Vašulka Mediascape
Feedback, no need for camera – a voltage, a frequency could create an image
Steina: “1969 – I was introduced that year to video in the place where Woody was working at the time. We would come in and just sit for hours and watch feedbacks – it’s a self-made process. It’s something that just goes on. You point the camera at the monitor, set it into motion and then you can sit and watch it and talk, and after a while you look at it and it has changed. Then we started to figure out how to interfere with it, how to control it, what to do to change it … One of the first things we did was images generated by sound and vice versa. We were interested in the absolute interface of sound and image. That’s when we realized that there didn’t have to be a camera – a voltage, a frequency could create an image.“
Linda Cathcart, “Steina,” in Vašulka: Steina – Machine Vision; Woody – Descriptions, Linda Cathcart, curator, Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (1978); link: https://www.vasulka.org/Catalogues/PDFs/Cat_KNOX.pdf.