Episode 051 Debora Bernagozzi

Show Notes

This week on the show we’re visiting with Signal Culture director and co-founder Debora Bernagozzi. In our chat we delve deeply into the niche and history-rich dimension of video art practice where the video signal itself is deconstructed and the flow of electricity becomes a medium that is synthesized, manipulated, and performed by the artist in real-time. We’ll hear all about the incredible work that Signal Culture is doing to collect, preserve, build, and restore incredibly rare and sometimes one-of-a-kind electronic instruments and tools made by and for artists, and the three-pronged residency program that they provide for researchers, tool builders, and artists. Tune in to hear Debora’s story, and to hear some very exciting news about the future for Signal Culture!

Links from the conversation with Debora
> https://signalculture.betterworld.org/campaigns/signal-culture-colorado-launch
> https://signalculture.org
> https://vimeo.com/signalculture
> https://www.instagram.com/signalculture/
> https://twitter.com/SignalCulture

Get access to exlusive content - join us on Patreon!
> https://patreon.com/artobsolescence

Join the conversation:
https://twitter.com/ArtObsolescence
https://www.instagram.com/artobsolescence/

Support artists
Art and Obsolescence is a non-profit podcast, sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and we are committed to equitably supporting artists that come on the show. Help support our work by making a tax deductible gift through NYFA here: https://www.artandobsolescence.com/donate

Transcript 

[00:00:00] Ben: From Small Data Industries, this is Art and Obsolescence. I'm your host, Ben Fino-Radin and on this show, I chat with people that are shaping the past, present and future of art and technology. This week on the show, we are chatting with a very exciting guest that runs an organization very near and dear to my heart. 

[00:00:19] Debora: Hi, my name is Debora Bernagozzi, and I am an artist as well as co-founder and executive director of Signal Culture. 

[00:00:27] Ben: On the show so far, we've heard from plenty of artists, many of whom work in video as . Their primary, medium, but a distinction that we haven't really discussed in depth is this sort of niche within the world of video art. One where the video signal itself is deconstructed and the flow of electricity becomes a medium that is synthesized, manipulated and performed by the artist in real time, often using hardware created by and for artists. Handcrafted electronic instruments and tools that might look to some more at home on a spaceship than an artist studio. We heard just a bit about this history back in episode 20 in our chat with Gary Hill and in today's conversation, we'll be diving in head first. Signal Culture, the residency program directed and co-founded by Debora has done incredible work over many years to keep this culture and craft of handmade artist tools for experimental media, art and performance alive. They have not only amassed an incredible collection of these kinds of tools and literature and reference material pertaining to them, but they have also made all of this accessible to artists who want to use these in their work, researcher who want to study them, and technicians who want to build their own instruments and interface with ones that were built sometimes 50 years ago. In my view Signal Culture is a preservation minded anti obsolescence think tank, where this very sort of fundamental knowledge of electricity as a medium is kept alive and the work that Debora does in making all of this possible is beyond vital. This history will hear Debora talk about is especially near and dear to me, as I mentioned back in episode 20 my own artistic coming of age was steeped in these practices and so many of the teachers and the mentors that you'll hear Debora mention were also formative in my life. Just a quick reminder before we dive in that if you have been enjoying the podcast, leaving a review is deeply appreciated. It helps other people discover the show. Thank you to all of you that have left such amazing reviews already. It is deeply appreciated. And now without further delay, let's dive into this week's chat with Debora Bernagozzi. 

[00:02:51] Debora: I grew up in a small town in south Georgia raised by a single father. I went to a tiny private school that did not have art classes after sixth grade. But always really loved drawing. And it was something that felt really good. So even after it wasn't available in school, it's something I kept up on my own. And when it came time to look at colleges, I was excited about the idea of going to art school. And my dad said, no, absolutely not. You'll starve to death. And so I was supposed to be a lawyer or a doctor because then I could take care of myself. So when I was forbidden from going to art school, I ended up going to Emory and I was gonna be an English major and I'm not sure how that was gonna feed me better than art school, but somehow that was acceptable. So I was there for two years and while I was there, the classes that I really enjoyed were an art class that I took and then a couple of semesters of technical theater classes. I decided to secretly transfer to art school and I told my dad after I was accepted and it was not pretty, the reaction. And the thing that brought him around is eventually I got paid by White Wolf. Who's a live action role playing game company to take photos of people, pretending to be vampires and warewolves and he saw my name printed in the books and that I'd gotten paid and then he felt, okay, but my undergrad path, you know, when I changed from Emory to the Atlanta College of Art, I kind of had to start over and then there was a little financial aid mix up. So it took me 10 years from graduating high school to finish undergrad, but it actually ended up being great because during all of that, somehow it put me there at exactly the right time to be Sara Hornbacher’s student. And she's an incredible video artist. She was back at Buffalo Media Study when Paul Sharits and the Vasulkas and Hollis Frampton were there. And she was a classmate of Peer Bode's and actually lived in Owego for a while during the early days of the TV Center being there and she curated and wrote and made work. And she ended up being the chair of the department at Atlanta College of Art as well as teaching as well as making work and just so much energy and knowledge , and she had worked in industry as well as making art. And so, she had a really big influence on students in terms of being really good crafters of their medium as well as good thinkers. And that was what launched me in this direction is specifically her.

 In one of my foundations classes you know, I had asked what the professor thought, you know, may be some good things to take my sophomore year. And they said, well, you're, you're good at storytelling, maybe filmmaking. And I was like, oh yeah. Okay. That makes sense to me. And so I, I fully expected that I would do, you know, like narrative filmmaking kind of stuff. And so, You know, when I was in my first video class, we are seeing things that I had no idea existed. And, you know, I remember seeing Joan Jonas's Organic Honey's Vertical Roll and we saw a lot of stuff from that surveying the first decade set that Video Data Bank put out. And I remember seeing Gary Hill's soundings, that was one of the early pieces that really stuck out to me. So yeah, she was showing us, really great video art pieces and then she had had a history with the Experimental Television Center like I said, she lived in Owego for a while back when they first moved to Owego and at that time, like between residencies, if you lived in town, people would hop in the system for a few hours here and there, uh, when they could. and there were a lot of people living in the town at that time in the early eighties. And this was, I guess, 1998. And Pam Hawkins through a partnership with Alfred University and ETC did an international student residency. So there were students from Norway and Syracuse, Buffalo, Alfred, and Atlanta College of Art. And it was amazing. So, you know, we went for I think it may have been two weeks. And it was just a 24 7 kind of thing where Hank Rudolph would give us instruction on the system. And then we would have guest lectures from Peer Bode and Andrew Deutsch and Sherry Hocking, we did a field trip over to Alfred and saw a performance by Pauline Oliveros and Andy and Peer. That was mind blowing yeah, it was incredible. So up until the time I went to that Experimental Television Center student workshop, I had basically been editing. Tapes, you know? And so when I went to ETC, it was this life changing thing where you go from a very structured way of making where you record, you log, you edit, go back and revise, you know, to I sometimes compare it to a musician playing from sheet music to a musician who's doing improvisational jazz. So you go into this studio and you're able to turn knobs and move sliders. And things happen instantly. It may change color or speed or loop back on itself. And you can respond to that in real time and that real time system that ETC had was such this physical and playful way of working. It really, really changed me fundamentally as an artist. The studio at ETC at that time was a really big room with some space to do Recording down on one end the system in the middle and then a kitchen and bedroom down at the other end. And there's another room that had the tape library. That was the first time I got to see Matthew Schlanger's work was in that, and that was amazing. I'm still blown away by the work that I saw it was just a really incredible experience, and then on the way back, we swung by New York City and went to that big Bill Viola retrospective that David Ross curated at the Whitney. So that was also a really big deal in my uh, undergrad experience. It was a life changing trip for sure. So I graduated from Atlanta college of art in 99 and then the grad program in Electronic Integrated Art at Alfred started in that same year and so I was in the second class of that program. So I graduated in 2002. Alfred was intense. It's a very different kind of situation than I've heard at other grad programs. We would have two or three advisors and we'd meet with them weekly and they always wanted to see new work and then twice a semester, every semester we'd have reviews with all of the grad students in the area, as well as all of the professors in the art department. And it was just super intense. I mean, you're just working, working, working, and, you know, I say now anyone can say anything about my artwork because . I, you know, went through grad school. I I've heard so much said that, you know, nothing you're say you're gonna say is gonna upset me. So, I learned a lot obviously being there with Peer Bode and Andrew Deutsch was really incredible. Joe Scheer a print printmaking professor, I learned so much from him about digital printmaking. They were one of the few places that had a Sandin Image Processor. So being able to do some real time work with that during grad school was great. So, I got a lot out of it, but grad school is kind of a brutal process period. And so, You know, you kind of leave grad school and after you've worked toward this very, very, very specific goal. And then you're like, what do I do now? So, um, yeah, So I think it took a few years, after that to figure out, you know, who I was again, but my husband, Jason and I did a residency at the Experimental Television Center. We also did a residency in Malaysia that was sponsored by the Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film and Video Festival and Multimedia University. And I had also done a residency at squeaky wheel in Buffalo. Although that wasn't one where you lived there. It was, a regional, artist access residency, but those residencies were incredibly important and transformative for both of us. You know, when you have a residency you're applying for that time and space and when you're selected, it feels very precious because you know that other people didn't get the opportunity. And so when you go it's very motivating to, try to make as much amazing work as you can during the time you have there, because you have access to time to just be an artist full time. And you're not, having to vacuum your carpet or go to your day job or whatever. So it's an incredible experience where you have the job of being a full-time artist at a place that you're not normally. Living in and you have different resources than you normally have, whether that's equipment or people or knowledge you're in a different environment than normal. So that's inspiring. Residencies were really transformative, both artistically and personally for us and participating in residencies was so important that we wanted to give other people that experience. In addition in 2011, I believe was when we did our last Experimental Television Center residency and we arrived there that day went up the stairs, we're so excited. And then Hank came in to greet us and said, did you see the email? And we're like, what email ? And so, yeah, it was the email about that they were going to close the residency program. And so that was, you know, a very emotional thing, cuz I'd been going there since 1998 and this I believe was the beginning of 2011. When that program closed. There wasn't really anywhere else that you could go at the time to work with real time, , equipment there had just been this hole left by the residency program at ETC stopping. And so, Jason and I decided we wanted to see if we could start something and. We very much did not wanna be like, ETC two. We always wanted to be our own thing. We knew there were gonna be comparisons obviously, but we wanted to be able to give to the community meaningful experiences like we had had, and also create something new and meaningful yeah. 

[00:15:59] Ben: I mean, I guess how does one start a residency program, I mean, I guess that's not the question, but like did you have space already? And you were like, oh, we could just... 

[00:16:08] Debora: Oh Lord. I wish you have no idea how big an issue the space thing has been. A lot of times when residency programs start, it is because people like inherit a building or, you know, something like that. And that is so not the case with us. We had a lot of background working in the media I had while Jason was an undergrad in Kansas City been lucky to be a part of The arts incubator there, which provided like business training for artists. So I did the Kaufman Foundation's fast track entrepreneurship program. And, um, I managed a gallery and worked for a nonprofit board in the Crossroads arts district. So I had gotten some experience with administrative kind of stuff in addition to, you know, our backgrounds as artists and that sort of thing. And basically, we just started doing research at the time we decided that this is something we wanted to do. And you know, I talked with Sherry Hocking who ran the experimental television center for many years. Her husband Ralph Hocking is the person who founded it. So she gave me some great advice and she was, you know, one of our biggest cheerleaders, one of my proudest moments was the first time I was able to bring her into the studio once we set it up and she was so happy for us. But yeah I called around to a lot of artists and researchers and other folks in the field talked with Dave Jones, video engineer, talked with Hank Rudolph the person who trained artists the Experimental Television Center. We asked other folks who were working in this field. If you came to a residency, what would you want to have there? What would you want that experience to be like? And eventually formulated ideas about what we wanted it to be. I went to my first Alliance of Artist Communities conference and learned different models for artist residencies and what it's actually like to run one and yeah. So we just did a lot of research and we just spent a lot of time driving around trying to think of a name and so the name signal culture came out of video signals, becuase the signals are what make it different from film, right. It's an electronic magnetic, medium that's kind of alive. And then also the idea of signaling out into the world. And then culture, not just culture like arts and culture, but culture like growing something in a lab. And then, you know, we spent, oh gosh, so long looking for a space. I can't even tell you. It was just, it was a thing. My stepdaughter at the time was a kid so we wanted to be, not too far away from her. And then once we got Hank Rudolph on board as our other co-founder, he lives in Owego so we wanted to also be not too far away from him. And so that gave us kind of a range and yeah. Oh man, we looked so many places like all over central and Western New York basically. So we learned a lot about how the bigger place you are, the more zoning complications there are. And people don't understand a place where it's not a hotel, but people are going to spend the night and it's video. And no, we are assure you, it's not a porn production company. multiple people asked us that. So, yeah, it was challenging and we actually had purposefully avoided Owego at first as a potential site, because we did not want confusion with the Experimental Television Center. I mean, Owego is beautiful and wonderful, but it's a village of less than 4,000 people. So it's not like you're not gonna notice when two video art organizations are both in a tiny village. Right. But it turned out that while government entities were making it very complicated to have a space the mayor of Owego at that time, Kevin found out that we were looking, he put on his Facebook page that we were looking and ended up with a really amazing building that we rented two floors in Owego. The whole time we were there very inexpensive beautiful space and could not have had a better landlord situation, Ellen was super excited that we were an arts organization and it had been historically both business and residential. So we just felt very, very welcomed into the community. And It was a great fit. And then we ended up being, you know, a couple blocks from Hank's house. So he was able to walk over and then, you know, a block from Dave Jones studio. So, you know, it actually ended up being the perfect place to start. Our very first residency Jax DeLuca came she's the head of media arts at the NEA now and Jason and Hank were doing final touches on the studio and we're all freaked out. Like what if there's not enough here and people are disappointed and, you know, we genuinely have bought almost nothing this entire time. It's been people donating stuff and so at that time, Bob Doyle had donated some stuff and I think maybe Alan Powell had donated some things at the time and Hank and Dave had loaned some things. And so it was much smaller than it is now, but actually still pretty great. And so they were just doing last minute things on the system and told Jax and her friend, we're still working a few last things out. We're gonna, you know, get you all set up in the morning, but why don't you walk over to the Barley Corn, the pizza is really great. And so, they didn't come back for hours and we're like, well, that's weird. And so when they finally come back, they're like, there's this guy who said, he's the mayor. And I'm like, is this name Kevin? And they said, yeah. And so I'm like, did he give you a business card that has deputy mayor crossed out? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, yeah, that's him. And so they ended up, , on a trivia team with Kevin and won. That's the kind village experience you could have.

[00:23:23] Ben: So, of course you've relocated away from Owego, but considering that's where Signal Culture started. I'm curious if you could kind of walk us through what that space that you crafted was, you know, I unfortunately never got to see it.

[00:23:39] Debora: Yeah. It was a really wonderful space we had in Owego aside from the stairs. The stairs were a nightmare, but we were on the second and third floor of a building that is on maps from the 1850s. We're not sure, you know, entirely how old it was, but it was really beautiful space, you know, wood floors skylights on the third floor, really beautiful deck out back where we had old TVs turned into planters that we grew herbs in. And when you would come in the second floor of the building had, uh, a little bit of space in one end where we had our bedrooms cuz we were living there on site. And then most of it was the tool maker and researcher space. So there was a bedroom and studio for those residencies. We have three different types of residencies at signal culture. The artist residency is for people who are going to be using the real time video and sound processing equipment. And so the, those will be in the artist studio. We have a tool maker, residency, and that's folks that may be building actual machines or hacking or writing code. And then we have the researcher residency and that could be people writing books or articles or doing archival type research or curating shows it's a pretty broad definition. And then the tool makers and researchers were residencies that we alternated between, and those were a little bit longer. So those could be one to three weeks, whereas the artist residencies in that space was always an artist residency and that would typically be a week. And the reason for the short residency times were. One, we wanna make the residencies as accessible as possible to as many types of people from different backgrounds as possible. And so if someone has a family or a job, we don't want them to not be able to take part, you know, there are many residencies that, you know, come for three months minimum and you know, who can do that? You know? In the six years we had the residency in Owego we had over 400 artist researchers and tool makers from 33 states and 26 countries. The other thing is that, we have really, really unique equipment. Some of it rare, some of it literally one of a kind and so getting more people access to that is better. So that's another reason for the short residencies. We also tried two week residencies occasionally with the artist residency, and we didn't really feel like people got more work out of it. So, in the toolmaker slash researcher studio, there are parts drawers with different kinds of, you know, resistors and chips and soldering workstation, and also some machines that you could take apart and hack, if you wanted to. And then also, you know, a basic setup with monitors and mixers and oscilloscopes stuff like that. In the artist studio upstairs we had all the real time, both analog and digital video and sound processing equipment, things like Jones raster scan manipulator, which if you've heard of a Rutt Etra Sarah Hornbacher commissioned Dave Jones to make her a version of something like that. And It's the only one he ever made and Sarah donated it to Signal Culture. We have a Dave Jones colorizer actually we have two of them, one borrowed from Dave and one built by Alan Powell and Connie Coleman. We have some wobbulators that we built. We also have a wobbulator later by Ivan Marusic, that was built in Croatia by a guy they call Tesla who had no idea how a wobbulator worked and just kind of figured out how to do a version. And so it's in a tiny footprint compared to the way that folks were making them here, but it's great and he donated one to us . We have some different kind of cameras. We have a Barbie Video Girl that, is literally a Barbie and her necklace is a video camera lens. And. on her back is the monitor and it's as if like, super eight film married, old cell phone video, it's like this wobbly weird colored blurry image that's just beautiful. We have a dental camera donated by Jason's uncle who's a dentist. So if you can imagine it's the kind of camera that would normally be looking in your mouth. So it has, a fiber optic light, but also a very, very, very wide angle of view. That's able to focus very close up. We have a Pixel Vision, we have some borrowed modules, from Dave Jones of a Hearn Video Lab. We also have some contemporary Euro rack modules. So it's a mix of things that are extremely rare to things that anyone can buy from 1970s Sony Porta Pack to, you know, brand new stuff. The idea is that, why would you limit your vocabulary? You know, if someone invents a new paintbrush people aren't going to throw out old paint, brushes and go, oh, well this paint brush is so two years ago, you know, and so there's, millennia of painting that has happened and gotten to evolve. Whereas with technology, it feels like because it's such a consumer oriented product, with planned obsolescence really built in you have a lot of, oh no, that video format is from a couple years ago, you gotta get rid of that and get the new thing. And we don't think that you necessarily need to get the new thing. If the old thing is a vocabulary with which you want to speak. So we want people to have more options, not less, and we want those. Options to be able to interact with one another and so that's what we have is a fluid, analog, digital real time studio.

[00:30:40] Ben: That's amazing. So, I gather you're not in Owego anymore. You've packed up the system and moved to Colorado. That's a long distance, especially to move a lot of equipment so I'm super curious what initiated that, what led to that and what is Signal Culture today? Do you have a space? Like I'm just so curious for the update.

[00:31:02] Debora: In 2017, Jason my husband and Signal Culture co-founder was hired to teach at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. So we moved out to Colorado at the time Signal Culture stayed in Owego and our other co-founder Hank Rudolph was running the physical day to day by himself, which was way too much for one person. I was still executive director, but from afar. Before that we had had a very specific type of residency where we were there on site and we purposefully shared a kitchen and dining room with the residents, because we really wanted to build community. So that's why also we had an artist residency at the same time as either a toolmaker researcher residency to build community. And so, when we came out here, we still had two residencies running concurrently, but nobody else in there activating the space. So it was definitely a different experience for residents once we moved. But you know, it was still incredible. We missed it so much. We had literally lived there with, you know, a couple hundred residents coming through and it was amazing, you know, I was nervous at first about, okay, what if they suck? Right. you know, well, if you're sharing space that intimately with people, you know, what's that gonna be like, but most of them were not only fine, but they were great, like genuinely great people. So it was just a joy. And we so loved it and it was great for me because I'm very much a people person, whereas Jason needs some breaks sometimes. So, I could just go up to the dining room and wait for somebody to show up and have a great conversation at midnight, you know, so, but um, yeah, so then we moved to Colorado and it's just like us, which, you know, he's great, but it's not the same. It was really hard being away from Signal Culture. But it's expensive to move, and Colorado is very, very expensive. We rented the 4,000 square foot space in Owego for less money than we were paying for a small apartment in Colorado. So it was very daunting trying to figure out how to get it out here. But then in 2020 three things happened at the same time. Jason got tenure, so we knew we would be out here. And then COVID happened so less exciting. So, you know, at that time we didn't know how we could safely run a residency because there was so much that was unknown. So we had to stop the residency program while that got figured out and, you know, prec vaccines and everything. And then our really wonderful landlord decided she wanted to sell the building and she did give us the option to buy the building. But with Jason getting tenure, it seemed to make more sense to try to figure out how to have the organization out here. So we spent months packing it up, I mean, months. And then, you know, Hank in a different room wearing a mask with doors closed in between and, you know, Hank's one of my best friends and I couldn't even hang out with him during the process. So it was a lot. And then I think was a 27 foot truck full of stuff and has been living in storage, since that time until very, very recently. So, we um did so much research about how to find a space out here and it's been primarily the money that has been the issue out here and several things that we thought were gonna pan out that didn't. But, you know, we had to go through those processes to get to the other side of that. And this past spring, eventually I decided, you know what, it's not gonna be a replica of what it was in Owego. It's just not possible out here. We're not gonna find a space that's gonna accommodate the living and the studios and storage and everything we need, because we just don't have the financial resources for that. So then how do we make it work anyway? And I had done a lot of research over the time we'd been here about where I thought was a good fit and I identified Loveland as the right fit for us because it's a little less expensive, not a bad commute for Jason. It's a lovely town very easy to get to from the airport for residents. And it also has a, strong history of support for visual arts, which a lot of the other communities in the area do not. So, I decided, okay, as a way to get started, I'm going to get a studio space or apply for a studio space at Artworks Center for Contemporary Art, which has 28 artists studio spaces and two galleries, and is right in downtown, a walking distance from you know, the museum and shops and bars and, you know, all sorts of stuff. And when I was talking with the executive director about the possibility of me having a studio here, which is where I'm talking to you from today she was very excited at the idea of Signal Culture, having space here as well. And they had been interested for a long time in residency programs and we talked a lot about it. And so, the day that I came into artworks, everything changed and I ended up with not only a studio for myself, but two spaces for Signal Culture. So so we have an artist studio and then a researcher in toolmaker space. And they're right across the hall from each other, right around the corner from me. And it also gives us a way to be introduced to this community, which is very exciting as well.

[00:37:44] Ben: So are these two spaces now fully operational, like everything's all set up? 

[00:37:49] Debora: So it's in process, basically, like I said, there was a 27 foot truck that brought stuff out. and so we've been bringing it over like one pickup truckload at a time, unboxing marking in the spreadsheet that it's here and not in the storage unit and we also were donated a lot of stuff by Marilyn Arsem during the move that has been one of the most significant donations we've ever gotten. Marilyn was married to Bob Raymond, and he worked in public access television and was an artist. And so he had really, really great equipment that was very well cared for and really wonderful books. So we've got some amazing additions to the library, but we've also at least doubled the resources for the toolmakers based on their donation. And then there's been a lot of great stuff that's gonna go in the artist studio as well. And we have got a I don't know who knows this yet, but we were donated a Sandin Image Processor that was built by Bob Raymond and Jack Mello and some other folks in Boston back in the day on the back. It actually says who built what module. So that's really exciting. And, we not only have the modules that they built, but we have the documentation of how to build modules as well as parts to build more. And so one of the things that we're gonna be doing at some point is live streaming. As we build more modules. So we've got so much exciting stuff. Even new stuff beyond what we had before, and what's really crazy if you ever get to see Signal Cultures space, we bought a couple of Euro rack cases and a few Euro rack modules. We bought mattresses and then a very, very, very few pieces of equipment, maybe a book or two that's it literally everything else we have has been donated because people really believe in what we're doing. And they're so excited that instead of stuff, getting tossed in a landfill, it's going to be used and loved and given life.

[00:40:28] Ben: So, I guess just thinking about the, residency program, , both for toolmakers and artists over the years, I'm sure you don't like to pick favorites, but is there any, you know, anything particularly memorable that just like really stands out for you and sticks in your mind?

[00:40:45] Debora: There's so, so many amazing projects that have come out of the residency programs and, you know, I hate to name names, but you know, I'll name a couple, Kristen Reeves is an artist in residence who does, she was, we first knew about her when she submitted an article about doing direct animation on film with a laser to our first Signal Culture Cookbook, and she uses, found footage and she does the direct animation with laser and combines that with video processing and it's just really beautiful kind of deep work that doesn't look like anyone else's and just really made interesting use of the system. And is one of the few people that's doing this kind of real cross media work using the film and video together in a really interesting way. And she does really great live film performances as well that are like a grid of projectors that she's going up and down a ladder doing things is amazing. And then an example of a project that we had a small part in for a researcher would be Derek Holzer's, vector synthesis book. He came and did some work with Vector synthesis there. And he also, you know, did a graduate program in Europe and lots and lots and lots of research. So we're just a tiny little moment in all the research that led to that book, but it's a great, great resource for the community. And we're happy to have been a part of that. And then our very first tool maker in residence was Jen Cutler. And at the time she was really, I think, kind of just learning. And so we still have the project that she did at the time, wheres just like this little Teddy bear with inputs and knobs, and you could hook it up to a Eurorack system and change things. And now she's just doing really, really amazing things where we have done some research about wobbulators and, updated the documentation that had been done back in the day at ETC so that it's corrected some things updated some methods. So it's actually a lot easier. Now, if someone wants to build a wobbulator they can do it. And so she not only built a wobbulator but built a wobbulator projector and is doing performances with that. So yeah, there's just so much varied work that comes out of the residencies, whether it ends up as single channel pieces or installations or being output to other mediums like fiber, sculpture, it's just been so much fun.

[00:43:58] Ben: So I'm curious, you know, I have my own opinions about this, but I'm curious from your perspective, what kind of role do you see Signal Culture playing within the ecosystem of preservation? 

[00:44:12] Debora: So signal culture is involved in preservation in a number of ways. First of all, obviously we have tools that we're keeping running and giving people access to that have been sitting in barns and closets , you know, previous to us having them. We also have a really great library and our archive of materials. I mean we have posters, postcards, books on repairing three quarter inch decks of specific models. We have so much in our library and archive that is really hard to find. So people are very excited to dig into those and, uh, whether it's books or ephemera we also are preserving the knowledge of how to work with these types of tools and keep them running and helping people have the knowledge from that to build new tools or apps or whatever they wanna build. We also have a viewing area where we have multiple formats of machines so people can watch or listen to artwork. I do have a goal of eventually having a preservation residency as well. I would love for people to come in and be able to migrate their tapes to more contemporary formats to make sure that things are preserved. And obviously that will require space, equipment and staff, so money, but eventually I would really, really love to be able to provide that. We have such an incredible wealth of knowledge and equipment from folks that are quite a bit older now. And I wanna make sure that that history does not go away when they pass. Yeah. So I think the preservation is incredibly important. And, you know, with this medium, I had a friend in grad school who at his thesis show, there was an electric outage when we say it's an ephemeral medium, yeah the power goes out, where's your work? But not only that you have magnetic tape that can be very fragile and if it's not stored properly, even more so, but also, you know, repair manuals and books that were put out unlimited editions and, show catalogs there's a lot of stuff that is important to preserve for this pretty underrepresented in terms of, you know, financial support in this field. You know, even if you look at money that goes to media arts, a lot of it is going to fund documentary or narrative projects. So, the funding for experimental art media is pretty small and the community is fairly small. So, I feel like we're doing some really important work and if folks have books or tapes or show cards or whatever that, you know, they would love to see preserved we would be the folks to reach out to we do have climate controlled space and we'll take good care of stuff.

[00:47:48] Ben: So something that we haven't really talked about, but all this, while you are still maintaining your own art practice and making work. So I'm just so curious, like how has Signal Culture fed into your own practice as an artist?

[00:48:01] Debora: I'd say my practice as an artist definitely helped to inform the creation of Signal Culture.

When we were in Owego we were doing back to back residencies with only a couple of hours in between to clean. And so people thought, oh wow, you get to play on this equipment. And no, I really, really didn't. I got to hear other people having a great time on it, but yeah, it was not something that I had access to because it was there for the residents. Now, since we're in Colorado and we don't have Hank here. And so we'll be hooking up all the equipment and testing it and training artists, how to use it. I do have to become very, very, very expert on all the machines. So I will have to make opportunities for myself to use everything often just to make sure that I can answer all the questions. A couple of times, once right before we packed up and then once during a short break where Hank hadn't actually taken things apart to rearrange it, I did make a little time for myself on the system. So I do have some really great footage that I need to make into pieces, but I didn't actually get to use the system very much. I will say Jason and Eric's development of the Signal Culture apps, which are real time video processing apps that were created to give people an entry into how to have tools that were affordable and accessible and also be an income stream for donations, for Signal Culture. Those have been really amazing tools. Jason initially conceived of them as, oh, we'll just make some simple little things and they are anything, but simple little things. As far as I know, it's the only live data moshing app that exists that's actual data moshing and not pretend data moshing. We also have a frame buffer and a slit scan app and you know, various other things. So on signalculture.org if you go to resources, there's the Signal Culture apps and there's, I think about nine at this point that are really incredible apps that are available for a small donation. And then also our eBooks, the signal culture cookbooks. So, yeah, there's some great stuff on there. So that actually has been really wonderful for me. I've used the signal culture apps in making my own artwork as well as doing live performances, either myself or in collaboration with my husband. I've been learning lace making, and I'm looking at ways to incorporate that into video art. I have some ideas for some projects coming up where there'll be video projected on and through lace. 

[00:51:09] Ben: It's interesting. It almost sounds like the reverse of my question has been more true for you that your practice as artist has more informed how you've run Signal Culture as opposed to how Signal Culture has necessarily impacted your work.

[00:51:22] Debora: I think that's true and some of our core philosophy for the organization. You know, we are people who formed this organization, basically with no money, just a, a real passion for the need for the organization. And so we wanted to ensure that the residencies were accessible to people from all types of demographics and backgrounds and, financial situations. So we have never charged an application fee. We have never charged a residency fee and we never will. And we feel that's really important. You would be surprised at anger we've gotten from other nonprofits who make their living off of application fees. The other thing is that when Signal Culture's name is attached to an exhibition, we insist that our artists get paid for that exhibition.

[00:52:18] Ben: Hell yeah. So, we've covered a lot of ground. We've traced your path all the way from Georgia to Owego to Loveland. But I'm curious, what's coming next for you, what's coming next for Signal Culture. What does the future hold?

[00:52:34] Debora: For Signal Culture, we're in the middle of getting the studios set up, we're hoping to have them up and running and have some first residents in to test things out by the winter, if all goes well. We're about to do a big fundraising campaign to help fund getting things up and running again. I'm in talks with some folks at various places about having exhibitions of Signal Culture, alumni work. So, if you follow our social media then you can find out about that. And then for us personally, we are in the middle of purchasing a house and we are going to donate space in the house to have residents have a free place to stay. So we again will get to hang out with residents and that will be lovely. It's not gonna be what it was, you have to get back and forth between the studio and the living space, but it's a way that the organization can continue to exist and we're just so thrilled that we've figured out a way for that to happen. 

[00:53:45] Ben: Well, so for all of our dedicated listeners who are now just itching to know where they can send their money to support Signal Culture, where should we send people?

[00:53:55] Debora: The best way to find out, uh, what's going on with Signal Culture or to make a donation is to go to signalculture.org. And you can make a donation and get one of the Signal Culture apps to do real time video processing yourself. We have two really wonderful eBooks on there. The Signal Culture Cookbooks with articles like realtime glitch video processing, visualizing earthquakes, in real time using swarm algorithms to compose new musical structures, PS 2 memory editing for glitch art, vetrex oscillographics modification. So all sorts of fun things in those. On our, uh, Vimeo, we have interviews with folks in the field like Kristin Lucas, ecoarttech, David Ross, Phillip Sterns. So we have a lot going on, but signalculture.org is the best place to find out what's happening. 

[00:54:57] Ben: Well, Debora Bernagozzi. Thank you so much for coming on the show. You know, we kind of have this shared lineage from this culture. And so it was just really nice to get to know you and just really hear Signal Culture's story and hear about what you're up to these days and to see that it's thriving. So thank you for coming on the show and thank you for all of the incredible work that you do.

[00:55:19] Debora: Oh, thank you so much, it was really fun.

[00:55:21] Ben: And I hope you had fun too, dear listener, and thank you for joining me for this week's show. As always, if you want to help support our work and mission of equitably paying artists that come on the show, you can join us over at patreon.com/artobsolescence. Or if you are interested in making a one time tax deductible gift through our fiscal sponsor, the New York Foundation for the Arts you can do so artandobsolescence.com/donate and there you can also find the full episode archive, including full transcripts and show notes. And last but not least you can always find us on Twitter and Instagram @artobsolescence. Until next time have a great week my friends, my name is Ben Fino-Radin and this has been Art and Obsolescence.