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
The Rutt/Etra Video Synthesizer is an analog raster manipulation device for image processing and real-time animation. The Rutt/Etra was co-invented by Steve Rutt
Steven Alexander Rutt (February 26, 1945 – May 20, 2011) was an American engineer ...
.
Etra was born in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
and raised in
Lawrence, Nassau County, New York
Lawrence is a Administrative divisions of New York#Village, village in Nassau County, New York, Nassau County, New York (state), New York, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the village population was 6,483.
The Village of Lawre ...
.
Etra worked briefly as a professional cameraman, then studied film at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
. 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
The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary avant-garde performance and experimental art institution located at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was founde ...
.
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
The Strasenburgh Planetarium is a public planetarium located at 663 East Avenue in the city of Rochester, New York. It is named after its benefactors, Edwin and Clara Strasenburgh. It is a department of the Rochester Museum and Science Center. Th ...
in
Rochester, New York
Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...
, 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. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...
, and
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC is an American film and television production company and a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, which is a business segment of The Walt Disney Company. The studio is best known for creating and producing the ''Star Wars'' and ' ...
, and produced digital video for New York clubs and theater.
[Logan Hill (January 19, 2000)]
A Multimedia Life, Plus Weasels
''Wired
''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...
''. 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 or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, 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