The Aesthetics of Steina and Woody Vasulka

Description of works


Steina and Woody Vasulka, Participation, 1969-1971Steina and Woody Vasulka, Participation, 1969-1971
This anthology consists of excerpts from videos shot in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Steina and Woody Vasulka, Discs, 1970Steina and Woody Vasulka, Discs, 1970
The Vasulkas were particularly interested in examining the horizontal traveling of the image.
Steina and Woody Vasulka, Calligrams, 1970Steina and Woody Vasulka, Calligrams, 1970
The horizontal drift is "deliberately maladjusted" causing the image to repeat vertically.
Steina and Woody Vasulka, Matrix, 1970-1972Steina and Woody Vasulka, Matrix, 1970-1972
Matrix is a series of multi-monitor works that explores the relationship of sound and image in electronic signals.
Steina and Woody Vasulka, Black Sunrise, 1971Steina and Woody Vasulka, Black Sunrise, 1971
The sound again comes solely from the video signal, which has been interfaced with a sound synthesizer.
Woody Vasulka, Golden Voyage, 1973Woody Vasulka, Golden Voyage, 1973
For Golden Voyage (1973), the Vasulkas were inspired by Magritte's painting The Golden Legend (1958).
Woody Vasulka, Vocabulary,  1973Woody Vasulka, Vocabulary, 1973
Woody’s hand is placed in the foreground of a sphere, the hand and sphere seem to loose their shape.
Woody Vasulka, The Matter,  1974Woody Vasulka, The Matter, 1974
The visual and aural pattern in The Matter is created by the waveform generator as it is displayed on the screen of the Scan Processor.
Woody Vasulka, C-Trend,  1974Woody Vasulka, C-Trend, 1974
The videotape depicts the experiment of recording images and sounds with a camera pointing out of the window and onto street traffic.
Woody Vasulka, Explanation,  1974Woody Vasulka, Explanation, 1974
Woody uses the pattern of the Broadcast Signal Generator, whose shapes are displayed on the Scan Processor.
Woody Vasulka, Reminiscence,  1974Woody Vasulka, Reminiscence, 1974
The real-life material that Woody records with a Portapak camera during his visit to a farmhouse in Moravia.
Steina and Woody Vasulka, Heraldic View,  1974Steina and Woody Vasulka, Heraldic View, 1974
In Soundsize and Heraldic View the pattern will be modulated through sounds that are generated from an audio synthesizer.
Steina and Woody Vasulka, Noisefields,  1974Steina and Woody Vasulka, Noisefields, 1974
The Video Sequencer is used to switch between two video sources to create similar flickering effects.
Steina, Machine Vision, 1975-Steina, Machine Vision, 1975-
The Machine Vision (1975-) corpus was born out of research into perception begun by Steina in 1975 and pursued ever since.
Steina, Allvision, 1975Steina, Allvision, 1975
In Allvision, two cameras "face" each other, adjusted in a stable position in relation to each other on a horizontally turning axis.
Woody Vasulka, No. 25,  1976Woody Vasulka, No. 25, 1976
In No. 25, we see on the screen recorded accidents of the signal as it’s shaped through voltage and frequency.
Steina, Orbital Obsessions, 1977Steina, Orbital Obsessions, 1977
Orbital Obsessions superimposes and alters the different image sources through processing, keying, and sequencing devices.
Steina, Violin Power, 1978Steina, Violin Power, 1978
Besides being the performer, Steina plays the violin and the video so that in intermediary ways the observer and the observed converge.
Steina, Bad, 1979Steina, Bad, 1979
This work provides another example of sound-image inversion, in which the digital differs from the analog modulation of wave forms.
Steina, Urban Episodes, 1980Steina, Urban Episodes, 1980
For these six urban capsules filmed in Minneapolis, Steina attached different lenses and mirrors to the camera.
Steina, Cantaloup, 1980Steina, Cantaloup, 1980
The Vasulkas are interested in maneuvering the smallest amount and the highest density of image clusters.
Woody Vasulka, Artifacts,  1980Woody Vasulka, Artifacts, 1980
In Artifacts, Woody experiments with constructing and deconstructing digital visual imagery.
Steina, Summer Salt, 1982Steina, Summer Salt, 1982
Summer Salt is an exercise in an immersive space.
Voice Windows, 1986Voice Windows, 1986
Steina renews her efforts to generate a complex sound-image interface.
Steina, Lilith, 1987Steina, Lilith, 1987
Lilith (with analog processing) shows the mobile face of painter Doris Cross, talking and shifting in a natural background.
Woody Vasulka, The Brotherhood, 1990-1998Woody Vasulka, The Brotherhood, 1990-1998
After moving to New Mexico, Woody began sifting through the military surplus waste cast off by the nearby Military Research Centre in Los Alamos.
Woody Vasulka, The Theater of Hybrid Automata, 1990Woody Vasulka, The Theater of Hybrid Automata, 1990
In this ongoing project begun in 1985, Woody combines hardware with sophisticated software for processing real-time images.
Steina, Orka, 1997Steina, Orka, 1997
Orka expresses motion, a motion that runs counter to the laws of physics and the "frame-bound image".
Steina, Warp, 2000Steina, Warp, 2000
The effects in Warp are produced with the software Image/ine.