Theodore Telonis

____My original project was primarily concerned with sound imaging. I discovered an interesting method of creating Oscillographics (think Oscilloscope) with makeshift materials. By stretching a balloon over the surface of a speaker, gluing a shard of a mirror over the center, & pointing a laser into the mirror complex shapes are projected dependent on the frequency of the sound. Different sounds make different patterns. Regular music creates very messy & noisy patterns while simple waveforms (particularly low & sub frequencies) create intricate & complex oscillating geometry.
____After composing a score for my sound imaging performance I struggled to apply any significant meaning to the piece. I could not force a reading from the audience that was not a simple marvel at the technique I employed. The score consisted exclusively of sine waves. My concept was to explore my own femininity through the curvy waveform. The sine wave as a shape references the Tekete & Malumba study where people across the globe associated curvy and round geometry with the feminine sounding name and the pointy geometry with the masculine name. I quickly learned that it a very difficult task to make compelling music which conveys such complex ideas, and even harder to do so only using sine waves. Sine waves naturally have no harmonics - great music is complex & wonderfully layered. Nonetheless I created the score, but the piece was lacking in my eyes. It did not share the ideas I wanted to about a complex reality of being and embodying femininity through masculinity.
____I struggled for some time searching for answers and resolutions. Eventually I got bored & completely abandoned my original concept & decided to start completely fresh. Along my journey I stumbled upon a Nam June Paik video which immediately inspired me. The video comes from a television special titled "The Medium is the Medium" which aired in the 1960's. "The Medium is the Medium" was a showcase for upcoming video artists who were exploring uncharted territory within the new media. Television played a huge role in the history of video art - many artists were able to collaborate with public networks to air there own art, others would buy commercial spaces. The TV was a medium for artists to show their art to a s massive audience. Paik himself used the Tv screen in many interesting ways, creating sculptures by placing magnets on top of the television, and by rewiring the deflection coils to create oscillographics. I was taken aback by his methods. Not only was I interacting with the same practice as Paik by creating oscillographics, he did it better & in the 60's over 50 years ago." Well fuck me" I thought. I wasn't so original after all. I decided to engage with his work, which is how I got here.
____Anyways, I began thinking about the phrase "The medium is the medium". I thought about how television as a medium is no longer the colossal medium by which people consume media, TV has been replaced by the internet. As artists, how do we collaborate with the internet? The internet is far more broad and complex than television, it is not as simple as working with a network to have your work seen. It is arguably even easier now, but I still have not decided if uploading to youtube or a similar platform on the internet is considered a collaboration. The internet is considered collaboration. The internet in 2019 is no longer a new frontier, but it is also not fully developed, we are still figuring out the META. Did you know META stands for Most Efficient Tactical Approach? In video art, the two monolithic artists to me are Name June Paik and Hito Steyerl. While investigating Nam June & all of his experiments with sound & television, I recalled Steyerl's piece "Strike". "Strike" is a piece about medium. Hito takes a hammer & chisel (a tool historically used to carve stone & create sculpture) & breaks a TV screen to create a new kind of sculpture. Breaking the TV to me is significant of the decay of TV as a medium. I superimposed these two works to show how Paik built art around the TV, & Hito broke it.
____Now what? Thinking about Medium, from one point to another, the internet, etc. Wifi is what grants us connectivity. Wifi allows us access to the expanse of the internet, it is the medium so to speak. Plugging my own body into this system of connectivity & the internet is performance, but also conveys my jaded attitude towards a society connected to technology as extreme as our own. In the end, I recreate our Nam June Paik's piece "Electronic Opera #1"according to my own experience. I utilize the same imagery as Paik, three hippies, a political figure, & a dancer. I use my own oscillographics and contemporary techno music known as Aggrotech. The work functions as an homage to Paik, and to a lesser extent Steyerl. After my journey with this work, I have discovered what the medium truly is thanks to my friend & former professor Frank Holliday. The medium is light.