Joel Cadman - Spinning Lights #137 (2011 - excerpt)

This video clip is a 6 minute excerpt from a 28 minute video entitled "Spinning Lights #137". It is the latest installment in a long-running Manhattan public access television series called "Spinning Lights" which features the video art of Joel Cadman.

The primary inspiration for the series is the technical video-graphic phenomena known as "video feedback" which spontaneously creates visual patterns by pointing a video camera at a monitor while it is out-putting the camera's imagery. This process can generate detailed, complex geometric forms which have structures that parallel forms in nature such as snowflakes, flowers, spirals, clouds, etc. Such feedback imagery has formed the basis for the majority of video explorations created for the television series.

One of the main goals of these works is to induce a meditative, trance-like calm in the person viewing them. The project was developed to function as a counter-point to the trend in television and video which has moved in the direction of evermore frenetic and disjointed energy.