Testtone 1000Hz

Testtone 1000Hz is a collection of videos that were created in the Summer of 1999 at the Athens, Ohio, Public Access Station offices. It was released on VHS tape and the videos were later included in the Akroness collection in 2004.

Video Listing

1. Testtone 1000 Hertz (Monophonic/Fully Loaded) (1:24)
2. Human Beatnik (titles) (1:23)
3. Space #1 or, "What tomb?" Any drugs would do... for you. (2:14)
4. Metal (2:43)
5. Part 1: "The Abduction" (3:17)
6. Teeth (2:30)
7. varying levels of insanity ---or--- "Prelude to The Stalker" (1:40)
8. The Stalker (6:39)
9. Never (Live @ Mama Einstein's, Cinco de Mayo 1999, Athens, Ohio) (5:56)
10. Auto 2 (The Stalker Reprise) (1:44)
11. Talking Head (Closing Credits) (1:43)

Video Notes

Space #1 or, "What tomb?" Any drugs would do... for you.

This video features my coffee maker brewing a cup of coffee as the contents of a letter sent to me by my future girlfriend appear across the screen. I'd been receiving letters from her recently and didn't know what to make of most of them. She was Russian and didn't speak the best English. Eventually, I figured-out that she'd invited me to move into a room in an old house in Oberlin, Ohio, where she was enrolled at the conservatory there, which I accepted because I had no other plans at the time and my lease was just about up.

Metal

The song used in this video was recorded by a couple of friends and included in The Spring Collection 1999 collection earlier in the year. It features home video footage of my friends, some performances of their bands. It also features footage from The Ultimate Revenge, a tape of concert footage featuring Slayer, Exodus and Venom performing in NYC's Studio 54.

Part 1: "The Abduction"

This video was meant to be the first part of a serial that featured... well, in a nutshell: Two guys abduct crackheads off the streets, brainwash them and turn them into an army of crackheads that take-over the world. Yes, you read that correctly. A guy I worked with at The Burrito Buggy in Athens, Ohio, came up with this idea. He had this one scene in his head where a crackhead was being brainwashed/interrogated, you know, bright lights with the guy tied-up to a chair... and the interrogator pulls out a zip lock bag of hotdogs in water, pulling one out, saying, "Ohhhh... you WANT this, don't you?!?" And, that breaks the will of the crackhead.

So, this was the first part of the story, where the two bad guys find their first crackhead and abduct him. It was shot while my friend (who is driving in the scene) was working at The Buggy. My current roommate and I met him and we spent about a half hour driving around town at night, improving the scene, then shot the scene with the crackhead (who was me, naturally) at the storage units near where The Buggy lived at night. To be honest, I love this piece and am proud of it. It was exactly what I had in my mind and turned-out really well.

Teeth

The footage for this piece was shot up at The Ridges, an old sanitarium in Athens, Ohio. The music was created by my friend, Todd Jacops, who I was playing some music with at the time. This is one of my favorite songs of all time, period. While we were walking through the grounds, I had the song going through my mind, the whole time, and I think it helped with the edits.

varying levels of insanity ---or--- "Prelude to The Stalker"

Video clips from various horror movies that I had on VHS tape were used to create a disturbing collage of murder, possession and other horrible images.

The Stalker

This video sums-up my mental state in the Summer of 1999. By that point, I was alone in the apartment in the country and I spent most of my time alone, not really having anything that I would count as friends anymore, which was my own fault. I was unhappy with everything and just wanted out of Athens.

Never (Live @ Mama Einstein's, Cinco de Mayo 1999, Athens, Ohio)

On May 5, 1999, I performed this song with my friend on drums at a bar called "Mama Einstein's" on Court Street in Athens, Ohio.

Auto 2 (The Stalker Reprise)

The footage for this piece was shot in my apartment as I was packing-up to move out of Athens, back to Northeast Ohio. I had come up with this... storyline of sorts, creating a path of "stations" depicting each one through my belongings. I played the song (another one created by my friend Todd Jacops) through a boombox in the room as I walked through, timing the movement to the song. It took about 20 or so attempts to get it to where I was happy, in one continuous shot.

Talking Head (Closing Credits

The song used in this video was recorded by a couple of friends and included in The Spring Collection 1999 collection earlier in the year. It features footage that was in the parking deck underneath Ohio University's Convocation Center in Athens, Ohio. My friend drove his car through the columns as I shot out the passenger side window.

Personal Thoughts

In the Winter of 1999, my friend and I took the required instructional courses at the local Public Access station in Athens, Ohio, that would allow us to check-out their video equipment and use their in-house production studios. That summer, I created these videos based-on a bunch of songs that we had created, along with some experimental videos using clips from films and home movies. It was literally a crazy time in my life when I made this collection of videos. My girlfriend had moved away and I was living more-or-less all by myself in a duplex out in the country outside of Athens. I didn't interact with people outside of work for the most part and had no direction or idea as to what was going to happen next in my life. The video for The Stalker reflects my mental state at the time. The videos were initially mastered to S-VHS tape. Once I got my first digital miniDV camera, I captured the videos to that and then included them in my first DVD-based collection Akroness.