BECK, Stephen

In 1976, I saw extraordinary video works that were so unfashionable that I did not see, or even hear of, them again for fifteen years. One Beck piece Video Weavings (1974), has hypnotic, metamorphosing geometric shapes that change color rapidly. The syntax of change consisted mostly of pulsations, in and out, but the speeds of change are quick and the colors are ethereal. Beck had synthesized imagery directly onto videotape, in live time (rather than distorting images previously recorded with a...