The Creation Cycle

The Creation Cycle was a series of seven pioneering video recordings made over 5 years. They arose from an exploration of the nature of the universe, the nature of human consciousness, and the connections between the two. They followed a period of liminal personal experiences and are all somewhat “shamanic” in their creation – a period of many days internal meditation, followed by two days immersion in a darkened studio, and a resulting artwork to share with others.

The imagery and sound were performed and recorded by Donebauer and Desorgher “playing” and improvising around a theme together in real time with both participants having visual and aural feedback of each other’s transforming contributions as they affected the piece in real time and thus in turn their own continuing contributions. The resulting recorded tape represents the best live “take” from several recordings done at the time. This was the first example of the visual techniques Donebauer had developed through access to the old ATV colour studio donated to the Royal College of Art by Lew Grade. These techniques involved manipulating the studio in ways for which it was never designed, enabling the development of a form of “Electronic Painting” equivalent to the “Electronic Music” that was being first developed around that time. The two went on to work together for several years with Desorgher providing and co-ordinating the sound elements through a mixture of traditional musical instruments and electronic processing and generation.