Super Long Play

Matte Rochford

Opening 06.07.16 6-8pm
Artist Talks 28.08.16 6-7pm

The once ubiquitous VHS (Video Home System) cassette tape now occupies a space of curiosity and fetish, a symbol of the 1980s and an antidote to the digital perfection of High Definition (HD) video. The act of recording to videotape is one of protest and yearning for another time. It is one of nostalgia.

Videotape is material and can be handled. The cartridge is satisfyingly pushed into a machine where the tape is mechanically engaged. The tape travels through the video player’s tape path and is read by sensitive playing heads. These heads read the information on the magnetized videotape and send the video and audio signals to a television or other monitor.

Domestic videocassette recorders (VCRs) allowed the everyday person to make their own mix-tapes from television broadcasts. If you use multiple VCRs you can copy your own tapes and even edit your own compositions.

But the compositions you make are imperfect. The controls at your disposal are not as accurate as a computer. You rely on the mechanics of the machine and the timing of your own finger on the play, pause, record and rewind buttons. Further, the tape in its movement across the heads may bobble slightly with resultant imperfections on the screen. Noise, movement of the image, fluttering, blips, lines and static washes can occur. If you make a copy of these imperfections onto a new tape, the imperfections multiply and flourish. Thus instead of recording a perfect moment in time, you smear time on the tape, bend it and warp it.