{"id":5542,"title":"Notes Toward a History of Image-Processed Video: Steina and Woody Vasulka","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/notes-toward-history-image-processed-video-steina-and-woody-vasulka","version":"9d2cfb68fd390dab016b40f555981468220f0d6f2f3c44ccf7c43eaaa2887aa1","modified":"2026-09-13T21:52:04.4371797+00:00","credits":[{"role":"Author","name":"Lucinda Furlong"}],"authorKeys":["Furlong, Lucinda"],"subjects":["Texts by Author"],"metadata":[{"label":"Publication","value":"Afterimage","url":null},{"label":"Publisher","value":"Visual Studies Workshop","url":null},{"label":"Date","value":"December 1983","url":null},{"label":"Place","value":"Rochester, New York","url":null},{"label":"Volume","value":"11","url":null},{"label":"Issue","value":"5","url":null},{"label":"ETC archive","value":"ETC0350","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022Notes Toward a History of Image-Processed Video: Steina and Woody Vasulka.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/notes-toward-history-image-processed-video-steina-and-woody-vasulka.","publication":"Lucinda Furlong. Notes Toward a History of Image-Processed Video: Steina and Woody Vasulka. Afterimage. vol. 11, no. 5. Visual Studies Workshop. December 1983.","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/5542.ris"},"links":[{"label":"Scanned document","url":"https://archive.org/details/ETC0350","relationship":"linked document; contents not retrieved","contentType":"application/pdf"}],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":63250},{"name":"abstract","source":"recorded publication abstract","generated":false,"characters":24},{"name":"archive_summary","source":"existing ETC archive summaries: ETC0350","generated":false,"characters":24}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"Ed.\u0027s note: This is the second in a series of articles on imageprocessed video. The first article examined the contributions of Eric Siegel, Stephen Beck, Steve Rutt Dan Sandin, and Bill and Louise Etra to the development of electronic imaging devices [see Afterimage, Vol. 11, Nos. 1 \u0026 2 (Summer 1983), pp. 35-38] Future articles will discuss the work of Ralph Hocking and Sherry Miller at the Experimental Television Center, Nam June Paik, Shalom Gorewitz, Barbara Buckner, Sara Hornbacher, Peer Bode, and others. The project is funded by a video writing grant from the New York State Council on the Arts Media Program. Despite the fact that many video artists whose work is categorized as image-processed reject this term, it can be useful in describing work by people who not only use similar equipment but share an attitude which treats the video signal as a plastic medium. Beyond such generalizations, however, the designation can be misleading since, as a genre, \u0022imageprocessed\u0022 conflates any and all tapes which contain manipulated and/or synthesized imagery. This acknowledges obvious technical similarities but doesn\u0027t account for the variety of approaches which produce works that can be more precisely interpreted. Of course, one interpretation doesn\u0027t necessarily preclude another, but an attempt must be made to get beyond the all too familiar responses to this work-that is, either total rejection or total embrace. The intent of this project, then, is twofold. The first is to identify-without becoming dogmatic-some of the different approaches, some of the social and artistic contingencies, and how these are manifested in the work. The second-but by no means secondary-goal is to contribute to a broader history of video that emphasizes the parallel and overlapping activities of artists. Probably the most common way image-processed work has been described is as an exploration of the basic property of video-the electronic signal. There are many examples of this fundamentally formalist characterization which, I think, provides a way to lend modernist credentials to an art form that has had a difficult time gaining acceptance-critical attention, funding, marketability-by traditional art institutions. For example, in December 1971 the Whitney Museum\u0027s first video exhibition, assembled by the late film curator David Bienstock, consisted almost entirely of image-processed tapes. In the program notes, Bienstock wrote, It was decided instead to limit the program to tapes which focus on the ability of videotape to create and generate its own intrinsic imagery, rather than its ability to record reality. This is done with special video synthesizers, colorizers, and by utilizing many of the unique electronic properties of the medium (emphasis added).\u0027 More recently, Sherry Miller, assistant director of the Experimental Television Center, wrote in Exposure, \u0022Electronic image processing uses as art-making material those properties inherent in the medium of video. Artists work at a fundamental level with various parameters of the electronic signal, for example, frequency, amplitude, or phase, which actually define the resulting image and sound.\u0022[2] Yet another recent example is the catalogue introduction to \u0022The Electronic Gallery,\u0022 an exhibition that included tapes by a number of .people who use the Experimental Television Center. In it Maureen Turim writes,\u0022The Center explores video as an artistic medium. To figure out, to give form to, to embody, to display the various properties that a video system can possess.\u0022[3] Such generalizations pose a number of problems. It is highly questionable whether synthesized or manipulated video can claim to embody all the medium\u0027s \u0022inherent properties.\u0022 Couldn\u0027t one easily argue that video\u0027s instantaneity and potential for interactivity are also inherent? More important, I think, is another point Turim makes, \u0022Ultimately, though, the works gain their communicative impact in reference to other concepts and issues.\u0022 These quotes referto any and all kinds of image-processed work. However, of all the prominent artists associated with this type of video, Steina and Woody Vasulka have been consistently associated with technological experimentation and all the ensuing formalist implications. Their work has been described as systemic, didactic, formal, and syntactic, and the Vasulkas-who are both very articulate-have encouraged such readings. Turim\u0027s comment may be worth considering, though, since the effects and meanings of their work cannot be so neatly confined to these categories. As Shalom Gorewitz has remarked about some of the Vasulkas\u0027 multipie-monitor pieces that he saw at The Kitchen in the early 1970s,\u0022They could talk about it being didactic and minimalist, but when you saw it streaming down a pyramid of monitors, it was so lush and exciting visually. It was an incredibly sensual experience to be presented with.... I wouldn\u0027t call [their work] minimal, and I wouldn\u0027t call it pure research, because there\u0027s a lot of pleasure on a sensual level when seeing it.[5] Beyond being prolific and playing enthusiastic roles in pioneering electronic imaging, the Vasulkas-as founders of The Kitchen-were also major contributors to the development of an intellectual and institutional framework for video, and they have continued to nurture and promote video within a variety of contexts. I\u0027ll begin, then, with an account of their involvement in the early years of video and a discussion of how their work reflected-or in some cases, didn\u0027t reflectattitudes dominant in the \u002760s about technology, art, and the \u0022establishment.\u0022 Born in Iceland, Steina Fteinunn Bjamadottir studied violin in Reykjavik and at the Music Conservatory in Prague from 1959 to 1962. She also played in the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra in 1964. In Prague she met Woody Vasulka, who was studying at the Academy of Performing Arts, Faculty of Film and Television. Woody Vasulka, following family tradition, had at first studied industrial engineering in Brno, Czechoslovakia, his birthplace. Privately, however, he was writing poetry and fiction and found that he had no use for engineering because it involved too much mathematics. Feeling more affinity with literary tradition, he studied documentary filmmaking. This interest developed out of his desire to work individually as he had as a writer, rather than in a group; documentaries could be produced by one or two people, whereas feature work involved many more. However, documentary had its limits too, and Woody found that film in general was \u0022absolutely a closed medium to me.... I was exposed to all the narrative structures of film, but they weren\u0027t real to me.... I could never express myself in what was called the narrative cinema.[6] The Vasulkas\u0027 decision to emigrate to the United States was based on cultural rather than political considerations. As Woody explained, \u0022I was never attracted to this kind of political system,\u0022 but \u0022one cannot live in the twentieth century and not deal with America directly.\u0022[7] When the Vasulkas arrived in New York City in 1965, they had much to deal with, not least of all learning English. While they spent most of their time during their first two years in the U.S. getting oriented, there were many avant-garde activities going on with which they would later become involved. These activities-loosely labeled \u0022intermedia\u0022-grew out of intermingling music, dance, theater, and film communities. In November 1965 Village Voice film critic Jonas Mekas proclaimed in his weekly column, \u0022The medium of cinema is breaking out and taking over and is going blindly and by itself.[8] In 1966, he wrote, \u0022Suddenly, the intermedia shows are all over town.\u0022[9] Light shows, slide shows, multiple film projections, light-motion art, sensoria-these were the activities of people like Jackie Cassen, Elaine Summers, Jud Yalkut, Aldo Tambellini, Stan VanDerBeek, Ed Emshwiller, Gerd Stern, Nam June Paik, and many others. Many, though certainly not all, of these events were inspired by Marshall McLuhan\u0027s influential media theories. Because of the widespread impact and popularization of McLuhan\u0027s writing, it may be helpful to briefly review his arguments. McLuhan begins with the assumption that modern human experience is characterized by the simultaneous reception of vast amounts of information in the form of sense stimuli: sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste. Because the attempt to communicate and process this variegated experience is subject to distortion, some methods of communication are betterthan others. According to McLuhan, a medium which \u0022extends one single sense in \u0027high definition\u0022-such as a photograph-is a hot medium, whereas a medium which provides only minimal extension of a sense-such as print-is cool.\u0027\uFFB0 In other words, cool media demand a high level of participation, or completion, by the receiving audience, while hot media do not. In McLuhan\u0027s formulation, the electronic communications \u0022explosion\u0022 of the 1960s created a new form of perception which makes these stimuli directly apprehendable through the senses. Since he views all media as \u0022extensions of man,\u0022 television and radio act as cybernetic extensions of the human nervous system. As McLuhan wrote in 1964,\u0022Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man-the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our senses and our nerves by the various media.\u0022 Thus, McLuhan\u0027s \u0022global village,\u0022 a harmonious world \u0022tribe\u0022 linked via a network of instantaneous communication, would evolve. Jonathan Miller has pointed out that McLuhan\u0027s overly optimistic vision could only have been achieved by \u0022stressing the immediate mental effect of the various media at the expense of neglecting the messages they actually convey.\u0022[12] This emphasis on the effect of the medium itself-regardless of its content-is the basis for the famous dictum, \u0022The medium is the message.\u0022 This aphorism fit quite neatly with formalist art discourse; identifying those qualities specific to video as an art medium not only coincided with McLuhan\u0027s ideas but Clement Greenberg\u0027s formalism. McLuhan\u0027s theory has since been discarded by some scholars because his utopianism completely contradicts the fact that electronic media have been used as instruments of social control. Moreover, as Raymond Williams has shown, this analysis represents a technologically determinist approach to history, which posits technology as a force in itself-responsible for changes in society and the human condition-rather than something developed with specific purposes in mind. In \u0022Television: Technology and Cultural Form\u0022 Williams counters McLuhan: \u0022All media operations are in effect desocialised; they are simply physical events in an abstracted sensorium, and are distinguishable only by their variable sense-ratios (emphasis added).\u0022[13] Still, as I said, many artists were creating intermedia sense environments, openly embracing McLuhan\u0027s ideas.\u0022 These events-as well as others less explicitly derived from McLuhan-were commonly known as \u0022expanded cinema\u0022 (the term was later used as the title for Gene Youngblood\u0027s futuristic survey of such work). While the Vasulkas \u0027read Mekas\u0027s column regularly and were peripherally aware of underground filmmakers, they attended very few of these events in the first years they were in New York. Steina continued studying violin, while Woody started working on commercial and industrial films and exhibits in 1967. In 1969 he started using video. His employer, Harvey Lloyd, was using closed-circuit, multiple-monitor video displays as well as multi-screen projections and this structure eve","offset":0,"nextOffset":12000,"totalCharacters":63250,"complete":false},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}