"Vasulka Video: Objects" (1978) by Steina & Woody Vasulka

This is from Six Programs for Television: Matrix, Vocabulary, Transformations, Object, Steina, Digital Images, each 29 min.

"No. 19 E-Object"

I always wanted to make an image which would be contained on the surface of a sphere, but I didn't have the instrument. So I used a scan processor to create an object, this diamond-shaped object. By scanning the room with a mirror and with a camera, I imprinted the surrounding space on the surface of this object.

I think this urge of translating image, a two-dimensional image to an object, I think this urge is quite natural or evolutionary to the image, electronic imaging. Since the object does not need any pictorial justification. The object just exists.

"No. 24 Torso" (1977)

It was the most interesting confrontation of a texture, or a tactile translation between the feel, the touch, and the visual transformation of the texture itself. It was psychologically an interesting feeling to see something totally different from the experience of touching.

Vasulka documentaries

Binary Lives: Steina and Woody Vasulka (1996 dir. Peter Kirby) includes excerpts from these pieces:

Steina Vasulka:
Violin Power (1970)
Orbital Obsessions (1975)
Allvision (1976)
Summer Salt (1982)
The West (1983)
Geomania (1989)
Violin Power (1991)
Pyroglyphs (1995)

Woody and Steina Vasulka:
Participation (1970)
Vocabulary (1973)

Woody Vasulka:
The Matter (1974)
C-Trend (1974)
Artifacts (1980)
Art of Memory (1987)
Brotherhood No. 3 (1990-98)


Artisode 5.4: Steina & Woody Vasulka was produced by New Mexico PBS. it contains a brief introduction to the Image Articulator (1978), computer-controlled digital image processor, created by Woody Vasulka.



Further details are found in the rough and ready Vasulka worktape (1977). Amusingly, it takes several attempts to boot up the system.



Vasulkas: Computer Images (1977)

Switch! Monitor! Drift! (1976) by Steina Vašulka

Multiplied and "rippling" across the screen, as if on the surface of an electric liquid, Steina's face appears seen slightly from below. After a few seconds it becomes recognizable, attentively serious,looking out of the screen in our direction. Suddenly from the right edge-of the screen a form intrudes, a form that is Steina's silhouette. From the left edge another form appears, a video camera pointed toward - the opposite face. The image stands like a kind of signature and then is transformed by the recognition that in silhouette we can see how the image that is facing us was made; whether the images in silhouette are the source of the background image is not that important-they could be . What is important is the sense one also gets from looking at Nam June Paik's Video Buddha (who contemplates a video camera pointing at himself). Video is a mirror that permits us to better see ourselves.
-- R. A. Haller

You can grab the working notes for this production from the Vašulka archive.

Vasulka Video (The Vasulka’s, 1978)

 Two of six episodes in which the Vasulkas demonstrate video techniques. 

"Scan Processor Studies" (1973) by Woody Vasulka & Brian O'Reilly

The project first started while Woody and I were working on different commissioned projects at the ZKM (Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe Germany). He and Steina on the exhibition MINDFRAMES and Garth Knox and myself on the DVD and performance SPECTRAL STRANDS: FOR VIOLA AND VISUALS. Woody, Steina, Garth and I spent many nights screening works for moving images, playing music, and cooking, enveloped in the huge ghost town mood the ZKM's kitchen took on at night. During this time there were passionate discussions about video synthesizers (mainly my love for the Sandin Image Processor), and how Steina's VIOLIN POWER had a huge influence on Garth's and my new series of works.

The source materials were generated by Woody using a Rutt-Etra Scan Processor in the 1970's and sat on a shelf for years, having been recently digitized. Woody came into my studio one day and asked me if I would be interested in using them to work on a collaboration, and the project began from there...

The works use sources excavated directly from the output of the Scan Processor, as well as further manipulations using Tom Demeyer's ImX software, developed with input from Steina. Extensive editing and layering and additional augmentations were done using Phil Mortons IP. The Sound was generated (mostly) by custom software developed by Chandrasekhar Ramakrishnan and myself called NETHER GENERATOR, which sets up a number of complex real time feedback networks filtered and processed by various means.

"Ngoma Dance" (1976) by Barbara Sykes and Michael Sterling

The work presented on this tape is one excerpt of three pieces in a live performance of dance, audio, and video synthesis. Originally conceived by Barbara Sykes and Michael Sterling in November, 1976, the ‘Ngoma Dance’ was a total interaction work with an electronic environment performed at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle Campus.

Video synthesis: Barbara Sykes

Audio synthesis: Michael Sterling

Camera: Tom Defanti

Dancers: Tessie Daniels, Elaine Godfryd, Clifford Howard

Original Media Burn page. 

Electronic Visualization Event 3 (1978)

 MediaBurnArchive in Chicago unearthed this compilation from 1978, consisting of:

• “Wire Trees with 4 Vectors” by Phil Morton and Guenther Tetz.
• “By the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak” by Tom DeFanti and Barbara Sykes.
• “Electronic Masks” by Barbara Sykes.
• “Spiral 3” by Tom DeFanti, Phil Morton, Dan Sandin, and Jane Veeder.
• “Digital TV Dinner” by Jamie Fenton and Raul Zaritsky.
• “Data Bursts in 3 Moves” by Phil Morton and Guenther Tetz.
• “Cetacean” by Chip Dodsworth and Phil Morton.
• “Not of this Earth” by Barbara Latham, John Manning, and Ed Rankus.

Full details.

"Piano Piece" (1993) by Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik created Piano Piece as a tribute to his close friend and mentor John Cage. Paik altered this piano to play one of Cage's compositions using a computer program designed by Richard Teitelbaum, one of the artist’s numerous collaborators. The television monitors display collaged footage of Cage; shots of Paik’s hands while playing the piano; images of avant-garde choreographer and dancer Merce Cunningham; and a live stream of the piano captured by two cameras trained on the keys.

"Goodbye, M. Orwell" (1984) by Nam June Paik

Merce Cunningham dances with satellite-delayed images of himself, overlaid with crawling text about George Orwell's time in Spain. In the background, Ástor Piazzolla plays the bandoneón.

The event, which Paik saw as a rebuttal to George Orwell's dystopian vision of 1984, linked WNET TV in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris live via satellite, as well as hooking up with broadcasters in Germany and South Korea. It aired nationwide in the US on public television, and reached an audience of over 25 million viewers worldwide.

Nam June Paik: two documentaries

Nam June Paik: Electronic Superhighway is a short documentary on possibly the most famous video artist. Paik worked largely with television as a sculptural form, producing installations and performances. But he was also instrumental in developing signal art, with his Wobbulator, and video processing, with the Paik/Abe synthesiser.

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"PBS (1963-2000)" was an installation created in 1993 that very much celebrates cultures around the world. Paik was Utopian in his view of universal communication.