Participation

Participation, Steina (Iceland/USA) and Woody Vasulka (Czechoslovakia/Iceland/USA), 1972, 63 min., 1/2” open reel video shown on DVD

Participation is an assemblage of short videos shot with an early Portapak that documents the wildly creative downtown New York art and music scene in the late 1960s and early 70s.

Commission

The Commission, Woody Vasulka, 1983, 39:15 min., hybrid video with camera, non-camera, processed and computer generated images shown on DVD

Applying his electronic imaging codes to narrative, Vasulka develops a metaphorical image language to envision an epic electronic opera. The text, which is based on the relationship of violinist Niccolò Paganini and composer Hector Berlioz, confronts myths of Romanticism, history and art making. — Electronic Arts Intermix

Selected Works of Steina and Woody Vasulka

Steina and Woody Vasulka

The art scene in New York City during the mid-1960s and early 1970s was one of social fermentation where dialogs between artists of all kinds were breaking down barriers between disciplines, and new audiences for many forms of contemporary art and culture were emerging. The Vasulkas arrived into the midst of this extraordinary milieu from Prague where Steina was studying classical violin and Woody was a student in the FAMU film academy. They soon began using portable video equipment to record and present multi-monitor installations of this burgeoning scene (see Steina 1970-2000, SITE Santa Fe, 2008). During this time the Vasulkas also began experimenting with real time video image manipulation including audio modulations of the live video signal. Since then their work has continued to be innovative in terms of the history of video art, but more importantly, the body of work they have produced collaboratively and as individual artists has played a significant role in the development of what is now being charted as the broader field of electronic (new) media. .

Steina’s many video works are beautiful examples of her sustained experimentation over many years with analog and digital signal processing and aspects of machine vision. Her videos take many forms including single-channel and multiple monitor works, projection environments, non-narrative database sequencing and the use of electromechanical-kinetic optical apparatus.

Woody Vasulka’s early studies of signal processing explored unique ways of encoding displacement functions in relation to video raster topologies of the human face. This led to the development of syntax for signal modification that supported psychological aspects of electronic images as seen in the narrative-material tropes of Art of Memory and The Commission. Subsequently he has combed military surplus lots at Los Alamos and other locations around the country for discarded electronic equipment. Through the use of electronics, optics, engineering and computer programming he has produced new forms of media constructions including hybrid automata and electromechanical systems that explore cultural and psychological aspects of human interaction with advanced military technology and the subjectivity of war machines. –Patrick Clancy

Portrait courtesy of Meridel Rubenstein, 1981.

DVDs and image stills courtesy of the artists. Descriptions of works courtesy of the artists, electronic Arts Intermix and Steina: 1970–2000, SITE Santa Fe.

Electromediascope website