Tschak-Tschak Funeral service for newspaper and TV-magnate Axel Cäsar Springer Camera: TV-material, source unknown Image /sound/arrangement/ editing: HDT Production: DFFB1985. Length: 3:20.

Rescuing a tape of current-events items from erasure by the usual cameratape-recycling turned up a treasure trove of material. Withholding all commentry on the particular (temporally specific) event that served as source for the film, I attempted to incorporate the sound material of this public ritual into a coherent sequence.

I was fortunate in that, at the same time as I was working on „Tschak-tschak“, Gabor Bódy in collaboration with Martin Potthoff was holding a seminar with the obscure title „Temporal Transgraphy“ in which our assignment was to transfer the time-rhythm-machine VIDEO onto diskettes and then playfully rearrange the material.

„Tschak-tschak“ utilizes these techniques and the playfullness they allow, particularly by establishing and recalling files that consist of sound sequences. (note 1995: now, when editing on hard-disks of high-powered computers, I feel the more that we were on the right train).

During the final montage work on the film, I consciously recognized the primacy of hand-written notes and emotional progressions, to which the preprogrammed ideas in the film had to be subordinated.

Thus the long musical progressions were created by manually running the source tape backwards at half speed, thereby altering instantly the entire set of parameters of the temporal transgraphy ... I have often wished my work had made Gabor laugh, but he died in the course of the seminar.