FIVE DECADES IN VIDEO BY THE VASULKAS

7.11.2011
THE 70's "BUILDING OF THE TOOLS"

14.11.2011
THE 80's
"VIDEO SIGNAL & MIDI CODE"
THE 90's "INTERACTIVE INSTALLATIONS"

21.11.2011
THEATRE OF SELF (THE 2000s)
"ALGORITHMS PERFORMANCE"

28.11.2011
1969-1972 NEW YORK PERFORMS IT'S UNDERGROUND / screening

Woody Vasulka and Steina are major figures in video history, technical
pioneers who have contributed enormously to the evolution of the
medium and who continue to be major practitioners of video as art. The
Vasulkas' technological investigations into analog and digital
processes and their development of electronic imaging tools, which
began in the early 1970s, place them among the primary architects of
an expressive electronic vocabulary of image-making. Applying an
informal, real-time spontaneity to their formalist, often didactic
technical research, they chart the evolving formulation of a grammar
and syntax of electronic imaging as they articulate a processual
dialogue between artist and technology.

The Vasulkas' early collaborative efforts, produced from 1970 to 1974,
include phenomenological explorations that deconstruct the materiality
of the electronic signal and analyze the imaging capabilities of video
tools. Central to these increasingly complex exercises are
explorations of the malleability of the image, the manipulation of
electronic energy, and the interrelation of sound and image.

In the mid-1970s, working with such engineer/designers as Eric Siegel,
George Brown, Steve Rutt and Bill Etra, the Vasulkas developed
electronic tools specifically for use by artists. With Jeffrey Schier
they developed the Digital Image Articulator, a device that allows the
digital processing of video imagery in real-time. Steina's training as
a violinist, and Woody Vasulka's background as an engineer and
filmmaker, informed their invention of electronic devices to transform
sound, image, space and time — themes that they have pursued
independently in their later works. Though the Vasulkas continue to
collaborate, since 1975 they have produced much of their work
individually.

The Vasulkas immigrated to the United States in 1965, and began their
collaborative exploration of electronic media in 1969. In 1971, they
co-founded The Kitchen, a major alternative exhibition and media arts
center in New York. From 1973 to 1979, the Vasulkas lived and worked
in Buffalo, New York, where they were faculty members at the Center
for Media Study, State University of New York. The Vasulkas have
received numerous awards for their work in the media arts, including
grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the
New York State Council on the Arts, and the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting. In 1989, they received a United States/Japan Exchange
Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Vasulkas have
broadcast and exhibited their collaborative works extensively
throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan, at institutions
including The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Everson Museum of
Art, Syracuse; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia;
Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo; and The Museum of Modern Art, New
York, among many others.

(Source http://www.eai.org)