Woody & Steina Vasulka.
Three autoportraits:

“Violin Power”. 1978
10 min.
A demo tape on how to play video on the violin. The author’s background as a violinist and her evolution from musician to visual artist is referenced through an analogy of video camera to the musical instrument. Steina is first seen in footage from 1969 playing the violin and mouthing to the Beatles’ song “Let it be”. As succeeding segments trace a chronological progression, she layers imagery and time. The violin self ultimately becomes an image generating tool, as it is connected to imaging devices, creating abstract visual transpositions of sounds and vibrations. This unconventional self-portrait is a study of the relationship of music to electronic image.

“Somersault”. 1981
5 min.
A dramatic exploration of the phenomenology of space and vision, as Steina uses a mirrored lens attachment to physically investigate her immediate surroundings. This artificial vision allows the viewer an altered perception and spacial perspectives.

“Warp”. 2000.
4 min.
The author performs two features of the image/line” software, written by Tom Demeyer at STEIM in Amsterdam. The first feature, “warp” is a time-delay software, scanning one line at a time, leaving the rest of the image motionless. The other feature is “slit scan”, an effect first seen in Kubrick’s “2001-A Space Odyssey”, where a point or line in a continuously moving image is captured and streamed forward. The capturing line can be at the sides, middle, top or bottom as seen in the tape.

Woody Vasulka.
The theme of presentation:
“Time energy and Code: how electro-mechanical machines contain and perform these principles”.
A visual essay on building and exercise of some of the tools instrumental to the author’s comprehension and practice of this new empirical knowledge.

Steina Vasulka.
Will demonstrate and lecture on her recent performances and installations, opening the talk with the three autoportraits.