La voix • Synthetiques H. 2M

The video synthesizers are instruments of productions of electronic visual imagings, which have been invented in the 1960’s and developed in the 1970’s. These video synthesizers are characterised by the capacity to generate, in an independent way, forms from electronic components. Among the famous synthesizers, Eric Siegel conceived in United States, the PCS (Processing Chrominance Synthesizer) in 1968 which ‘colors’ images from a black and white signal, and in 1970 the EVS (Electronic Video Synthesizer), which, not only colors, but also generates abstract forms. But it is mostly the artist Nam June Paik, as a resident of the WGHB of Boston, who in the 1969-1970 developed an artistic reflection on the digital image, by imagining, in collaboration with the Japanese engineer Shuya Abe, a synthesizer able to create its own images.

It is in the lineage of these experiences that Philippe Hiquily is associating with Marcel Dupouy between 1973 and 1974, to integrate his Movicolor, created between 1971 and 1972, in a prospect of plastic research. Together, they realize different series of synthetic images, constituted from a video treatment of the artist’s sculpture « La Voix ». On the basis of a scalable recreation and colourisation of the form of the sculpture through variations of video electronic oscillations. In the wake of this experiment, he tried to transpose these images on more standard supports in plastic arts. In order to print one of this images on a canvas, Hiquily had to go as far as Japan, which was the only country to own the necessary technology for the print. Because of these complications, only one canvas has been printed and, besides an exhibition at the Salon de Mai in 1977, this series remains unpublished.

From the sculpture “La voix”
Series of 94 phototypes from video synthesizer

This work is listed in the Artist’s Raised Catalog (page 213) under the reference number: 1014 – 73.Des.SV1.PU.DI.24 (P.190)