Vašulka Mediascape

Discovery that video had frames

Woody: “The biggest shock to both of us regarding video and film, but especially to me, was that video had frames. I didn’t know that initially because the phenomenon is well hidden behind the frame of television. But soon we found out, through a broken cable, that there could be a drift of frames in video. We always used a matrix of monitors – by accident we got 6 monitors at first and everything that we ever watched was related through these monitors. This idea of a time frame on multiple screens becomes so powerful. When the frame starts drifting horizontally within one monitor you see that this frame has a vertical and horizontal boundary. Of course it is made by timing elements but the frame is very evident. I understood that video was designed to be an imitation of film, and it was designed to deliver one frame after the other. They couldn’t deliver an entire frame in one piece so they scanned it, but the idea of a framing system was preserved. And that’s how narrativity was carried on or was translated from film to video.”

Chris Hill, “Interview with Woody Vašulka” (1992), in The Squealer, Buffalo, NY, 1995; link: https://vasulka.org/archive/4-25/Squealer(5097).pdf.