How TV Works

Solo work by Dan Sandin acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in 2021.

Electronic visual synthesis performance.

A joint effort by numerous video artists of the time, starring dancer Rylin Harris.

“This 60 minute electronic fantasy featuring computer animation can control and change your moods of elation and tranquility. To change or enhance your mood, simply play a musical selection that accompanies your present feeling - its mesmerising! The abstract colorised computer animated visuals are artfully paced with their complimentary sound track. Images explode with colour while sooting with flowing shapes and rhythms, Great for parties or individual contemplation.”

In Sister's Bay Christmas Morning, Sandin transforms natural landscapes, merging image-processed material with unaltered images of snowfall. In Wandawega Waters, a kinetic ode to nature, Sandin processes images of the surface of a lake until they are transformed into an abstracted study of light and movement.

In this segment, Dan Sandin demonstrates the routing of a camera signal through several basic modules of an Information Processor (IP), producing a "primitive" vocabulary of the effects specific to video.

In this elegant demonstration, Sandin explains the mistake of using common language concepts and spatial relations to describe what actually can happen on the video screen. The images generated in the tape act according to specific parameters set by the artist. Sandin has stated "The analog Image Processor was programmed to implement the logic equations; if square, if triangle and circle show circle." In this tape, Sandin is in effect arguing for a distinct video vocabulary that replaces the classical concept of perspective. This tape was produced at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Spiral 5 is in the inaugural collection of Video Art at MOMA [Museum of Modern Art] in New York. It was the fifth in a series of performances of a piece called Spiral. Most of the Spirals were performed live in front of audiences by people controlling digital computers and playing on the analog image processor (IP), with musicians jamming along. The GRASS digital system combined with the IP formed the digital visual instrument used in the performance. Spiral 5 was performed in front of a studio audience and the music was re-recorded later. It is an abstract, mathematical animation based on the linear spiral, in something you might call the visual music tradition.

Chemistry, physics, and mathematics lectures illustrated by computer graphics, including footage explaining and demonstrating the creation and animation of the graphics by Tom DeFanti and Dan Sandin.