Switch! Monitor! Drift! (1976)
By Steina Vasulka
Duration 3 min 44 sec Switch! Monitor! Drift! is a videotape by Steina that was made in 1976 . It is part of her Machine Vision series-a group of tapes and installations which question our assumptions of point of view, "our" visual spectrum, our sense of where we are in terms of what we see . Steina shows the tape rarely, apparently believing it to be too specialized or too long (it is the longest tape she has made : at fifty minutes it is two times as long as any of her other tapes) . As I will indicate, the tape is rich in ideas and visually pleasurable . It deserves to be seen The most imposing works in Steina's Machine vision series are the large, rotating two camera mechanisms that were built for the shooting of the tapes in the series, and then were put on display, as works in their own right, as installation pieces . These machines, particularly the Allvision devices that have been seen at the Kitchen in New York and at the Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo, are utterly fascinating . Two cameras, aimed at a central reflecting sphere, are on a base which is rotating parikllel to the floor . The signals from the two cameras are fed to monitors which are also in the room, so…
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