Woody Vasulka
Artist Bio
Woody Vasulka was born in Brno, now in the Czech Republic and trained as an engineer before studying television and film production at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. While pursuing his studies in the fifties, Woody Vasulka wrote poetry and produced short films. Woody met Steina in Prague in the early 1960s, where Woody introduced video to Steina.
Steina and Woody Vasulka founded The Kitchen in 1971 in New York City, which was originally housed in the Mercer Arts Center in Soho. The Vasulkas were known for their early experiments in analog and digital processes, coupled with electronic sound. In their opening manifesto for The Kitchen they wrote, “This place was selected by Media God to perform an experiment on you, to challenge your brain and its perception,” firmly establishing The Kitchen as an open space for challenging new work by artists in all disciplines.
Woody Vasulka’s early creative works pioneered the investigation of ‘signal’ as syntactic visual language, experimenting with most electronic imaging and sound synthesis/processing systems, leading from analog to digital to photonic tool applications and transcendent artistry. Woody’s theatrical installations using robotics and software-controlled interactive components to explore new forms of techno-spatial narrative, have been presented internationally since the 1980s.
Woody and Steina have been based in Santa Fe since 1980.