5 LECTURES BY VIDEO ARTIST WOODY VASULKA
Buffalo, May 17 – 21, 1976, 7:00 – 9:00 PM
These are the selections from the typescript (made by John Minkowsky) of the five lectures Woody Vasulka had at Media Study in Buffalo in five May evenings of 1976. With the opening remark, “whatever I say you can doubt, but listen to it”, he wanted to indicate that he is going to present the ideas in the moments of genesis, documenting his own creative and evolutionary process with the intention of inventing a new language to deal with this new electronic material, or “the kind of cathode ray tube expression”. After going through the process of initial experimentation and observation, Woody discovered that to continue his research process he has to reflect back on the area and try to conceptualize it. This cybernetic idea of stepping out and observing the process of one’s own evolution in working with the technology resulted in one of the most ambitious attempts to deal with this so far unexplored field, coming from the detailed knowledge of the material itself. Electronic image is perceived as an extension of cinema existing in different time domain; the electronic image research has to descend into smaller time sequences and explore e.g. the process of synchronization as the “condition under which the electronic image exists”. Cinema as well as electronic image creation involves the process of frame-forming; but while in cinema the frame is essentially a static entity, in case of electronic image it is internally generated, having a special relation to its time structure. While in cinema there is a parallel process of exposure involved, in case of electronic image the frame originates in sequences of lines. The three decisive early discoveries of image treatment were the modulation of sound from image, locating a frame through a time zone and originating of image from sounds, first demonstrated on the tape with the symptomatic title “Evolution”. There is also a suggestion of a different, internally generated image, in the form of data structure, as an alternative to the inherited organizational model of pinhole. Inline with the endophysical concepts of creating models for observing the observing (individuals or machines), The Vasulkas play with the idea of obtaining an instrument for the all-vision model of space, steering the electronic-wheel to the oceans of different consciousness. Electronic image thus becomes the material for understanding the time energy concepts as well as a possibility for learning about ourselves. (L.D.)
cinema/video relationship, energy, matter, synchronicity, timing process, sound and image, camera obscura, allvision, consciousness, processing, frame