I produced this video when I was still working out of the Public Access studio. They got an underwater camera, and no one really knew what to do with it. I immediately had the idea of filming competetive swimmers from underwater. I was on staff at Cornell University at the time, so I approached the swim coach and asked if I could come by during their practice as shoot some video. He was intrigued by the idea and said yes.

On the one hand, I was well equipped to take on this project, because I had been a cometitive swimmer myself in high school. I knew how to get in the water and capture some footage without getting in their way. But it was excessively challenging in a couple of other respects. First of all, it was not actually an underwater camera. It was a waterproof case that a camera would be put into. Once sealed up there were buttons on the exterior that could be used to control the camera. It all worked fine with one exception - there was a large air pocked inside the device, so it floated like a beach ball. I wound up having to rig a bungee cord to a dumbbell weight to achieve neurtral boyancy. That wound up working well enough, but the other problem that I was boyant myself. I could get some shallow footage by hooking my feet under the bottom rung of the built-in ladder at the deep end to hold myself under the surface. But for some of the deeper shots looking directly up I had to fully exhale all my air so that I would sink to the bottom. This made it tough to hold my breath for any duration, and that was exacerbated by the fact that I smoked both cigarettes and marijuana at the time, so my lung function was not optimal. But I was actually surprised at how long I could stay down there and keep filming

Once I got all the raw footage I went into the video booth at the Public Access studeo to start maniuplating it. When I produced "VoyEx" I had help from a colleague in creating the video feedback effect. He was a positive savante at that stuff. This was my first time doing it all on my own. The end product wasn't as good as it would have been if I had enlisted his help again, but I was pretty happy with what I was able to do all on my own.

Finally there was the music. I had a vinyl record that I bought on a whim at a local record shop because I liked the cover and was intrigued with the band name Alien Farm Exorcist. There was a track that had a flowing water sound in the background, and otherwise had the kind of trippy sound that would work well. Unfortunately the running time was a little too long. It would probably have been easy to just cut down the audio track in editing, but either I didn't really have those skills on the analog editing equipment I had at my disposal, or I just didn't think of it at the time. The end result is that the piece runs several minutes longer than I would have liked it to. I think it works well, but it overstays it's welcome. It would be better if it the running time were significantly shorter. I did, however, actually get permission to use the music. I got in contact with the band. They were a little iffy about it, but when I said that it would only be broadcast locally, and only 3 times, they reluctantly agreed. If they ever found it here streaming online without restriction they would probably have something to say about it, but they probably disbanded decades ago.

Beyond those 3 broadcasts, this video has never been seen beyond streaming it on my site.