Steina and Woody Vasulka are undoubtedly the most prolific and significant artists to have explored the potential of electronic imaging technology. Working exclusively with video and sound since the late 1960s, the Vasulkas have taken a systematic and rigorously formalist approach, evolving a working method characterised by a complex interactive dialogue with each other, their cultural community and electronic imaging technologies, in a process of exploration which they have termed "dialogues with tools".
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| The Sketch |
Initially Steina worked as a freelance musician, and Woody was employed as a multi-screen film editor, but by 1969, they had decided to work exclusively with video, producing their first joint video tape- Participation that same year. Soon involved in the core of the New York Avant-Garde film and experimental video scene, they founded "The Kitchen-LATL" (Live Audience Test Laboratory) with Andres Mannik in 1971 in order to continue and extend a collaborative exchange with other artists and activists working with video, sound and performance.
Over a period that continues up to the present, the Vasulkas have explored the potential for video via a comprehensive body of work that seeks to provide the foundation for a new electronic language in order to explore and define the frontiers of digital and televisual space. In an interview I made with him in 2000, Woody explained his early fascination with the electronic image and the political implications of his decision to move from film to video in the late 1960's:
"The idea that you can take a picture and put it through a wire and send it to another place- you can broadcast from one place to another- this idea of an ultimate transcendence- magic- a signal that is organised to contain an image. This was no great decision, it was clear to me that there was a utopian notion to this, it was a radical system and so there was no question of deciding that this was it. Also I was not very successful in making films- I had nothing to say with film. This new medium was open and available and just let you work without a subject (2)."
The Vasulkas have characterised their early approach to video as primarily "didactic", for many years working with the materiality of the video image towards the development of a 'vocabulary' of electronic procedures unique to the construction of what they termed the "time/energy object". They saw this formal approach to video as very much aligned with the American avant-garde film movement of the time, and felt initially that they were part of a new wave of formal experiment in video: (Steina)
"...when we conceived of video as being the signal- the energy and time and all of that, we thought we were right there, smack in the middle of it. These were the radical times in experimental film and there were all these people starting up in video. We were all discovering this together. We erroneously thought that everybody conceived of video this way: this 'time/energy construction'. Now I realise we were very much alone. We were never lonely because we thought we were in the middle of it, but we were. We never had any followers who practised this time-energy organisation (3)."
This conception of video as 'pure' signal enabled the Vasulkas to identify the significance of the fundamental relationship between sound and image in video, an inherent property of the electronic medium that set it apart from film, and it was an exploration of this idea that characterised their earliest work. Steina sees this relationship as crucial to an understanding of video as a medium for art:
"It was the signal, and the signal was unified. The audio could be video and the video could be audio. The signal could be somewhere 'outside' and then interpreted as an audio stream or a video stream. It was very consuming for us, and we have stuck to it.....Video always came with an audio track, and you had to explicitly ignore it not to have it (4)."
This exploration of the relationship between the electronic encoding of picture and sound also provided the Vasulkas with their first model for their emerging dialogue with electronic tools- the audio synthesiser, an instrument which also enabled them to begin to explore 'pure' video imagery which was free from the camera, or more specifically, from images produced via the lens. For the Vasulkas, it was a question of exploring a potential for video that was entirely different from either film or broadcast television.
Working with electronic imaging technology to produce video works in this period, the Vasulkas were not interested in making 'abstract' video, but were attempting to develop a vocabulary of electronic images through a systematic deconstruction process. Alongside their videotape and multi-screen works produced throughout the 1970's, the Vasulkas developed a range of special machines in collaboration with a number of electronic engineers including George Brown, Eric Seigal, Geoffrey Schier, Steve Rutt and Bill Etra, which were designed to explore and develop a medium-specific vocabulary. These devices and others enabled the Vasulkas to produce a body of work with a very clearly identified analytic objective:
"...the problem was not really to mix the images, but to deconstruct them, and we went through a long charade of building these machines that would deconstruct the images- meaning they would show the elements- including the codes, because that was the mystery (5)."
Woody and Steina's collaborative work across more than 30 years of commitment to video is complex and multi-layered; the Vasulkas have constantly influenced, inspired and challenged each other. Their oeuvre includes scores of works; collaborative and solo video tapes, multi-screen displays and installations, live performances and broadcast television.
For Steina this collaborative influence led to the development of an extended series of works called Machine Vision, begun in 1975, which include Signifying Nothing and Sound and Fury (both 1975), Allvision (1976), Switch! Monitor! Drift! (1977), Summer Salt (1982) and The West (1983). These works all feature an interrelationship between the camera and a series of increasingly complex devices including rotating turntables and reflective spheres. Steina sought methods of distancing the camera from human intervention, using physical space, initially using her studio and later the desert landscape of New Mexico as her subject matter. Her primary intension in this series of works was to explore the potential to reconfigure the viewer’s relationship to space (6).
The Vasulkas consider the development of the Machine Vision series to be part of the 'dialoguing' process, both with each other and with the machines they developed:
"First of all, we have always wanted to be inspired by the machines, we always wanted to have an equal partnership where the machines will suggest to us what we do; or the machine shows us. You put a camera on a machine and you see what it does. It's not imposing your 'superior' view on the camera. Especially for me it led to this whole thinking about what is the hegemony of the human eye, and why are we showing everything from this point of view , and who is the cameraman to tell the rest of the world what they can see, wasn't it just out of the view of the camera that all of the action was? All the things that I had never thought about before because I was a musician. This whole idea of the tools as hardware, and then the tools as the signal and signal processing was very important, and there was the dialogue in between (7)."
For Woody, the influence of their collaboration has lead to an engagement with sculptural gallery installation work that he had avoided until comparatively recentl:
"We've always been united by an interest in the signal. That was something that we could never think outside of any machine or an installation. We've really struggled together, and we still do. (Steina) does something and there's a signal involved, and that unites us, looking or appreciating. But I was never interested in the object- I was interested in the screen only until about ten years ago. In Steina's case she was always interested in the instrument, probably because of the violin, and she adopted these instruments as instruments of play. But I always denied that because instruments came too easy to me. I knew that life had to be much more miserable. So I thought to try to find the secrets of the metaphysical content of the time-energy and the code. These were the highest calls (9)."
Since completing two major single screen works "The Commission" (1983) and "The Art of Memory" (1987), Woody has abandoned his commitment to an exploration of the single frame to concentrate on the development of "The Brotherhood Series", a cycle of 6 large-scale installations. The Brotherhood Series consists of 6 “tables” ("Translocations, Automata, Friendly Fire, Stealth, Scribe, The Maiden") constructed from scrapped military hardware that Woody has reconfigured into complex creative machines or “Interactive Media Constructions” which engage the viewer in a blend of robotics, architectural and virtual space (10).
Individually and in collaboration, Steina and Woody Vasulka have devoted themselves to a systematic and profound exploration of the video medium as a tool for artistic expression. They have produced a unique and complex body of work that is impossible to categorise or contain, spanning the entire range of formats and configurations of electronic media; single and multiple screen video, live performance, installation and interactive technology. The collaborative dimension of the Vasulka’s practice also extends beyond their own profound interaction to include the artist/engineers with whom they have worked to develop new imaging machines; both hardware and software. This crucial dialogue between “‘art” and “technology”, “engineering” and ‘aesthetics” lies at the centre of their work, but does not in any sense define it.
The Vasulkas enjoy a well-deserved international reputation for their pioneering contribution to video as a creative medium in many countries, but until recently their work was little known in the UK -something that I am certain is finally about to change.
Chris Meigh-Andrews, © October 2003.
Notes:
1) Marita Sturken, ed. exhibition catalogue: Woody and Steina Vasulka: Machine
Media, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Feb-March, 1996.
2) Woody Vasulka, from an interview with the author, Sept., 2000.
3) Steina Vasulka, from an interview with the author, Sept. 2000.
4) Ibid.
5) Woody Vasulka, interview with the author, Sept. 2000.
6) Marita Sturken, “Exploring the Phenomenology of the Electronic Image”,
Steina and Woody Vasulka: Video, Media e 7) Nuove Imagini Nell’arte Contemporanea,
Farenheit 451, Roma, 1994.
8) Steina Vasulka, interview , Sept. 2000.
9) Woody Vasulka, interview , Sept. 2000.
10) Denis l. Dollens, “Vasulka Machines”, Woody Vasulkla, The Brotherhood:
A Series of Six Interactive Media Constructions, NTT InterCommunication Center,
Tokyo, 1998.
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