Machine Vision: Monitors and Space by Steina

Streamed November 25 through December 1

This video program is a cross section of work by Steina and Woody Vasulka, spanning 30 years of their influential experiments with electronic media. The Vasulkas worked independently and in partnership at the intersection of video, multichannel video installation, and live performance from the mid-1960s until the early 2000s, freely pushing and investigating the possibilities of electronic signal processing and sound-image manipulation. Together they founded The Kitchen, a media theater in the Mercer Arts Center in Greenwich Village, for the purpose of fostering new-media art in a free and inclusive milieu.

In keeping with the National Gallery’s theme of focusing on women film and media artists this season, Machine Vision: Monitors and Space offers an overview of work usually credited to Steina. All videos are courtesy of Steina and BERG Contemporary, Iceland.

Distant Activities

“Real time development of a video feedback, processed and controlled through a video keyer. Sound results from video signals, interfaced with audio synthesizer (Putney).”—The Vasulkas, from a typed description by the artists given to the arts organization and distributor, Electronic Arts Intermix. (1972, 6 minutes)

Orbital Obsessions

Documentation and experimentation in real time, Orbital Obsessions is an example of early video self-portraiture, eerie and calm in its radical implications for the medium. The Vasulkas were interested in the building of control systems for the manipulation of electronic signals, resulting in their collaborations with several designers and engineers. One such example was the Multi-Level Keyer, a tool designed in 1973 by George Brown at the request of the Vasulkas, who were interested in expanding their range of source imagery. Steina’s manipulation of the image through keying, layering, and the manual control of luminance is seen here. (1977, 24 minutes)

Violin Power

Steina trained as a classical violinist, pushing her experience as a professional musician into the electronic realm with this seminal work. Originally performed in the late 1970s as a live recital with monitors, Violin Power began with the idea of generating a video image solely through the sound and movement of the bow. This signal switch, from audio to visual, grew in possibilities and variances as technology continued to expand in the ensuing decades. The most recent iteration of this performance involved Steina working with a MIDI violin and laptop. (1978, 10 minutes)

Somersault

Using one half of a convex mirror mounted within a glass cylinder, Steina trains the video camera eye dead center as she records the space immediately around her. “Steina playfully does gymnastics with her camera and its mirrored lens attachment as a means of producing a 360-degree image of a torso wrapped around the camera lens . . . an exercise in an immersive space” for both maker and viewer. —Yvonne Spielmann (1982, 5 minutes)

Lilith

Against a field of swaying and halting yellow vegetation, another processed field: the image of the eponymous subject (performed by painter Doris Cross) riles and emits unintelligibly to the viewer. Conjuring the mystical biblical character Lilith, Steina’s video layers both sound and image to produce an ever-shifting, frustrated presence. (1987, 9 minutes)

Music in the Afternoon

Fellow violinist and artist Tony Conrad, in collaboration with software engineer Tom Demeyer, made for Steina the instrument seen in this title. Conrad and the Vasulkas all taught at the University at Buffalo in the Media Study Department from 1976 to 1979. (2002, 4 minutes)