Stealing Fire from the Gods

Stealing Fire from the Gods: Merging Image and Sound in the Work of Steina Vasulka

BY FRANCESCA ASTESANI

We are not used to thinking of fire as technology, though learning how to manage fire was one of the most important technological advancements in human development. Referring to another world-changing technological advancement—that of video—and the experiments that she and her husband Woody have carried out with the medium since the mid-sixties, Steina Vasulka is reported enthusiastically saying: “Each time we believed we were stealing fire from the gods.” 1

Steina and Woody Vasulka have been working side by side for over five decades: moving to New York in 1965, they quickly discovered the moving image as a new open field of image-making, inscribing their work into the early history of video art. The relatively untouched territory of the new medium allowed the two artists to approach their electronic image experiments with great freedom and playfulness, qualities that often transpire from their works. This spirit of freedom and curiosity, which they never abandoned throughout their long artistic journey, also marked their founding of The Kitchen, an institution that is still an important space for multidisciplinary and experimental artistic practices in New York City today.

As opposed to the optical nature of film and photography, video offered infinite possibilities to create images from electrical impulses, manipulating a visual world according to the medium’s internal logic, through 88

imageries that could 1. Steina’s quotes are transcend the pheextracted from Marco Maria Gazzano’s text in nomenological expethe catalogue: M. M. rience of space and Gazzano (ed.), Steina and Woody Vasulka, time. Hence Steina’s video, media e nuove immagini nell’arte humourous notion contemporanea. Milan: of stealing the ‘godly’ Fahrenheit 451, 1995. prerogative of creation: “For the first time, we could see images which were not of this world, which came from somewhere else. The next step was when we discovered that the images and the sounds came from the same source: that images were formed by voltage and frequencies, and so were sounds.”

In video, image and sound are both created by electrical signals and this connection has always been particularly important for Steina, who was educated as a classical violinist. In a conversation I had with her recently, she pointed out that images are, for her, always moving: a time-based media just like music. Since the beginning of the 1970s, she has been experimenting with the musicsound interface. In the piece Violin Power (1970-78), for instance, the sound input from her violin distorts the video recording of her playing the instrument, creating a new interface where image and sound are merged, or even better, where sound actually generates a new type of image.

Steina, Violin Power, 1969-1978, 1/2" Open Reel video, b&w, sound, 10:04 min. Courtesy the artist and BERG Contemporary

In two later pieces, Voice Windows (1986) and Vocalisations (1990)—made after the couple relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico—Steina continued her experiments with the integration of sound and image in collaboration with vocalist Joan La Barbara. In both works, the soundwaves of La Barbara’s playful vocalisations materialise as waveforms on a grid of five lines that resembles a musical score. The abstract forms of the vocal patterns are overlaid onto background images of landscapes of New Mexico and urban Santa Fe, partly hiding them to create an electronic musicscape. In Vocalisations, in particular, the abstraction of the audio-visual interface overtakes representation, leaving the background images of the landscape barely recognisable in the moving-image collage. In these pieces, human and machine work together: video, despite its open possibilities, is dependent on human-generated signals in the form of voice, or tunes from the violin played by the artist. This synergy between human and machine makes Steina’s work particularly touching, while the exploration of the humourous frailty of this connection is, above all, very contemporary. ◻

Anne-Karin Furunes Portrait of Aslak Johnsen / Bæhr-Tromholt Archive, 2020, acrylic on canvas, perforated, 160 x 160 cm, Portrait of Inger Andersdatter / Bæhr-Tromholt Archive, 2020, acrylic on canvas, perforated, 160 x 160 cm. Unknown from Archive / Karelen, 2020, acrylic on canvas, perforated 160 x 160 cm. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Anhava