James Connolly’s DIY audio/video synthesizer hybridizes analog and digital systems to combine the control and precision of digital programming, the clarity and vividness of high definition digitally projected light, and the organic spectrum of analog video. Digitally synthesized complex waveforms are improperly bent into the red, green, and blue pins of a hacked VGA cable as analog signal and then converted into full quality HDMI. Digital light, usually generated through pre-determined algorithmic calculations, is liberated through the spontaneity of raw analog signal processing to generate an intense synesthetic experience of light and sound.

Audience members will use their smart phones to control the frequency, modulation, amplitude, and color of RGB.VGA.VOLT HD, exploiting the connectivity of the network and bringing improvisational exploration of synchronized audio and video to the fingertips of viewers.

Bio: James Connolly is a video, sound and new media artist, instrument builder, curator and educator. His videos and real-time performances undermine the interfaces and break through the computational instincts of digital and analog consumer devices, liberating their latent audio and visual materialities. His work has been shown at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago; the Dallas Video Festival/Medianale at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary; the Currents New Media Festival; the Vancouver New Music Festival; Columbia College Chicago; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. His work has been published in the MIT Press Computer Music Journal and the Creator’s Project, and his writing has been published in the Leonardo Music Journal. He teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is the assistant curator of the Roger Brown Study Collection.