Retro video artist Rooster arrived in the world too late.
Either that, or he’s a prophet from the future here to remind us humans that our data storage methods are fleeting and that “digitizing anything degrades reality.”
The Beacon resident is no doomsayer, just a purveyor of common sense concerned with complacency. “People think their phone pictures are permanent, but a lot of things could happen to take down the internet, like a virus or a solar flare,” he says.
The stated goal on his 1990s-style website (artistrooster.net) is to explore “the relationship between humanity and machinery, offering a peek into the post-digital future.”
An analog throwback in a digital world, Rooster enjoys tinkering with bicycles, spinning records on a turntable and watching VHS tapes (no DVDs, cable or streaming allowed). His main artistic medium is old tube televisions with concave screens.
His displays using old TVs have enlivened the picture window of Distortion Society on Main Street since the gallery and tattoo parlor opened last year. The current exhibit consists of a security camera trained on passersby, shown live on four small monitors, like fleeting selfies that move.
“People who only know flat screens are amazed, like ‘Why is this thing so wide?’ ” he says, standing in front of a 7-foot-high wall of a dozen old-fashioned sets in his home. In total, he owns around three dozen bulky units.
A local friend gave Chris Loers, 32, the nickname Rooster, which he’s turned into a brand. The moniker had nothing to do with his roots in Omaha, Nebraska, he said, but “could be the hair,” a brown Mohawk crested with a blond streak.
After studying computer engineering at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, he got a job at IBM and lived in Poughkeepsie, but ditched the white collar world and moved to bohemian Beacon in 2017.
Loers embraces the persona, sporting a rooster tattoo on his bicep. His sartorial style combines clashing colors, like purple high-top sneakers matched with dark brown pants and shirt.
For a Cannabis Day event held April 20 at The Yard in Beacon, he rode in on a bicycle wearing a trucker hat, a skeleton suit and sneakers with neon green shoelaces.
He might pull up in the mustard-yellow Art Van, which once belonged to the Vermont Department of Transportation. The side doors swing open wide so he can show a display without unloading; black lights animate the orange interior and crazy-patterned carpet.
Loers views vintage tube TVs in the same way many audiophiles contend that vinyl records convey a superior sonic experience compared to the format’s digital counterparts, in part because mp3 files compromise reality by omitting portions of the original recording.
Old TVs display “a depth of perception that you can’t get with a flat screen,” he says. “To me, they look different — and better.”
Sometimes he works construction to pay the bills, but got a nice break when Reid Ballard came into Distortion Society to inquire about the video display in the window. His father, Norman Ballard, helms the Manhattan-based Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation, which maintains an archival and preservation presence in Beacon.
Rooster has installed pop-ups at many other venues and his video wizardry augments local DJ sets and other live shows. At a recent performance at Quinn’s by avant-garde jazz band Modulus Now, snowy white static swirled around the saxophone player’s head like a swarm of bees.
Rooster also creates content, including Wheels, a full-length verite film shot with a VHS camcorder manufactured in 1989. The film dotes on stationary round objects around town and follows Beaconites driving, skateboarding, bicycling and zooming on motorcycles down Main Street.
“I want to incorporate people who are obsessed with seeing themselves on a screen into the art, if it even is art,” he says.
At The Yard, Rooster placed four monitors on a wooden stand covered with faux Rasta-patterned Baja hoodies and showed videos of four friends sitting around talking, each one filmed with a different camera.
The construct attempted to replicate the original conversation as if in real time, says Rooster, who also set up a television and video cassette player so visitors could watch some of his VHS tapes.
But the crux of his work is video feedback and distortion, which can only be achieved with vintage gear. He likens it to a guitarist with a tube amplifier fiddling around with overdrive to cause feedback that can be harnessed, but not controlled. Some people assume he is using software, but their “brains short circuit” when they find out he is not, says Rooster.
“Paintings are considered to be the pinnacle of fine art and then you get to video, which is often dismissed,” he says. “There’s only a few of us out here and we’re pushing the envelope on what art even is.”
