Steina Vasulka Video Demonstration

The legendary video pioneer Steina Vasulka demonstrates the digital tools she has developed, as well as some of her real-time, audio-visual environments. 6 p.m. Free. Bring a photo ID. No admittance after 7 p.m.

Steina will also perform as part of the OptoSonic Tea series on Saturday, October 15 9 p.m. at Experimental Intermedia, 224 Centre Street at Grand, Third Floor.

Steina was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1940. She studied violin and music theory, and in 1959 received a scholarship from the Czechoslovak Ministry of Culture to attend the State Music Conservatory in Prague.

Woody and Steina Vasulka were married in Prague in 1964, and shortly thereafter shjoined the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra. After moving to the United States. In 1965 she worked in New York City as a freelance musician. She beganworking with video in 1969, and since then her various tapes and installations have been exhibited in USA, Europe and Asia. Although her mainthrust is in creating Video Tapes and Installations she has recently become involved in interactive performance in public places, playing a digitallyadapted violin to move video images displayed on large video projectors.

In 1971 she co-founded The Kitchen, the Electronic Media Theater in New York, which is now celebrating 40 years. Steina has been an artist-in-residence at at KQED in San Francisco, WNET/Thirteen in New York. She has received numerous grants and awards including from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Film Institute and the New Mexico Arts Division. She received the Maya Deren Award in 1992 and the Siemens Media Art Prize in 1995.

In 1993 she co-curated with Woody the exhibition and catalogue, Eigenwelt der Apparatewelt (Pioneers of Electronic Art) for Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. In 1996 she served as the artistic co-director and software collaborator at STEIM (Studio for Electronic Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam. In 1996 Steina and Woody showed eight new media installations at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, an exhibition repeated in Santa Fe a few months later. Her installation, titled Orka was featured in the Icelandic Pavilion at the 1997 Venice Bienale. In 1999 she showed three installations in three countries: "Nuna" in Albuquerque, New Mexico, "Textures" in Reykjavik, Iceland and "Machine Vision" in Milano, Italy. She created two installations for the Art Festival 2000 in Reykjavik, Iceland. In 2001 she was invited to festivals in Norway, Russia, Estonia, Portugal, Montreal, England and Italy. Between July and October of 2002 she realized four installations in four locations in her hometown of 22 years, Santa Fe, NM.