Sea Tails is a video installation

Video installation

Video installation is a contemporary art form that combines video technology with installation art, making use of all aspects of the surrounding environment to affect the audience. Tracing its origins to the birth of video art in the 1970s, it has increased in popularity as digital video production...

 created as a collaboration

Collaboration

Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing...

 between video artist

Video art

Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...

 Molly Davies

Molly Davies (videographer)

Molly Davies is a videographer or video artist. She has collaborated with John Cage, David Tudor, Takehisa Kosugi, Lou Harrison, Michael Nyman, Alvin Curran, Fred Frith, Suzushi Hanayagi, Sage Cowles, Polly Motley, Jackie Matisse, and Anne Carson....

, French artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

 Jackie Matisse

Jackie Matisse

Jackie Matisse is a French artist who is, "ever the kiteflying [creating] pioneer," "renowned for her kites." She also works in stereoscopy, supercomputing and virtual reality....

, and composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 David Tudor

David Tudor

David Eugene Tudor was an American pianist and composer of experimental music.- Biography :Tudor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied piano with Irma Wolpe and composition with Stefan Wolpe and became known as one of the leading performers of avant garde piano music. He gave the...

.

Matisse created four various kite

Kite

A kite is a tethered aircraft. The necessary lift that makes the kite wing fly is generated when air flows over and under the kite's wing, producing low pressure above the wing and high pressure below it. This deflection also generates horizontal drag along the direction of the wind...

s, Davies filmed them being 'flown' underwater (drug behind a boat in the Bahamas near Nassau) for eight days, and Tudor simultaneously recorded sound below and above deck, later layered, mixed

Audio mixing (recorded music)

In audio recording, audio mixing is the process by which multiple recorded sounds are combined into one or more channels, most commonly two-channel stereo. In the process, the source signals' level, frequency content, dynamics, and panoramic position are manipulated and effects such as reverb may...

, and rerecorded the sounds onto three separate tapes

Magnetic tape

Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic. It was developed in Germany, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape recorders...

. This was all combined as a six-monitor (or three, or rather three-channel video played on six monitors), three-channel

Studio monitor

Studio monitors, also called reference monitors, are loudspeakers specifically designed for audio production applications such as recording studios, filmmaking, television studios and radio studios where accurate audio reproduction is crucial....

 video installation premiered at the Pompidou Center in 1983 and later exhibited at the Getty Center

Getty Center

The Getty Center, in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, is a campus for cultural institutions founded by oilman J. Paul Getty. The $1.3 billion center, which opened on December 16, 1997, is also well known for its architecture, gardens, and views overlooking Los Angeles...

in 2004.

External links

• "Audio and Video: Sea Tails (1983)", Getty.edu.
• Perloff, Nancy Lynn. Project Muse: Leonardo Music Journal: Section Introduction: "The Art of David Tudor", Leonardo Music Journal - Volume 14, 2004, pp. 57-58, Muse.JHU.edu. E-ISSN: 1531-4812 Print ISSN: 0961-1215.