During a recent visit to the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna, I was able to check out Changing Channels, Art and Television 1963 - 1987, an excellent exhibition of artistic reflection on the use of mass-media television from the 1960s to the 1980s.
(photo by flickr user --m--)
One of the works that particularly stuck me was a series of videos by Steina and Woody Vasulka, a couple who were technical pioneers in video art. Their main focus was the use of video as a means of exploring fundamental structures of sound and image production while maximizing the medium's aesthetic potential.
As described in the exhibition booklet, these Studies (1970-1971) are abstract videos resulting from an artistic approach that views the electronic signal itself as both the material and the medium. In doing so, special attention is paid to the interrelation and/or coupling of various levels of video and sound, whose transmission relies on the same technology. Specially developed synthesizers were used to manipulate - independantly and combined - both sound and video.
Extracts of these 6 Studies, as well as numerous other works, can all be viewed on the Vasulkas' website: http://www.vasulka.org/Videomasters/MA_index.html
I really liked the study Descends, because the beautiful abstract forms remind me a lot of some of the graphic shapes I see synesthetically with music -- but the sound associated with this video has quite a different shape, ironically!
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