This is an early video piece staring Dan Sandin in which he explains, in general terms, the functionality of the Sandin Analogue Image Processor (IP). This was the instructional video that accompanied the modules for constructing you own Sandin IP.
Sandin was an advocate of education and espoused a non-commercial philosophy, emphasizing a public access to processing methods and the machines that assist in generating the images. Accordingly, he placed the circuit board layouts for the IP with a commercial circuit board company and freely published schematics and other documentation.
The IP is a general-purpose patch programmable analogue computer, which is different from a regular digital computer, and is optimized to process video/television signals and sound. The video is processed through the IP "live" so that the viewer is able to see the effect on video signals. Initially the video is B&W, at the end Sandin debuts the 'Color IP'.
The Distribution Religion was created between 1971 - 1973 by Phil Morton + Dan Sandin. this document consists of the schematic plans for building your own copy of a Sandin Image Processor, a patch-programmable analog computer optimized for video processing + synthesis. Sandin open sourced his Image Processor, releasing the Distribution Religion freely + incorporating any new modifications into the document. The Distribution Religion was also released under Morton’s COPY-IT-RIGHT ethic and as such presents an important predecessor to current Free and Open Source approaches to Media Art.
in 2005 we (criticalartware *) digitized + rereleased the Distribution Religion "in order to honor the innovative [hystory/future] of the ImageProcessor and the DistributionReligion."
The Distribution Religion - Dan Sandin + Phil Morton (1971 - 1973) as digitized + rereleased by criticalartware (2005)
http://tinyurl.com/nf22d8
// jonCates
Assistant Professor
Film, Video & New Media
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
http://systemsapproach.net
* criticalartware was a collaborative media art histories research & artware development lab based in Chicago from 2002 - 2007. we interviewed + facilitated discourse between Kate Horsfield, low-fi, Sherry Miller Hocking, Peter Luining, Dan Sandin, Josh Goldberg, Jane Veeder, Josh Kit Clayton, Tom Betts, Golan Levin, Olga Goriunova, Alexei Shulgin, matthew fuller, Rene Beekman, Joe Gilmore, Simon Yuill, Sergey Teterin, LoVid, JODI, FM3 + Netochka Nezvanova to name a few. @ the turn of the 21rst century we defended + proposed hyperthreaded hystories of [connections/ruptures/dislocations] between early moments of Artware + other instruction sets such as Fluxus, Conceptualism, early Video Art, etc…
from 2007 - present, criticalartware is an artware demo crew from Chicago. we can be found @ NOTACON + BLOCKPARTY + online: http://criticalartware.net
Its strange, I am wearing the exact same outfit as he is right now.