10-Section 1 " I rts--Drania fit r, F %I,o EV1

Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Human Presence' Seems Violation

In Video World of 'Machine Vision'
By ANTHONY BANNON
In one corner of the white
room, a video camera with a
mechanically rotating prism
lens surveys the scene with an
unblinking eye scanning through
360 degrees. Beneath it, a moni-
tor reveals the view .
In,the opposite corner, a cam-
era mounted on a turntable
presents another arced vision
through a similarly vertical
axis, displayed on a monitor,
below.
Two corners are left in Steins
Vasulka's video installation in
Albright-Knox Art Gallery; two
corners and a capping center :
In the third corner, a camera
regards its own cool optics re-
flected in a vertically tilting
mirror . while in the fourth cor-
ner. an opposing camera sees it-
self in a horizontally panning
mirror
With the four cameras, a thor-
ough mapping of the space is
executed And should anything
be missed, it is picked up by
two cameras in room's center
that point into a reflecting
globe.
* *
VIDEO VIEW - Video artists Woody, and . Steina Vasulka cheek a part' of their in-
SIX CAMERAS, six monitors
and a reflecting globe - a stallation now on view in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.
multiple display of a fractured
space split like a broken egg foundations and most recently dures, as well as expressions of film frame and its implications
and reassembled, reprogram- the Guggenheim Fellowship for their imagery, are simply be-' of narrative sequencing .
med and re-presented around Steina . Both now live and work yond the ken of most, including Later work, including panels
the room It is the inside looking in Buffalo. art initiates. of still video images, document
out and the outside looking in . * * * "Forced editing . . . asynchro-various wave forms - the build-
Systems observe themselves . THE VIDEO medium has nous overlays . . . camera/moni= ing blocks of electronic images
Human presepce seems a thrived for fewer than 10 years, for rescan . . . scan processor . . .and their extension into spa-
violation . and the Vasulkas - together multikeyer . . . H.D . Variable tial illusion.
Here, it is less the movement and separately - have explored Clock . . . Field Flip/Flop Sketches, didactic tableaux of
of the scene that creates moving most means of image manipula- Switcher" - these are pro- binary (yes-no/off-on) images,
images than it is a matter of tion available. They have col- cesses and pieces of equipment stereo images taken from video,
the camera systems themselves laborated in the design and dis- used early in their career, when a stack of monitors showing
in motion . covery of new electronic image- video was still young and inno- images that appear to progress
processing equipment, revealing coherently from one monitor to
"Machine Vision" is the name the elemental structure of the
- "a decadent auto portrait of another, and still other exam-
video signal and displaying its WOODY VASULKA'S exhibit, ples of video experiments com-
cameras," said Ms. Vasulka. possibilities. called "Directions,"' introduces plete the display.
Steina and Woody Vasulka Their videotapes through the the thoughtful viewer to the new
are video pioneers, founders of years are a testimony to an ex- considerations of electronic "I WANT to decode the
the Kitchen in New York, an ploding medium as they image processing. images into their elements of
electronic media forum for dis- present, more like scientists, the Chronologically, Vasulka's structures," Vasulka told me.
play and interaction . They have summaries of experimentation, works begin here with film "Every image is justified by its
been internationally exhibited rather than like artists, creating strips from the late '60s that underlying code ."
and are recipients of grants, in an aesthetic. display a field of 360 degrees, The hothouse of experimenta-
cluding state and federal arts Explanation of their proce- rejecting the confinement of the tion in early video "didn't lead
me into freedom. Early video
was an uncontrollable pleasure,
but I discovered that I'm a col-

CORONETSUPER 12
lector' of the underlying codes. I
believed they could become
building blocks of structure . . .'
And I became disinterested in

CARTRIDGE TYPEWRffER images I cannot decode ."

He explained: "In film, we
take an image itself to be a
FROM code. Take a face, for example.
We read from it one's age, a
SMITH-CORONA certain state of mind - or we
think that we can - and proc-
ess of life. This is a photograph-
RUGGED, All ELECTRIC ic code . . .
PORTABLE THAT GIVES "ELECTRONIC IMAGES
YOU THE PRINTED LOOK possess a certain code, too. The
elements are wave forms, time
" Office-sized 88 character keyboard and energy. From that, I ask:
" Extra long carriage for wide paper What is the possibility of one
" Full range of professional features line? How does it behave fi5t "
top to bottom, and how can it be
" High impact case for traveling built up, and into what?"
OUR CODES Using a computer, Vasulka
8001-05 PICA 8001-06 ELITE arrived at other elements of
structure : A point for instance,
Touch .. . cartridge is ejected . a dot upon the screen . That dot
REG. PRICE $219 .97 has values of brightness and
Push ... cartridge is ready to go .

$2049
darkness, and it has location
Never ... again touch a ribbon .
SALE within the frame that enable it
to build toward a significant
CHANGES IN JUST
PRICE 3 SECONDS! meaning.

LIST PRICE $314.00 "BUT WHILE I'm grateful

that video relates to the past, I
SALE ENDS SUNDAY, NOV. 5th would like to locate my work
within a technical process. I am
presenting a technical system
rather than an aesthetic, and
we obey a technical inspiration,
consciously denying ourselves
any aesthetic system ."
SALES, INC .
The Vasulkas'' exhibit, curat-
BARRAMIRICIRD

AVAILABLE AT ALL LOCATIONS ed by Linda L. Cathcart and

made possible by a grant from
the National Endowment for the
Arts, continues through Nov. 26. .