary image, is revealed for what it is: a field of frequencies traversed by tensions.

Marcella Lista