In “Steina: Playback” video is a living experiment

It’s hard to separate digital video from the power that social media and new technologies have over it, as well as visuality’s connection to corporate surveillance. But “Steina: Playback”, An exhibition at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center may be an antidote. In a world where Metas Smart Glasses could be used to dox anyone in public And with deepfake revenge porn on the rise, it’s refreshing to be reminded of digital media’s potential for sublimity, collaboration, and raw, experimental creativity.

“Playback” is the first solo exhibition in more than a decade of work by the Icelandic musician and video artist Steina. The exhibition is light-hearted and playful and harbors a refreshing curiosity about the moving image.

Other recent surveys of video art have highlighted surveillance, citizen journalism, and protest movements—all fitting explorations for the medium—but Steina’s work feels unique because it addresses concerns that go beyond the human. The video is great, she shows it to us. It is a material with its own peculiarities, something that will always have something mysterious about it.

Steina’s husband, Woody Vasulka, was a long-time creative partner. In early collaborations, they used and created DIY signal processing tools to manipulate audio and video, resulting in some images that are truly insane.

In later works, Steina added movement to her pieces. In the installation “Allvision” (1976), two cameras on a turntable slowly revolve around a central reflective sphere. Steina had said: “When people look at Allvision, they see themselves and therefore assume it’s about them.” But then they leave and Allvision moves on.” Here she began to explore what she called “machine vision,” or a machine-centric approach to image creation. It was essentially about the idea that human-centered perception is not the be-all and end-all.

Steina’s musical background inspired the video “Violin Power” (1970-1978) or her “demo tape for playing videos on the violin,” as she called it. In the piece, she uses the instrument’s audio frequencies to disrupt the video footage and uses the violin as a creative and destructive force – the analogue chops up the digital.

What inspires the exhibition most is its optimistic undertone. This is particularly evident in the Vasulkas’ decades-long ethos of collaboration. The pair used technology as a tool for collaborative thinking and experimentation, sharing the image and signal processing tools they developed with others. Her archive of public media broadcasts, writings and artwork lives on vasulka.org.

“Steina: Playback” is at the List Visual Arts Center, 20 Ames St.Kendall Square, Cambridge, from Saturday to January 12th.

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