Larsen Effect
Bill Gwin (1971) begins his comprehensive feedback manual with a simple definition: “Video feedback is produced by aiming a camera at a monitor; the camera actually takes a picture of itself. The patterns thus engendered can be altered in several ways, by exerting various controls over the electronics, and by affecting the optical path of the picture/monitor loop.”[1] Some of the most insightful and creative explorations of video feedback have come not from art, but from science. The physicist James P. Crutchfield (1984) described video feedback as a “space-time analogue computer.” He also details the transduction of the image between mediums: “The camera converts the optical image on the monitor into an electronic signal that is then converted by the monitor into an image on its screen. This image is then electronically converted and again displayed on the monitor, and so on, ad infinitum.”[2]
