9/23/69: Experiment with David Atwood

Nam June Paik. In collaboration with David Atwood, Fred Barzyk, and Olivia Tappan. 

1969, 80 min, color, sound

9/23/69 is a newly restored treasure. This early masterwork of electronic experimentation was created by Paik while he was Artist-in-Residence at WGBH in Boston. The title refers to the day it was made — September 23, 1969. Paik creates a stunning visual collage that fuses spontaneous, free-form...

Action

Kristin Lucas

1997-98, 5 min, color, sound

Writes Lucas: "This video carries the tension of an audition or screen test. I am called onstage for a test drive around a virtual race course, a metaphor for the information superhighway. My intention for this video is to investigate the term 'action' as it applies to the contemporary lifestyle."

Manipulating a Fluorescent Tube

Bruce Nauman

1969, 62 min, b&w, sound

This videotape records the activities Nauman performed four years earlier in 1965. Both in this performance and in this work he strikes and holds a variety of poses on the floor in relation to a glowing fluorescent light fixture.

One11 and 103

John Cage

1992, 94 min, b&w, sound, 16 mm film on video

In this double work, abstractions of light travel across and into the sounds and space created by artist and composer John Cage. While intended as a unified work, the piece must also be considered as a joining of two discrete works, each of which stands on its own.

She Puppet

Peggy Ahwesh 

2001, 15 min, color, sound

Re-editing footage collected from months of playing Tomb Raider, Ahwesh transforms the video game into a reflection on identity and mortality. Trading the rules of gaming for art making, she brings Tomb Raider's cinematic aesthetics to the foreground, and shirks the pre-programmed "mission" of its heroine, Lara Croft. Moving beyond her implicit feminist critique, she enlarges the dilemma of Croft's entrapment to that of the individual in an increasingly artificial world.

Violin Power

Steina

1970-78, 10:04 min, b&w, sound

Steina terms this procedural work "a demo tape on how to play video on the violin." Her background as a violinist and her evolution from musician to visual artist is referenced through an analogy of video camera to musical instrument. Steina is first seen in footage from the early 1970s, playing...

Watch Out For Invisible Ghosts

Kristin Lucas

1996, 5:15 min, color, sound

This mock virtual environment is a playground for the imagination. Equipped with helmet, goggles, and a basic understanding of early video game strategies, the artist morphs into an adventureland training camp where she meets with media icons and common ground. She fearlessly changes her...