Steina Vasulka was an iea resident in 2001, 2004, and 2006. In 2007, she performed Violin Power at “Insatiable Streams: Ten Years of Work from the Institute for Electronic Arts” in Beijing, China. Initially trained in classical violin and music theory, Vasulka began her work in visual art through experimental music and engineering. Steina wrote of her work in an artist statement: “My background is in music. For me, it is the sound that leads me into the image. Every image has its own sound and in it I attempt to capture something flowing and living. I apply the same principle to art as to playing the violin: with the same attitude of continuous practice, the same concept of composition. Since my art schooling was in music, I do not think of images as stills, but always as motion. My video images primarily hinge upon an undefined sense of time with no earth gravity. It is like a duty to show what cannot be seen except with the eye of media: water flowing uphill or sideways, upside down rolling seas or a weather beaten drop of a glacier melt. The idea is that perhaps the audience could feel a part of this creative trance, living for a moment in a mental world where they have never been.”

In 1971 she co-founded The Kitchen, an Electronic Media Theater in New York. In 1996 she served as the artistic co-director and software collaborator at STEIM (Studio for Electronic Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam. In 1996 Steina and Woody showed eight new media installations at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, an exhibition repeated in Santa Fe a few months later. Her installation, titled Orka was featured in the Icelandic Pavilion at the 1997 Venice Bienale. In 1999 she showed three installations in three countries: Nuna in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Textures in Reykjavik, Iceland, and Machine Vision in Milano, Italy. She created two installations for the Art Festival 2000 in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Violin Power at Insatiable Streams iea show in Beijing, China.

Violin Power: Lilith at Insatiable Streams iea show in Beijing, China.

Violin Power: Trevor at Insatiable Streams iea show in Beijing, China.