Lecture Series
Larisa Dryansky: A Long History of Video Art: From Modified Oscilloscopes to AI

COURSE DESCRIPTION
The course, led by Larisa Dryansky, a French art historian at Sorbonne University in Paris, will focus on video art from the perspective of the history of the electronic image. In this way, the course will situate artistic experiments with video technology within a long time frame, spanning from the earliest attempts at transmitting moving images electrically in the 1870s to the recent developments of AI. We will consider in particular how artists have explored the topic of machine vision and the specificities of working with electrical signals. The course will be structured both chronologically and thematically with a special emphasis on the work of Steina and Woody Vasulka, two seminal figures of early video and digital art whose legacy is represented in Brno by the Vašulka Kitchen, Center for New Media Art

COURSE OBJECTIVES
The course aims to provide listeners with a background in the history of video art that combines art history and media studies. It will acquaint them with the more recent scholarship on this topic. While the study of video art has long been subsumed under the rubrics of experimental film and of postwar and contemporary art, the course, in line with a growing body of research, focuses on works that highlight the electric nature of the medium. Overriding the supposed divide between analog video and digital video, the course argues for the relevance of a long history of video art in helping us navigate the challenges posed by the latest developments in synthetic imagery.

PROGRAM
-"Seeing by Electricity": introducing the history and technology of electric image transmission
-Early artistic experiments with electric signals and with television
-VT versus TV: counter-cultural video in the 1960s and 1970s
-Machine Vision: video synthesis and focus on Steina and Woody Vasulka
-Early computer graphics and computer-generated film
-Hauntology: Video and Postmodernism
-The Return of Experimental Video in the Post-Digital Age
-AI: A Paradigm Shift?

The lectures will be held in English, admission is free.
The lectures will be divided into Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. It is possible to attend only one of the days.

October 21-24, 2025
10:00 AM-3:40 PM
Vašulka Kitchen Brno, House of the Lord of Kunštát

The lectures are held in cooperation with TIM and MUNI ARTS.
The lectures are funded by a grant from Masaryk University to support the internationalization of study programs.