Pioneering

I first saw this piece called "Sunstone" by Ed Emshwiller back when I was about 15, at the home of a family friend called Howard Wise. I didn't know it at the time, but Howard was an important and forward-looking patron of video artists in NYC; He founded Electronic Arts Intermix in 1971. I'd never seen anything like the piece before; It was my first exposure to pure video art that affected me in a meaningful way, its imagery iconic, dreamlike and memorable. Like electronic music, video art is inexorably linked to fast-evolving technology and as such it is very often prone to becoming hopelessly dated in the wrong hands (there's a quote that reads "Nothing is sadder than yesterday's vision of tomorrow"), but this was different. It was clearly the work of an artist, someone who had a real idea and wasn't just playing around with the newest gear of the day.

I later saw an excerpt of Emshwiller's "Scape-Mates" on PBS around 1981, which I also found evocative and riveting. Worth seeking out if you're into the aesthetic...

There is a Sunstone page by Alvy Ray Smith, one of the creators of the piece's CG, here.