Steina and Woody Vasulka

Steina (née Steinunn Briem Bjarnadottir) was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, on January 30, 1940.   As a child, 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, where she studied until 1963, then continuing with independent studies , first in New York and then in Paris in 1967.

Bohuslav "Woody" Vasulka (1937-2019) was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, on January 20, 1937. From 1952 to 1956, he studied metallurgy and mechanics at the industrial engineering school in Brno, where he earned his degree in 1956. Settling in Prague in 1960, he graduated from the faculty of cinema and television at the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU).  While pursuing his studies, Woody also wrote poetry, played jazz trumpet and produced short films. 

Steina and Woody married in Prague in 1964, and shortly thereafter she joined the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra.  In 1965 the Vasulkas emigrated to the U.S., settling in New York City.  While Steina worked as a freelance musician, Woody began making independent documentaries and edited industrial films.  The following year, he collaborated on developing films for a multi-screen environment to be shown in the American Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal.  In 1969, Woody conducted his first experiments with electronic images and put aside cinematographic forms in favor of video.

From 1969 to 1971, using a Sony Portapak and newly acquired equipment, Steina and Woody amassed video segments documenting the concerts and performances they attended at venues connected with New York's counterculture movement (Automation House, WBAI Free Music Store, Fillmore East).   To meet the need expressed by artists for a center to produce and show electronic art, the couple, together with a small team, opened The Electronic Kitchen (later shortened to The Kitchen) in 1971, in what had once been the kitchen of the Mercer Art Center.  This artists run organization helped video makers and later musicians, dancers and performers operating outside the mainstream to create their work and present it at venues that favored discussion and experimentation.  Steina and Woody ran The Kitchen until 1973. 

During that time they also began experimenting with equipment (modulators, video synthesizers, keyers, sequencers) that enabled them to isolate the elements of a visual vocabulary and to build a syntax specific to electronic images.   They were artists-in-residence at the National Center for Experiments in Television, at KQED in San Francisco, and at WNET/Thirteen in New York. 

In 1973, they were invited to develop the production lab of the Center for Media Study at the State University of New York in Buffalo, a research center devoted to media theory, founded by Gerald O'Grady.   Woody Vasulka became an associate professor there in 1974 and Steina in 1976.   Both taught at the Center until 1979. 

From 1975 to 1977, Steina focused mainly on the series “Machine Vision”, a project examining the mediation of space through technology that included videos and installations. She also began designing feedback devices to reverberate sound waves off video signals and vice versa.

 In 1980, Woody and Steina settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which was to become their long-term home and a new source of inspirations, interactions and life.

In the eighties, several solo shows devoted to Steina and Woody Vasulka were mounted at museums and art centers in the United States, France, Italy and Japan, and their videos were screened at media art festivals worldwide.  At the same time, Steina was working on a series of multi-screen installations highlighting elements of the landscapes of New Mexico and Iceland.  In 1986, with help from composer and vocalist, Joan LaBarbara, Steina created a body of works that relied on a sound-image interface.  In 1988 Steina was an artist-in-residence in Tokyo on a U.S./Japan Friendship Committee grant.