Colour, PAL, video and sound synthesis tapes, 37 mins and 38 mins.

Performed:
Melbourne, 1977;
La Trobe Uni, 1978;
Sydney, 1979;
Venice Biennale, 1980;
New Music America Festival, Hartford, 1984

(Available format: ¾ inch PAL U-matic master; DVD – remasterd 2008 by Stephen Jones)

Nocturnal B-4:6:7

Nocturnal B is a visual music composition that has “a traditional structure. The piece starts very simply and the development is by repetition and extension of the same image, a hammer and sickle, which is subject to continuous transformation and then destruction over 25 minutes [using the EMS Spectre video synthesiser at LaTrobe University].”1

“One of a series of 2 Nocturnals made in real-time in a single night at the electronic music studio at La Trobe University. This studio, which I designed, is designed for maximum control flexibility between all the machines in the system. This piece is also an example of a common control system controlling independently produced video and sound. The control system was a John Roy DAISY system and a Serge-Modular Music System. Sound was produced on the Serge and on Aardvarks IV, my home-made digital system. Video was produced on a Spectre Video Synthesiser and the Serge.

The piece changes very slowly. Not a drone, but an extremely slowly changing structure which rises to some sort of apotheosis by the end, it takes a familiar symbol and modulates it into an abstracted splendour. The numbers in the title refer to the frequency ratios in the left channel of the sound track.” 2

Shown in Plug In and Switch On at the NGV (1978), Videotapes from Australia, (New Yrok, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Venice, Sydney); and the Australian Video Festival, 1986.

1Warren Burt, Interviewed by Robert Randall and Frank Bendinelli, Access Video, vol.4, No.4, (Spring 1978), 19-21.

2 See the relevat catalogue entries: Robert Newton and NGV, Plug In and Switch On; Stephen Jones, Videotapes from Australia.