” We look at video feedback as electronic art material. It’s the clay, It’s the air, It’s the energy, It’s the stone. It’s the new material for you .. build an image with ”
Woody and Steina Vasulka used all manner and combination of audio and video signals to generate electronic feedback, which they conceived of as new artistic medium.
Steina Vasulka and Woody Vasulka are early pioneers of video art, and have been producing work since the early 1960s. The Vasulkas’ 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. They chart the evolving formulation of a syntax of electronic imaging as they articulate a processual dialogue between artist and technology. The Vasulkas’ work at this time was colored by the artists’ interest in negotiating terms like “space” in the context of video. The Vasulkas’ wide exploration of video in this ontological (the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Some fundamental questions of ontology include: “What can be said to exist?” ,”What is a thing?”,”Into what categories, if any, can we sort existing things?”) regard led to apparent contrast, such as that between the documentary-style Participation series involving footage of real-life performances (occurring in the space in front of and around the video camera), and works like Caligrams, in which the Vasulkas use hardware devices such as scan processors, video sequencers, and multikeyers to “play” or perform with video like a musical instrument, and in a different kind of space.
Steina and Woody Vasulka: Noisefields (1974)
In 1971, the Vasulkas founded The Kitchen and incorporated as a nonprofit two years later, The Kitchen has from its infancy been a space where experimental artists and composers share progressive ideas with like-minded colleagues. It was among the very first American institutions to embrace the emerging fields of video and performance, while presenting visionary new work in established disciplines such as dance, music, literature, and film. This unique combination generated an environment immediately conducive to groundbreaking and cross-disciplinary explorations, helping launch the careers of many artists who have defined the American avant-garde, including Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Charles Atlas, Dara Birnbaum, Lucinda Childs, Bill T. Jones, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, and Elizabeth Streb, among many others. Today, The Kitchen is an internationally-acclaimed institution giving support to—and seeking to foster a living dialogue among—artists from every field and area of culture in the effort to create an art for our time.
The Vasulkas also have a good big archive about video art articles in their website.
Vasulka Archive