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Peter Donebauer was born in the UK in 1947, a was a graduate of Manchester University and the Royal College of Art; he currently lives and works in London. Peter was a pioneering moving image (or “video”) artist in the UK in the Seventies and early Eighties, working live and un-edited in colour with performing musicians. His work mainly had and has improvisational and non-representational tendencies, but often with a structured and representational base. He was the first “video” artist to be commissioned by the Arts Council of Great Britain, British Film Institute, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Thorn-EMI, and was the first UK artist to be commissioned by the BBC for national broadcast. He built an image-processing synthesiser, the Videokalos, to extend his work beyond the confines of colour TV studios and has performed with his touring group VAMP (Video And Music Performers) at Ikon, ICA and Tate Britain galleries amongst others. After an extended break working in mainstream broadcast television as the co-founder and manager of Diverse Production Ltd, he is currently producing personal moving image work again.
"Frequently described as an electronic painter, I have sought to extend the possibilities of the television screen as an arena for the presentation of coloured imagery of the widest range of types." (P. Donebauer, Video Artists on Tour programme notes, February 1980). Donebauer's processing of video - his experimentation with abstraction synthesised video and live performance were clearly innovative of their time. Evidently, Donebauer was working with the painterly moving-image, and a scientific/engineering oriented research process; "I have been using this equipment to attempt to create an art form that is simultaneously sound, colour and visual pattern. Video is unique in allowing degrees of visual and aural spontaneity not possible with film. Thus in conjunction with an electronic music composer, I produce work that is neither music nor visual art but a combination of created sound with created vision."
(P. Donebauer, Arts Council Grant application, 28 Sept 1973). He received the first video arts award from the ACE in 1974.
Recently Peter Donebauer collaborated over a two year period with the electronics engineer Richard Monkhouse and Roderick Snell of Snell and Wilcox to build the Videokalos Colour Synthesiser, a portable image processing instrument. He explored performance improvisation and the spontaneous real time recording of video as an abstract art form, investigating its similarities to a musical instrument. He formed 'Video and Music Performers' (VAMP) in 1979 and presented video in live music concerts, often collaborating with musician Simon Desorgher. This video was created live by Peter Donebauer with composer/performer Barry Guy on double bass, plus 4 saxophones, 4 brass and two dancers. It was relayed live to the public outside the Colourscape multi-cellular coloured dome structure. A new enhanced live performance is planned for the 2014 Colourscape Music Festival in London: Gaia 2 at Colourscape Music Festival
Key works are “The Creation Cycle” 1974-79 (seven distinct pieces including “Entering” and “Merging-Emerging”) “The Water Cycle” 1990 (seven linked pieces), “Brewing” 1984, “The Mandala Cycle” 1990/1 (seven linked or distinct pieces), “Thames Reflections” 2006/7 - a multi-season durational urban landscape work for viewing on a single wall-hanging screen or four opposing screens as an installation. Current work is tending towards live performance again.
For more information see www.donebauer.net
Interview with Chris Meigh-Andrews
"Frequently described as an electronic painter, I have sought to extend the possibilities of the television screen as an arena for the presentation of coloured imagery of the widest range of types." (P. Donebauer, Video Artists on Tour programme notes, February 1980). Donebauer's processing of video - his experimentation with abstraction synthesised video and live performance were clearly innovative of their time. Evidently, Donebauer was working with the painterly moving-image, and a scientific/engineering oriented research process; "I have been using this equipment to attempt to create an art form that is simultaneously sound, colour and visual pattern. Video is unique in allowing degrees of visual and aural spontaneity not possible with film. Thus in conjunction with an electronic music composer, I produce work that is neither music nor visual art but a combination of created sound with created vision."
(P. Donebauer, Arts Council Grant application, 28 Sept 1973). He received the first video arts award from the ACE in 1974.
Recently Peter Donebauer collaborated over a two year period with the electronics engineer Richard Monkhouse and Roderick Snell of Snell and Wilcox to build the Videokalos Colour Synthesiser, a portable image processing instrument. He explored performance improvisation and the spontaneous real time recording of video as an abstract art form, investigating its similarities to a musical instrument. He formed 'Video and Music Performers' (VAMP) in 1979 and presented video in live music concerts, often collaborating with musician Simon Desorgher. This video was created live by Peter Donebauer with composer/performer Barry Guy on double bass, plus 4 saxophones, 4 brass and two dancers. It was relayed live to the public outside the Colourscape multi-cellular coloured dome structure. A new enhanced live performance is planned for the 2014 Colourscape Music Festival in London: Gaia 2 at Colourscape Music Festival
Key works are “The Creation Cycle” 1974-79 (seven distinct pieces including “Entering” and “Merging-Emerging”) “The Water Cycle” 1990 (seven linked pieces), “Brewing” 1984, “The Mandala Cycle” 1990/1 (seven linked or distinct pieces), “Thames Reflections” 2006/7 - a multi-season durational urban landscape work for viewing on a single wall-hanging screen or four opposing screens as an installation. Current work is tending towards live performance again.
For more information see www.donebauer.net
Interview with Chris Meigh-Andrews