From the Upcoming Collapsed Desires DVD comes this TCTD exclusive transcript of bonus commentary from chip vj PARIS GRAPHICS. The interview, taken from bonus digital content currently being prepared for Kickstarter backers, talks about his background as a motion visualist and how he came to be involved n the chip scene.

More info about the DVD, which will be limited to 100 copies, can be found HERE.

“I’d like to give a little background on what got me into doing visuals, what I’ve been doing within the chip community, and what’s next.

It all sort of starts with electronic music: I used to be part of a duo called Voltage Control that made electronic music with analog equipment—synthesizers, function generators, Navy surplus equipment… anything we could get our hands on. With synthesis there are two aspects. One is taking elementary waveforms to create sounds. It might be something that emulates a sound you’re familiar with, like a plucked string, a trumpet or a drum. Or it might be creating a brand new sound that is all yours.

The other thing you can do is take these elementary wave forms and create patterns of rhythm, melodic patterns and things of that nature, which to me have a great correspondence with visuals and creating visual patterns. From there, we started making visuals with oscilloscopes. Then it went on to taking the equipment and plugging it into TVs, making patterns that varied with the wavelength, frequency, amplitude and so on.

This isn’t something that we had invented. It had been done in the 1970’s, but we were new to it. We were just learning about it and exploring it. It was quite a bit of fun. Then I moved to New York and all of a sudden I’m 3,000 miles away from all this equipment and I wanted to start doing things. I started playing around with a laptop and seeing what I could do. Some other years went by and I went to my first chip show. I remember thinking, wow, this is really cool! These guys had portable little synthesizers in their hands, the Game Boy. The Game Boy has a sound chip in it that does elementary waveforms and here they are making these great sounds. I started going on a regular basis to all the shows.
Continue reading Paris Graphics – Videogame Music in Context