Bio-Dis-Plays

From 1970 through the early 1980s, a number of my creative experiments, performances and media artworks integrated audio and video synthesis, bio-electric sensing/transducing of the human body and other living systems, and art-science collaborations. These included early works with Peter Crown, Ph.D., Woody and Steina Vasulka (The Kitchen), and E.A.T. in NYC; and led to ten years of such projects undertaken on the West Coast, with the technical and personnel assistance of NASA Ames Research Center and some of their contracted partners, including Stanford Children’s Hospital; plus Henry Dakin and his Washington Research Center, in San Francisco.

Creative projects and collaborators during this time included:
-The Secret Life of Plants (1976 feature film sequences), with Jim Wiseman (video synthesis), Tom Zahuranec (audio synthesis) and John Lifton (plant monitoring and digital music);
and participation in two early telecommunication collaborations in 1977-78:
-Send-Receive, with Liza Baer, Kieth Sonnier, and Willoughby Sharp (NYC) and Sharon Grace, Carl Loeffler, and others (San Francisco); and
-Satellite Arts Project, coordinated by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, with Jim Wiseman, David Rosenboom, Keija Kimura, Paul Horn and others, in satellite arts interactions between NASA Ames, CA, and Goddard Space Center, MD.

Bio-Dis-Play studies and presentations, involving EEG, EMG, EKG, GSR and other multi-channel bio-interfaces with audio, video and performances during this period also included collaborations with Paul Demarinis, Margaret Fisher, Judith Azur, and others. This lead to multi-disciplinary arts and sciences works from the late 1970s through the early 1990s, with infrared thermal video, ‘blind’ echolocation, computer speech, military nightvision and surveillance systems, and collaboration with NASA on performances in simulated weightlessness.

Jill plays brain wave music/video, in concert with six channels of plant music (The Secret Life of Plants)