Watch a video for "We Go Further" a track by Wume made by Schmidt using vintage visual synthesis techniques
Wume is a duo made up of April Camlin and Al Schatz. Their new album Maintain is out on Ehse Records.
This video was made by Matmos's MC Schmidt using different visual sythesis techniques. Schmidt describes the thinking behind his video: "Technological change has been happening faster than is appropriate for artistic exploration. For example, huge advances were made in audio and video synthesizer technology in the 1960s through to the 1980s. Disastrously, the visual/musical/sonic possibilities of the tools created during this time were not exploited because more new tools were subsequently created, and the slightly older tools were considered outmoded. Many newer artistic mediums have been afflicted with this problem. The digital age has only exacerbated this unfortunate race to the scrap pile. The problem seems clearly tied to artistic tools being bound up with the marketplace. 'BUY THE NEW THING! THE OLD THING IS BAD! ONLY THE NEW THING CAN MAKE ART!' Imagine if paint or the guitar had been exposed to this same cruel capitalistic 'evolution'. Before I start frothing at the mouth, I think both Wume and I come from a place where using so-called old methods is extremely generative... I don't mean that I'm only using vintage (a word ripe with this problem) tools – this video was made on a pretty new computer with Final Cut Pro, make no mistake – but for video types I do think that simple keying techniques, analogue video feedback, and half-toning (not exactly a video thing, I guess) are extremely fruitful techniques that can yield beautiful results, and have years, possibly decades, or centuries of pleasure to be milked from them."
Wume are on a European tour through June, more here.
