THE "ELECTRONIC PAINTER" DEVICE

Bulat M. Galeyev

Our group, SKB "Prometei," in existence for some 30 years now, has conducted many experiments involving the unity of art, science and technology. However, until recently, video art was not one of our interests-except for our "Electronic Painter" installations created in 1975-1980 with conventional color TV sets. Through a set of electronic generators on the monitor of the color TV tube, abstract color (RGB) figures were obtained that could be programmed to move and change, synchronized with sound.

Discussions on whether video is art are still going on; nevertheless, our artistic practice includes a diversity of experiments with TV, specifically with the TV tube. At the Ars Electronica festivals held in Lmz, Austria, computer animation experiments are shown that require a TV monitor to reproduce the images-a condition that the audience accepts. At other festivals, for example, at WRO-89 in Poland, another genre-conventional videotapes-was presented, also under the name of "video." During discussions at these festivals, such videos were contrasted with "television art," which in turn was contrasted with "the art of television " This article is devoted to yet another artistic role of the TV set (the TV set as a box with a luminous monitor) - as a means of manifesting a certain paradoxical, grotesque or witty concept. Video art-or video installations, to be more precise-is a concrete display of so-called "conceptual art"-for which the title "art" has been disputed in the USSR. If one looks up "conceptual art" in the recently published Soviet glossary book "Esthetics", one is referred, for some reason, to "anticulture".