Don Ritter's education includes undergraduate degrees in fines arts & psychology (University of Waterloo, 1986), electronics engineering technology (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, 1979) and a Master of Science in Visual Studies (Center for Advanced Visual Studies/Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988). This last degree includes poetry, film, video and electronic media studies at Harvard University and the MIT Media Lab.

I am envious of musicians' abilities to create living art, because visual artists seem limited to creating the dead. Preferring the living to the non-living, and being a visual artist and not a musician, this conclusion has caused considerable discomfort to my artistic motivation. To overcome this discontent, I desired to create a visual medium containing the living qualities found in music and music performances. This goal is being pursued through performances containing large video projected imagery and live improvised music.

Technical Background

'Orpheus' is a computerized tool which automatically synchronizes video imagery with any form of music or audio. Video frames are stored as digital information within the memory of graphic computers and displayed in any order accompanied by one of over 70 cinematic transitions (e.g. forward, backward, flashing, fade in). Specific video imagery and cinematic transitions are automatically selected by music entering the system through a MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) connection. A user defined control file allows flexible correspondence between music type, frame selection and cinematic transitions. In general, 'Orpheus' is a digital video editing system controlled through improvised or intricately composed music or audio.

HW: 2 Amiga 2500, Video Genlocks, Pitch to Midi Converter
SW: Interactive Video-SW by Don Ritter (Image Controlled by Sound)