‘Visionary electronic abstractions’
The Village Voice

Reminiscence

Following on from the successful Vasulka Video event in 2004, LUX is pleased to present a new touring programme of pioneering video works by Steina and Woody Vasulka. Organised by Vivid (www.vivid.org.uk) in conjunction with a gallery exhibition (also touring), the three programmes comprising the Vasulka Lab tour cover the key video works developed by the Vasulkas’ between 1969-1987, questioning the boundaries between art and technology. Transforming the traditional genres of narrative and performance in the moving image, these works created a unique aesthetic through innovative use of emerging video technology.

The tour is part of Vasulka Lab 1969–2005, a VIVID touring exhibition curated by Yasmeen Baig-Clifford and is supported by Arts Council England and Czech Centre.

PROGRAMME DETAILS

Programme 1: Participation
35 years ago, the Vasulkas landed in New York. After seeing the ground-breaking TV as a Creative Medium exhibition at the Howard Wise Gallery in 1969, they began early experiments with sound and video. The Vasulkas quickly became central to the burgeoning underground scene in Soho, with Steina documenting rock concerts and underground events alike using the first Sony Portapak camera. In 1971 they founded The Kitchen, an electronic arts and sound “test laboratory’ which became a haven for the new video artists. The Kitchen soon became a NYC legend, presenting screenings, performances and concerts ranging from the new music of La Monte Young to Talking Heads, and it continues today as one of the city's most interesting multi-media spaces.
Participation (1969-71) is a pioneering video-document made with the early Sony Portapak video system opens the exhibition. Featuring Don Cherry performing in Washington Square, Warhol Superstars on stage and Jimi Hendrix in concert, Participation captures the Vasulkas’ early engagement with the American artistic counter-culture.
Total running time: 62 mins

Urban Episodes

Programme 2: Artifacts (1970-80)
The Vasulkas were the first of a generation to “open the box”: literally to rip apart pre-set commercial, manufactured media systems. In this way, they pioneered the development of low cost video ‘tools’, working with engineers to build highly specialised devices. Throughout the 1970s, the artists developed the Vasulka Imaging System, a range of audiovisual tools or ‘machines’ built in collaboration with electronic engineers and technicians, including the Rutt/Etra Scan Processor, George Brown’s Multikeyer and Eric Siegel’s Colorizer.
The Artifacts section is concerned with the formal vocabulary developed in the process of intervention and manipulation of these legendary tools. The machines allowed analysis of electronic image frames and time sequences and employed spatial, temporal and sound/image manipulation, setting a particular vocabulary for image making and creating a unique new media aesthetic.

An important early example of this can be seen in Noisefields (1974), where colorized video noise is keyed through a circle, the static sound then modulated by the energy content of the video. In Reminiscence (1974), the Rutt/Etra Scan Processor is evocatively applied to Portapak footage of a walk taken by Woody through a farmhouse in Moravia, the artist’s childhood home.

In 1976, the Vasulkas embarked on a major period of digital experimentation to generate electronic images without camera support. With Jeffrey Schier, then a student at the State of New York at Buffalo, Woody designed and built a complex system called the Digital Image Articulator, a device which processed digital images in real time and generated a number of key works. Artifacts (1980) documents the Vasulkas' analogy of their work as dialogue with a tool.

Woody explains, "By artifacts, I mean that I have to share the creative process with the machine. These images come to you as they came to me-in a spirit of exploration."

In Violin Power (1970–8), a chronological progression of the artist’s evolution from musician to media artist, image and time is layered. Steina plays the violin to directly produce image effects through feeding the sound to devices such as the Scan Processor, ultimately becoming an image generating tool as she modulates sound waves to build spatial images. In Orbital Obsessions (1975–8), Steina focuses on the electronic interrelation and manipulation of sound and image within a closed circuit environment. Steina demonstrates a type of performability within the medium of video, which focuses on time, space and movement, and the means by which the mechanical can inform and engage with electronic media. Image sources are altered using processing, keying and sequencing devices.
Running time: 110 mins

Programme 3: Machine Vision 1980 –
Steina’s work from the latter part of the 1970s to the 1980s is a striking exercise in the redefinition of vision, space and landscape. Her interest in what she has termed “machine vision” foregrounds a structural departure from other lens based recording media, and bridges the way to a performative generation of images.
The programme includes Urban Episodes (1980). Filmed in Minneapolis, the work was produced using a camera equipped with mirrors and lenses, rearranging the urban landscape by showing both the space that the contraption revolves around and the images reflected by the mirrors or deflected by the lenses. Also included are Cantaloup (1980) and Summer Salt Series (1982).
Total running time: 52 mins

INFORMATION FOR VENUES

Vasulka Lab is part of a touring exhibition organised by Vivid. The three programmes are available as single package, consisting of three Beta SP tapes along with printed programmes. The rental cost is £150 for UK venues and £200 for international venues, excluding VAT and shipping.