I submitted the title, A Concise History of American Progress to the Ann Arbor Film Festival months before having developed all the elements involved here. In the mean time, Woody Vasulka passed away. So part of the inspiration for this piece comes from his work, The Art of Memory, which my partner and I were able to watch at the Video Data Bank here in Chicago. We were struck by the similarities it has with Walter Benjamin's 1940 essay, On the Concept of History:

"There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair [verweilen: a reference to Goethe’s Faust], to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm."

Benjamin's vision of progress as one huge catastrophic evert seems so prescient now, with the pandemic raging and computer models predicting a horrifying, climate changed future.... Our idea of progress must change.

The books I've been reading have had an influence as well. They have illuminated the lineage of colonial slavery up to our present version of neoliberal capitalism, showing how it can never be anything but a system of institutional racism...my reading list:

How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century by Erik Olin Wright

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Dark Ecology by Timothy Morton

A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things by Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore

Staying with the Trouble by Donna J. Haraway

This is a direct capture of my audio/video performance at the Performing Media Festival 2020 at Indiana University, South Bend in February. Huge thanks to Eric Souther and Ryan Olivier for putting a great festival together!

The title Jacob's Escalator is an obvious riff on the biblical tale, Jacob's Ladder. This video essay attempts to reveal a more modern and therefore easier path between the physical and spiritual. But though the path is mechanized, it's not without it's own difficulties...a stray flip-flop can jamb it...and who wants to step onto an escalator that has no end in sight? But perhaps these modern means of conveyance can take us to a place that wasn't originally intended...

Extensive field recordings of the Chicago transit system form the core sounds and imagery of this piece.

Documentation of a collaborative performance that took place at Elastic Arts in Chicago, 2020.:

Ethan Turpin- wildfire video from his project The Burn Cycle.

Allison Leigh Holt- video sculpture, live camerawork

Dorien Gunnels/Need For Storms- sound

Mika McKinnon- narration

Kit Young- video synthesis

This is full documentation of the performance we did at the East Bay Media Center, Berkeley, CA. March, 2019. Sung Kim played invented instruments, Motoko Honda played keyboards and electronics, Paige Starling Sorvillo danced, I supplied the interactive video environment. This was all improvised from start to finish.

Improvisational set with Nathan Hill on sound, (for his birthday!), at Resonant Frequencies #17, in Oakland CA.

Documentation of our performance at the Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco, 2019.

Documentation of our performance at Coaxial Arts Foundation in Los Angeles, 2019

This video is documentation of a work in progress. It is a collaboration between dancers Tonya Powell and Tina Combs, choreographer Royland Lobato, musicians Yoel Mulen, Joe Churchill, and David Pedroso Rivero, and myself. This is one of my first attempts at establishing a video feedback environment large enough for people to perform in. The video was recorded by one of two Canon feedback cameras that were aimed at the projection screen. There were two other projectors throwing the same image to either side of the one you see. The performance took place on Dec 10 2017 at Shapeshifters Cinema in Oakland CA. We plan on doing a second performance in Berkeley, early in 2018 after working it up through more rehearsals. This project is supported in part by a grant from the Berkeley Civic Arts Commission.

This video is documentation of Brian Pedersen's and my performance at San Francisco Cinematheque's Crossroads Film Festival at SFMOMA. Solo Trumpet is a collaborative piece that is improvisational in both video and sound. Brian is playing a reeded trumpet and saxophone through many distortion pedals; I am playing a video loop of the CA coast through my video feedback and synthesis system. Sorry about the abrupt ending. I thought 8 minutes had gone by when I glanced at our timer and saw that run beyond our allotted 14 minutes! We can go on for hours....

Runcible Spoonfight's audio set at Resonant Frequencies, Oakland, July 1st 2018. Tom Djll, Clarke Robinson on audio synthesizers. Allison Holt and Kit Young on glass lenses, video feedback and synthesis.

This video documents a live, improvised video performance at Shapeshifters Cinema in Oakland, CA. It was the first set of three that we did for their August show. TBWIG Portraits condenses interviews I did of artists who participated in The Black Woman Is God show at SOMArts Gallery, curated by Karen Seneferu and Melorra Green, and combines them with dancers who are performing an Afro-Cuban folklore dance for the goddess Yemaya. Also mixed in are street scenes from Fanime-Con and downtown San Francisco. Huge thanks and gratitude to all who participated!

Grey Area Art and Technology show, May, 2016. Lori Varga on 16 and 35mm film, Thomas Dimuzio on Buchla synthesizer, myself on video feedback and video synthesis.

This is documentation of the first set of a live, improvised sound and video show I did at the invitation of the musician Sung Kim for his residency at The Ridge Space in Oakland, CA. Two more sets followed, using different images and instrumentation. For this set Sung Kim played ozukuri, Shanna Sordahl, cello, and I played my video feedback environment. This is all live video with no effects or prerecorded loops used. Two rotating cameras are fed back through three flat screens and projected with three projectors mounted on their sides. Many thanks to SF Cinematheque and Krowswork for the use of their projectors! The projected image was approximately 22' wide by 9' high. My assistant, Michael Brown helped with the candle ritual and the placement of Sung Kim's matryoshka dolls. Sung and Shanna were playing through Sung's Sympathetic Resonator Cannons, which amplify, sustain, and harmonize with the sounds running through them!

This video is documentation for an installation I did at Artist's Television Access in San Francisco during February, 2015. The installation used 6 cc cameras feeding their video signals to 6 screens in a randomized pattern. The screens and cameras were articulated with robotics and were in a randomized pattern of motion. The video signals and robotic motors were controlled with several Arduino microprocessors.

Storefront Window or Gallery Installation Proposal Installation to include the following elements:

Multipul video screens and /or video projectors.

Multiple closed circuit video cameras, (at least 4).

Microprocessor switching devices to route the closed circuit camera signals to

different screens at different times.

Motorized, motion controlled devices, (robotics) that will change the view/

perspective of some of the cameras.

Mannequins, props and models, (some also motorized), that will interact with

the cameras, screens and each other.

Design:
My goal is to create an environment where the viewer is constantly trying to identify what perspective or viewpoint they are being shown. Imagine a street intersection where cars and pedestrians are going in many different directions at once. All of them are traveling with video cameras who's signals are shown randomly on a group of several video monitors. The effect of looking at the monitors would be to realize several relative viewpoints simultaneously. And there would be instances when two cameras would cross paths and record each other recording...Some of the cameras in the installation will at times be directed at the viewers outside on the street, and at other times the video cameras will be directed at the video screens themselves creating multiples of the same image, (video feedback). Please see documentation of my work for examples of video feedback and robotics at www.youngkit.com.

Logistics:
The robotics will be completed in 4 months time. The installation process will take three full days. The installation will be maintenance free except for turning it on and off. It will not be able to run continuously for weeks on end. Therefor, it should only be run when someone is at the location and is responsible for turning it on and off. I am available to do this on a daily basis, and to trouble shoot if problems arise. If the installation were to stay up for more that a week, it would be interesting to change some of the props and camera viewpoints throughout the run. I own all of the equipment thus far but would look for funding to purchase two large LCD screens or projectors.

Thank you for your consideration.

Kit Young www.youngkit.com youngkit50@gmail.com 510 375-9699 

This proposal was conceived of and executed for the Artists And Models 2010 event, a fundraiser for Hallwalls, an exhibition space in Buffalo, N.Y. The work is titled Semipermiable Brain. Please look for documentation in my sculpture page. Excerpts from the written proposal are below.

  The proposed installation will include sculpture, video and kinetic art elements, and will have an audience participation dimension. It will require a 12' x 12' floor area as a footprint and need further space around it for the audience. The piece will be approximately 9' high and will need 1' of clearance above for assembly. A 10' high ceiling would suffice. These measurements are approximate, the piece can be modified to conform to a smaller space.

The sculptural aspect of the piece will be an 8' high androgynous human head. It’s form and skin will be made of stretch-film packaging material which will be stretched over an armature made of recycled pipe and lumber. The stretch-film will be layered up thick enough to make it translucent so as to partially obscure the armature beneath. The translucency of the stretch-film skin will lend itself to back lighting and the display of images or found objects beneath it’s surface. The skin can also be drawn on from the exterior with sharpy marker to define and highlight it’s form.

The video component of the piece will be shown through two 19" LCD TV screens that will form the eyes of the head. These screens will be mounted on axles so that they can rotate up to a speed of 100 RPM. This will make the images they transmit unable to be viewed in the usual TV sense, though the speed will be variable by the audience. As the RPM slows, the video images will become more coherent in the usual way. The content of the video will be different for each screen. One screen will be a collage of talking heads from news clips and TV commercials; the other will contain personal, intimate, and natural imagery,( nothing sexually graphic).

Our Favorite Shows is a video performance piece that was staged for Hallwalls Artists And Models event, 2011. Excerpts for the proposal are below.

Artists And Models Proposal '11: Our Favorite Shows , Performance of improvised video and sound.

The video component of this piece will consist of three TV channels or shows that will be created using small props, toys, and materials. These scenes will be altered and manipulated throughout the performance to form narratives. The themes of the narratives will be:

1. News; with melting talking heads. 2. Action; chase, catastrophe, violence. 3. Sexy; advertisements and melting pop stars.

The three scenes will be monitored with video cameras. Any one of the scenes will be projected on the wall behind the performance area where the scenes are being constructed. The scenes will be projected in random order as they reach the next point in their narrative. Some of the audience will be seated in front of the performance area,(the rest of the audience can stand). The audience will be able to view all the scenes as they are being developed as well as the projection of the chosen scene on the wall behind. 

This is another, tighter distillation of the performance I gave at the Artists and Models event last year in Buffalo, N.Y. All the video imagery and sound was improvised during this one night event. Three old turntables played flee market records while driving mechanized stages upon which improvised scenes were enacted with thrift store dolls, figurines and props. It was conceived as a parody of the brain washing effect produced by most TV programming. This was a collaborative performance using the help of four guest VJs; Gary Sczerbaniewicz, Kate Gaudy, Angela Harris, and Tammy McGovern.

This is video documentation of an installation I did in Buffalo N.Y.