Orbital Obsessions

Distant Activities, 1972, 4:45 min., 1/2” open reel video shown on DVD

Video feedback was a very powerful image source in the early 70s. In Distant Activities not one but two cameras were pointed at the monitor simultaneously, one creating the pattern, the other the ripple effect inside the pattern. Tool credit: Eric Siegel.

 Land of Timoteus, 1975, 6:45 min., 1/2” open reel video shown on DVD

This video begins with Timoteus sitting on the seashore and continues with rolling and thunderous camera scans of dark and ominous landscapes. The audio signal alters the video permutations.

Orbital Obsessions, 1975, 6:45 min., 1/2” open reel video shown on DVD

Orbital Obsessions is a compilation from the Machine Vision project of installations and videotapes that used mechanized modes of camera control to address human perception.

Violin Power

Violin Power, 1975, 6:45 min., 1/2” open reel video shown on DVD

A study of the relationship between music and the electronic image, Violin Power is emblematic of the artist’s playful and singular approach to music, art and technology.

Bad, 1975, 6:45 min., 1/2” open reel video shown on DVD

Bad is a technical exploration of several commands in the Vasulkas’ Buffer Oriented Digital Device, which controls digital imaging functions such as up/down and right/left movement, as well as the stretching and squeezing of the image.

Lilith, 1975, 6:45 min., 1/2” open reel video shown on DVD

In Lilith the face of a woman (painter Doris Cross) is altered, manipulated and submerged within a natural and technological landscape.

A So Desu Ka

A So Desu Ka, 1975, 6:45 min., 1/2” open reel video shown on DVD

A montage of seemingly arbitrary shots of Japanese religious sites and natural settings becomes a hypnotic vortex. A bombardment of electronic noise replaces speech and text.

In the Land of the Elevator Girls, 1989, 4:14 min., S-VHS video shown on DVD

The elevator becomes a metaphorical vehicle to reveal an outsider’s gaze into contemporary Japanese culture.

Trevor, 2000, 11 min., digital video shown on DVD

A lecture by avant-garde musician Trevor Wishart is the subject of the artist’s continued exploration of the interaction between sound and image.

Warp, 1999, 4 min., digital video shown on DVD

Ongoing investigations into video-effects technology and performance come together in this tape as the artist slowly approaches the camera, her body warping.

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