{"id":1770,"date":"2010-04-05T11:40:23","date_gmt":"2010-04-05T18:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2010\/04\/a_video_experiment\/"},"modified":"2017-05-31T12:23:06","modified_gmt":"2017-05-31T16:23:06","slug":"a_video_experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2010\/04\/a_video_experiment.html","title":{"rendered":"<em>Bill &#038; Tony<\/em> With a Twist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This video experiment, first posted by <a href=\"http:\/\/realitystudio.org\/multimedia\/jan-herman\/\">realitystudio.org<\/a>, was recorded on Dec. 21, 1971, as I wrote there, in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/William_S._Burroughs\">William S. Burroughs<\/a>&#8216; London flat at 8 Duke St. The filmmaker <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Antony_Balch\">Antony Balch<\/a>, who lived downstairs, brought his movie projector up to the flat, along with the unfinished footage of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TtyaIcNWlXQ\"><em>Bill &#038; Tony<\/em><\/a>, a movie he&#8217;d been working on. Burroughs sat in front of the movie projector. He looked remarkably like Buster Keaton, his stare so blank and deadpan he could have been a mummy. We turned off the lights.<br \/>\n<center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/87Ti9m9IKbA\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><br \/>\nBalch ran the footage through the projector, superimposing  the image on Burroughs&#8217; face. I ran the video camera. It was an Akai portable reel-to-reel video recorder that used 1\/4\u2033 black &#038; white tape. The video is purposely not edited, to give the actual context of the experiment.<\/p>\n<p>In an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1584350105\/superv32cinc\">interview in Rolling Stone<\/a>, in May 1972, Burroughs called the video &#8220;quite a precise experiment,&#8221; noting that the film projection &#8220;re-photographed on the video camera &#8230; faded in and out &#8230; so that you got a real-time section.&#8221; In other words,  what was actual and what was superimposed. Although the experiment <em>was<\/em> precise, it was also rudimentary. And after 34 years in storage, the videotape has degraded and now looks primitive.<\/p>\n<p>But it still gives the fantastic impression of a ventriloquist dummy coming to life or an ancient Egyptian mummy being revived to cheer the river gods. I think Burroughs got a kick out of that and the demonstration of how easy it was, even with primitive means, to create a televised witch&#8217;s brew of, say, Nixon&#8217;s face superimposed on Mao&#8217;s, speaking with the voice of Hitler or Stalin, or even FDR. Of course, any combination can be applied.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<em>What you will see, following the setup, are four combinations of images, in this order:<br \/>\n&#9830; Bill&#8217;s face superimposed on his own, speaking with Bill&#8217;s voice<br \/>&#9830; Tony&#8217;s face superimposed on Bill&#8217;s, speaking with Tony&#8217;s voice<br \/>&#9830;  Bill&#8217;s face superimposed on his own, speaking with Tony&#8217;s voice<br \/>&#9830; Tony&#8217;s face superimposed on Bill&#8217;s, speaking with Bill&#8217;s voice<br \/><\/em><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/jan-herman\/embill-tonyem-with-a-twis_b_535299.html\">(Crossposted at HuffPo)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This video experiment, first posted by realitystudio.org, was recorded on Dec. 21, 1971, as I wrote there, in William S. Burroughs&#8216; London flat at 8 Duke St. The filmmaker Antony Balch, who lived downstairs, brought his movie projector up to the flat, along with the unfinished footage of Bill &#038; Tony, a movie he&#8217;d been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1770","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-sy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1770"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25924,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770\/revisions\/25924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}