Considered to be artist Martin Blaszko's only incursion into film. Through the experimentation with various film techniques, the artist speaks of the laws of geometry which are an important part of his work, and other obsessions of his, such as, bipolarity, the monumental, and the city as a source of aesthetic emotion.
In this film, Nauman bounces his testicles with one hand. Shot in extreme close-up, the work is perhaps an ironic reference to an earlier film Bouncing Two Balls Between the Floor and Ceiling with Changing Rhythms, in which he bounced rubber balls. Along with Black Balls, Gauze, and Pulling Mouth, Bouncing Balls is one of Nauman's "Slo-Mo" films which are shot with an industrial high speed camera.
A 1970 projection of what may come when pollution over powers nature.
In Discs, originally made as installation for a set of monitors, the creators experiment with the phenomenon of horizontal drift trhough the indtroduction of purposeful time error. The result is the repetitive abstract pattern of a distorted magnetic field. Furthermore, this horizontal stream also travels thorugh a set of TV screens stacked on top of each other, giving the work a vertical dimension as well. The image thus demonstrates the flexibility of the frame in video.
In Studies cycle, abstract studies are assembled, which document the Vasulka's early work with electronic material. The visual aspect of Tissues is the work of Steina, whereas Woody engineered the sound.
An Interface not only between two continually switched over images but also between documentary tape, imagery taken from "reality", and its transformation in the electronic sphere.
In an ironic reference to body art, process art and performance, Baldessari challenges definitions of the content and execution of art-making. Performing with deadpan precision, he moves his hands, arms and entire body in studied, minute motions, intoning the phrase "I am making art" with each gesture. Each articulation of the phrase is given a different emphasis and nuance, as if art were being created from moment to moment. This index of body movements is ironically offset by the repetitive monotony of the exercise.
Poet and artist Vito Acconci points his finger towards the camera and his own reflection in an offscreen video monitor.
Recording of video processing feedback which was "performed" live to the music of The Soft Machine.
Real time development of a video feedback, processed and controlled through a video keyer. Sound results from video signals, interfaced with audio synthesizer.
Expansion remixes the images of Matsumoto’s Esctasis into an more colourful psychedelic short.
In this elegant demonstration, Sandin explains the mistake of using common language concepts and spatial relations to describe what actually can happen on the video screen. The images generated in the tape act according to specific parameters set by the artist. Sandin has stated "The analog Image Processor was programmed to implement the logic equations; if square, if triangle and circle show circle." In this tape, Sandin is in effect arguing for a distinct video vocabulary that replaces the classical concept of perspective. This tape was produced at the University of Illinois Chicago.
The work is inspired by the surrealist René Magritte's unsettling painting La Legende doree, depicting French baguettes flitting in a window frame. Woody and Steina used a three-camera construction and through the use of horizontal deflection created objects migrating through a landscape. Maureen Turim called this work "a meta-discourse on painting and video".
Short experimental film by Steina, Woody Vasulka
Abstract computer animation set to autoharp solo music composed and performed by Jordan Belson
Video Weavings is a link between the modern (video) and the ancient (weaving) technologies. Video Weavings are based on poetic mathematical rhymes, or algorithms, visualized in real time on the warp and weft of video's horizontal and vertical scanning electron beams, color phosphors, plasma cells, and LCD pixels.
This is an attempt to process abstract images without the use of camera. The central circle divides the creen into two parts that continually vibrate hypnotically and change colors to the accompanying rumbling of modulated sound.
This tape was created when Woody visited his native Moravia with a Portapak camera. In the course of signal modulation an alteration in the field of raster lines is taking place, in which the lines are being vertically deformed and gain the contours of objects (with the use of a Rutt/Etra synthesizer).
A lone man walking across the video screen is the starting point for this dynamic formal exercise. This image and its accompanying sound are subjected to increasingly complex and proliferating configurations to arrive at what Emshwiller calls a "visual fugue" in time and space, structured like musical or mathematical sequences. The walking figure and its de-synchronized footsteps are multiplied, slowed down, accelerated, reversed, syncopated, overlapped and otherwise altered in multifarious variations on a theme, building in a kinetic, almost narrative progression of compositional relationships. The screen is finally transformed into a dance of motion by male and female figures in an abstracted, colorized space. Rather than an analysis of movement a la Muybridge, Crossings and Meetings is a celebration of the potential for representing movement in time and space through video.
A political work in which Ko Nakajima opposes himself to the Vietnam War.