FREE 
Lipsey Auditorium, Knox Building

This free screening features three 30-minute programs—STEINA, TRANSFORMATIONS, and MATRIX—that Steina and Woody Vasulka produced for a series called VASULKA VIDEO that aired as part of a 1978 artist residency with WNED, Buffalo, Toronto Public Media's local PBS station. 

The screening will be followed by a discussion with curator Chris Hill and Kathryn Larson, a BIFF Board member and VP of Content Distribution at Buffalo Toronto Public Media/WNED.

In 1978 Linda Cathcart curated the first major exhibition of the Vasulkas’ work at the AKG—The VASULKAS/Steina: Machine Vision; Woody: Descriptions. The program STEINA features the artist in the studio, describing and screening excerpts of her various “Machine Vision” projects, including "From Cheektowaga to Tonawanda."

TRANSFORMATIONS opens with a camera pointed out of the Vasulkas’ Buffalo studio onto Franklin Street below, with the image slowly transformed by Woody's application of the Rutt/Etra Scan Processor, a special instrument that allowed him to alter the horizontal scan lines and the rectilinear video frame, creating mesmerizing object-like images, a radical formal gesture.

MATRIX concentrates on the Vasulkas’ early collaborative experiments with the electronic video image (feedback, multi-layered keying, colorizers) that were often shown on multiple monitor matrices. Due to the happy mistake of a broken cable, the Vasulkas discovered horizontal drifting images, and often presented works where images move horizontally across multiple monitors, including many of Steina’s early studio-scapes ("Switch! Monitor! Drift!") and later installations that feature landscapes of her native Iceland and the American Southwest.

Presented in partnership with Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo Toronto Public Media, and Buffalo International Film Festival.