William Etra (March 27, 1947 – August 26, 2016) was a live video pioneer and the co-inventor (with
Steve Rutt) of the
Rutt/Etra Video Synthesizer.
Etra was born in
Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
and raised in
Lawrence, Nassau County, New York
Lawrence is a village in Nassau County, New York, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the village population was 6,483.
The Village of Lawrence is in the southwestern corner of the Town of Hempstead, adjoining the border wit ...
.
Etra worked briefly as a professional cameraman, then studied film at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...
. He began teaching experimental television at NYU before he graduated.
In 1971, Etra and video artists
Steina and Woody Vasulka
Steina Vasulka (born Steinunn Briem Bjarnadottir in 1940)
Soros Center for Contemporary Arts Budapest
started a performance space at
The Kitchen
A kitchen is a room used for the preparation of food.
Kitchen, or The Kitchen, may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment Films
* ''Kitchen'' (1966 film), an American film
* ''Kitchen'' (1997 film), a Hong Kong film
* ''The Kitchen'' (1961 film ...
.
Using the Rutt-Etra synthesizer, Etra made ''Narcissikon'' with his wife Louise.“This was my first Rutt-Etra piece. The initial picture is Louise sitting against a black background. She’s got an output monitor she can watch, and I put it in a circle wipe, feed it into the Rutt-Etra synthesizer, get a white line wipe, put Louise’s face into that, take it out of the Rutt-Etra, and outline it in the synthesizer, and Louise is on the intercom, and she’s talking to me and I’m talking to her, and we actually ran through it twice."
Another early piece was ''Heartbeat'', in which Louise Etra sits in a chair in a studio, while a circle bounces on screen, blipping in time to her amplified heartbeat. Bill comes in and kisses her; the sound grows; the circle bounces larger. Then he goes back to the control room, she relaxes, and the circle returns to normal.
At WNET, Etra created a video based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, ''Silence'', with David Silver narrating. “That scared me so much I stayed away from narrative for years and years,” Etra commented.
Etra attempted a symphonic work at the
Strasenburgh Planetarium in
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in and the county seat, seat of government of Monroe County, New York, United States. It is the List of municipalities in New York, fourth-most populous city and 10th most-populated municipality in New York, with a populati ...
, when Central Maine Power Music Company played space music, to the accompaniment of the star maps of the planetarium, plus Etra’s video pictures of the musicians projected onto the stars.
He worked for Warner-Atari,
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
, and
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC is an American film and television production company founded by filmmaker George Lucas in December 10, 1971 in San Rafael, California, and later moved to San Francisco in 2005. It is best known for creating and producing th ...
, and produced digital video for New York clubs and theater.
[Logan Hill (January 19, 2000)]
A Multimedia Life, Plus Weasels
''Wired
Wired may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Music
* ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976
* ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993
* ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017
* "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street''
* "Wired ...
''. Accessed 14 July 2014
References
Books
*Price, Jonathan, 'Video Visions: a Medium Discovers Itself', New American Library,
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
, 1977, ASIN: B00ECDT4V2
External links
*https://archive.org/details/BillEtraSteveRuttInterview
{{DEFAULTSORT:Etra, Bill
1947 births
2016 deaths
American video artists
Hofstra University alumni
New York University alumni
People from Lawrence, Nassau County, New York