Sad Stonewash is described as a 'mulch.' An adventure, or perhaps abyss, of distortion. Like if an alien raided a charity shop's VHS section and created some kind of a muzzy tapestry of humankind.
Created by Luke Wyatt (known elsewhere as Torn Hawk), the video deploys rather extreme analogue video processing, mixing analogue and digital tools as well as some good old fashion VCR bashing. Wyatt is also responsible for the spellbinding score that accompanies the visual experience.
Previously DVD only, the full video is now made available in an online format for the first time exclusively via 4:3.
The artist says: “I select a video to appropriate based on its mood resonance or compositional zing. My VCR gets beat up with a size 13 docksider until it makes errors and the VHS tape spits upon itself. While digitizing the video I induce the computer to make mistakes by not telling it the truth about the data it is ingesting. I isolate the mistakes I like best, outline them, and send them back to my VCR, resuming the docksider attack, repeating this process until things attain an anti-sheen, losing any crisp edge as if they had always belonged together. I then arrange the images in an order that must appear equally inevitable.”