Reel Dealer

Jokelson Turns On TV On The Radio

Words: Sandy Hunter

The elegant drone of TV On The Radio's anthemic "Staring At The Sun" is mirrored in the electric strands and wafting filaments director Elliot Jokelson has injected into a particularly preternatural performance by the Brooklyn band (of which 2004 RES 10 head Tunde Adebimpe is a core member).

Jokelson, a Williamsburg dweller, has been producing videos for the past three years and as he himself puts it, has "of late begun directing." His video is ethereal yet dark and lingers on fragmented and replicating moments with the band members alternately singing, playing or simply melting into the black void background. Improvisation and the inspiration drawn from old-school video art played key roles in the concept behind the piece, but mid-to-late 1970s video effects synthesizers and their painstaking manipulation by Jokelson and his collaborators Brad Turner, Tim Crean and Benton C. Bainbridge elevate the clip beyond mere visual oddity.

"The lead visual instrument we used was the Rutt/Etra Video Synthesizer. We made patch after patch, hooking up miles of cables and running the song over and over again, driving the neighbors crazy. Only a small fraction of the textures, palettes and techniques we tried out made it into the final cut, but the keeper image process passes all have a gorgeous organic quality to them because they emphasize the human hand...that gestural quality of buttons, knobs and sliders you just don't get with a timeline," explains Jokelson of the video's pleasing distortions.

These human touches reflect the fact that the late '70s era video art that inspired "Staring At The Sun" was more often than not created in real time. In further keeping with the era, the filmmakers devised a method where each stage of production would embody the sought after "improvisational autonomy."

"We shot the band doing their thing in Brooklyn and cut a performance edit at Post Millennium in Manhattan. Later, we fucked with our edit in an upstate Koreshian nerd compound, the result of which was a six-hour treated loop of the original performance cut," relates Jokelson. "We brought it back to the city, and reconstituted our edit, employing the best of what we made upstate. The result was a bit like choreography. We encountered opportunities for improvisation at every turn, and there was a tremendously empowering call- response vibe to the multi-tiered editorial/effects process, but all of these things were happening according to a very fixed plan, and in service of a singular vision."

The results present a haunting low fidelity companion to what, if it isn't already, should be your favorite song.

For more information on vintage video synths: http://www.audiovisualizers.com/toolshak/vsynths.htm