WOODY VASULKA
FOYER
Rafsegulhlutir
Electromagnetic Objects
Woody Vasulka (with Bill O’Reilly)
1975–2006
Videó, hljóð
Video, sound
33’58”
Með leyfi BERG Contemporary
Courtesy of BERG Contemporary
The “Electromagnetic Objects” are a collection of works by Woody Vasulka & Brian O’Reilly. The source materials were generated by Woody using a Rutt-Etra Scan Processor in 1975, and in 2006 Brian O’Reilly collaborated with Woody to contribute the soundscape. According to O’Reilly, “the works use sources excavated directly from the output of the Electromagnetic Objects, as well as further manipulations using Tom Demeyer’s ImX software, developed with input from Steina. Extensive editing and layering and additional augmentations were done using Phil Morton’s IP. The Sound was generated (mostly) by custom software developed by Chandrasekhar Ramakrishnan and myself called NETHER GENERATOR, which sets up a number of complex real time feedback networks filtered and processed by various means.”
LIMA www.li-ma.nl/lima/catalogue/art/woody-vasulka/
electromagnetic-objects/18288
ENTRANCE
Panel 4
Panel 5
Án titils / Untitled
Panel 6
Woody Vasulka
1975
Ljósmyndaverk
Photography
Með leyfi BERG Contemporary
Courtesy of BERG Contemporary
Gallery 1
Panel 8
Panel 18
Panel 22
Woody Vasulka
1975
Ljósmyndaverk
Photography
Með leyfi BERG Contemporary
Courtesy of BERG Contemporary
Panel 20
Panel 21
Woody Vasulka
1975
Ljósmyndaverk
Photography
Með leyfi BERG Contemporary
Courtesy of BERG Contemporary
Panel 16
Án titils / Untitled
Panel 11
Woody Vasulka
1975
Ljósmyndaverk
Photography
Með leyfi BERG Contemporary
Courtesy of BERG Contemporary
Gallery 1
Sporbaugs þráhyggja
Orbital Obsessions
Steina & Woody Vasulka
1975–77; revised 1988
Videó, hljóð
Video, sound
24’25”
Með leyfi Steinu og BERG Contemporary
Courtesy of Steina and BERG Contemporary
Gallery 2
Ógn á sporbaugi
Peril in Orbit
Woody Vasulka
1968
16mm film
4’00”
Með leyfi BERG Contemporary
Courtesy of BERG Contemporary
360 gráðu geimskrár
360 degree space records
Woody Vasulka
1968
16mm film
4’00”
Með leyfi BERG Contemporary
Courtesy of BERG Contemporary
SINGLE CHANNEL WORKS
Art of Memory, 1987
Video (color, sound); 35:00 min.
Art of Memory is a major work, an original and mature articulation of
Vasulka’s inquiry into the meaning of recorded images. Constructing a
haunted theater of memory from a spectacle of filmic and electronic
images, Vasulka collapses and transforms collective memory and
history in an enigmatic space and time. The monumental landscape of
the American Southwest is the mythic site onto which he inscribes
newsreel footage of war — ghostly images that become malleable,
sculptural forms through constant electronic transmutations.
In this metaphorical vision, the recorded image becomes a monument
to the past; history becomes cultural memory through photography
and cinema. Vasulka locates the trauma of 20th-century history in filmic
images of violent events, including the Spanish Civil War, the Russian
Revolution, World War II and the advent of the nuclear bomb. Presided
over by a winged creature of conscience, history and memory are seen
to be manipulated by the history and memory of images. In a
breathtaking conjoinment of the apparatuses of war, history and the
media, Vasulka achieves a poignant, ultimately tragic memory theater.
With: Daniel Nagrin, Klein. Voices: Doris Cross. Videotools: Rutt/Etra,
Jeffrey Schier. Collaboration: Bradford Smith, Penelope Place, Steina,
David Aubrey.
http://www.eai.org/titles/2103
C-Trend, 1974
Video (color, sound); 8:37 min.
In C-Trend, one of Woody Vasulka’s “dialogues with tools,” the video raster, or monitor screen, is controlled by the Rutt-Etra Scan Processor, a scan deflection tool designed by Steve Rutt and Bill Etra in 1973. The camera image being modified is urban traffic, whose synchronous sounds are clearly recognizable on the audio track. Two basic modifications of the electronic image are evident: each horizontal line scanned by the electron beam is translated into a live graphic display of voltage, radically reconfiguring the luminance information and the video image, and functioning as a wave form monitor. The shape of the video frame itself, the raster, is also skewed. The deflection coils, which electromagnetically control the electron gun and thus the raster, receive mathematically recoded analog information and reconfigure the normally rectilinear video frame. The “empty spaces” between the altered frames, which appear to drift or roll throughout C-Trend, are the horizontal and vertical blanking intervals between electronic frames.
https://www.vdb.org/titles/c-trend-excerpt
Grazing (Ocean Sounds), 1976
Video (b&w, sound)
No. 25, 1976
Video (b&w, sound); 5:00 min.
In No. 25, we see on the screen recorded accidents of the signal as it’s shaped through voltage and frequency. In saying that the image derives from “noise,” according to Woody we need to understand noise as all frequencies together, which means unstructured energy that bears the “potential” of all video. Surprisingly, the imagery that arises from the deflection of 525 lines is not made through a camera lens but rather the empty television frame. The Scan Processor affects this information electromagnetically, so that the whole information of the empty TV is shrunk and bent into a 360 degree shape that appears as an abstract object in video void. The density of scan lines is spread until the structuring of the lines is brought to visibility. The image source in No. 25 is the rewinding of a videotape and this signal of random noise is processed in the Scan Processor, where it is then rescanned according to the raster system, and finally filmed.
Before it can be filmed or rescanned, the distorted “image” needs to be stabilized and locked in order to stop drifting so that it matches with the constraints of the preset raster frame and therefore can be recorded. This happens through a clock operation, which, in case of the Scan Processor, is carried out by an internal oscillator. The newly “created” image self-reflexively refers to signal processing, because in its internal movement from top to bottom it verifies the vertical synchronization jump, usually invisible. The visual demonstration of how drifting scan lines are locked in the internal form of the presented image as frame reveals the function of the clock to adjust random noise so that we can see and hear an image. The modulation of frequency and voltage into a cylindrical form also demonstrates how dimension and direction of electronic imagery can be easily manipulated. The transformative potential of the empty screen also reveals that the visual part of video can take any form and even become a spatial object, thereby foregrounding 3-D computer graphics.
https://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=484
The Commission, 1983
Video (color, sound); 44:55 min.
Applying his electronic imaging codes to narrative in The Commission, Vasulka develops a metaphorical image language to envision an epic electronic opera. The text, which is based on the relationship of violinist Niccolo Paganini (played by video artist Ernest Gusella) and composer Hector Berlioz (composer/performer Robert Ashley), confronts myths of Romanticism, history and art-making. Constructing a fantastic video theater, Vasulka stages a narrative of transformation, an intricately crafted blend of figuration and abstraction, in which imaging techniques serve as expressive visual syntax. Specific video effects are assigned interpretive meaning; reframed images proliferate within images in re-compositions that propel the narrative progression. The Commission is a pivotal work in the articulation of narrative strategies through an electronic image language.
https://www.eai.org/titles/the-commission
The Matter, 1974
Video (color, sound); 4:02 min.
In “The Matter”, a generated dot pattern is re-sculpted into myriad three-dimensional forms and shapes by simultaneous sound and image generating wave forms. The Rutt/Etra Scan Processor enabled the modification of the shape and scale of geometrical patterns, resulting in the creation of a new kind of image behavior. The original patterns on the display are transformed into analog wave shapes due to the vertical deflection of horizontal lines. The work thus demonstrates the variability of time and energy in video.
The Scan Processor was created by Steve Rutt and Bill Etra, and the Multikeyer by George Brown.
https://www.li-ma.nl/lima/catalogue/art/woody-vasulka/the-matter/18276
Reminiscence, 1974
Video (color, sound); 4:48 min.
The real-life material that Woody records with a Portapak camera during his
visit to a farmhouse in Moravia (where he spent some time in childhood) is
later processed in such a way as to defamiliarize the encounter with his past.
However, the deflection does not change the scale of the image, so that the
frame-bound imagery and the visuality of the topographic environment
sustain a permeable relation to reality. This approach demonstrates an
overriding concept in the work of the Vasulkas, where the focus is not so
much on the linear passage of but on interference and transformation. The
results of such operations are to build up tension: they are incoherent, and
paradoxical.
Vocabulary, 1973
Video (color, sound); 4:17 min.
Vocabulary, writes Vasulka, is “designed to convey in a didactic form
the basic energy laws in electronic imaging.” Here a hand, as a
metaphor for expression and gesture, and a sphere that symbolizes
form, are processed with a keyer, colorizer and scan processor. EAI
Here in this 4:17 minutes work from 1973, Woody refers to George
Brown’s Multikeyer, Eric Siegel’s Dual Colorizer and Rutt/Etra’s Scan
Processor.
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