Sketch-Tape

Ernst Caramelle

Sketch-Tape, 1975

Artwork text

”The video camera is used like a pencil to visualize sketches of ideas that do not yet exist,” is how Caramelle describes his video. He continues: “A series of short performances is created without any preparation, using only things found in the studio.” The video was made in 1975 at M.I.T. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in collaboration with Juan Navarro Baldeweg and departs from the presentation of identical visual information and acoustic perception. The visual level is dominated by the facial expressions, gestures, and actions of the people performing, which never correspond to the audible background noises. The spoken mime of a fictive overdub is counteracted by a sort of sign language. The act of drawing an abstract picture on a board is accompanied by the natural sound of a thunder shower. The viewer’s gaze is confronted by speech and sound as independent stylistic means, which in the tradition of “concrete poetry,” each attain a cogent presence and emphasize the space between real action and acoustic representation as difference. (Doris Leutgeb)