The Power of Play
Retrospective Exhibitions
on 'Technology as a Medium'
How do we balance play and purpose in designing innovation?
Today’s artistic interactions with frontier AI and extended reality echo a deeper, decades-long continuum: the fusion of art and technology. A fusion that pushes boundaries, reshaping how we engage with information and technological mediums.
The MIT List Visual Arts Center’s current retrospective, ‘Playback,’ exemplifies this continuum and reflects on lessons for the modern digital society. The exhibition features the work of Steina, who, together with her partner Woody Vasulka, pioneered video and electronic media arts in the late 20th century. Their spirit of play and purpose through experimental research, helped pave the way for a world where digital manipulation, multimedia integration, and real-time processing are ubiquitous.
The Vasulkas’ legacy has seen a resurgence in relevance, offering fresh insights into the digital landscape. Their innovations in signal transformation and automation resonate in the contemporary use of AI algorithms, multimodal techniques, and generative content creation. Their work offers a prescient lens into the technologies we increasingly use daily, from social media filters to immersive environments and augmented reality.
Yet, their impact extends far beyond new media artistry. The Vasulkas’ research explored profound techno-social concepts of perception, interaction, machine-language, and the fusion of physical and digital connectivity. Their ethos of play and purpose remains a guiding principle for designing and engaging with technology in the present day.
Take, for instance, Steina’s translation of natural landscapes through electronic means. This approach anticipates contemporary trends in creating environments that synthesize natural and virtual worlds. Similarly, Woody Vasulka’s work with “Hybrid-Automata”, originally exhibited at the NTT Intercommunications Center in Tokyo, prefigures today’s multi-agent architectures, where sensors, robotics, computer vision and AI can be strategically orchestrated. Their exploration of electronic processing and strategies for composing interaction, mirror the capabilities of autonomous systems and imaging techniques that reveal phenomena beyond human perception.
The Vasulkas redefined technology as more than a tool. It became a flexible medium for exploration and expression. By treating technology as intrinsic to the creative process, they transformed it into a platform that shaped their work as much as they shaped it. They created dynamic scripting environments, bridging unstructured network behavior, cybernetics, and machine-driven strategies. This perspective lives on in today’s interactions with AI-defined systems and evolving edge-AI, fostering new relationships between creators, users, machines and audiences.
Innovators today should note, that integrated experimentation, when guided by vision, is key to nurturing new technological ecosystems, and that this balance of play and intent is crucial for unlocking breakthroughs.
The Vasulkas’ legacy challenges us to view technology as a medium, as intrinsic to creation as paint is to a painter, or sound is to a musician. A perspective that moves beyond creativity, toward a strategic imperative. Embracing technological ensemble as a partner in shaping both process and output. The evolution of immersive environments, generative intelligence, and many-to-many interactions exemplify this dynamic of continuous, integrated innovation.
By embracing technology as a medium, we transcend its utility and unlock its full potential, blurring the line between creator and tool. A structured experimentation, infused with curiosity and guided by intent, can unleash the true power of play. Through play, we learn. Through play, we adapt.
Details on Exhibitions
‘Playback,’ a retrospective of Steina’s groundbreaking work, is on view at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Boston until 12 January 2025 and at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in New York from March to June 2025.
‘The Brotherhood,’ a retrospective of Woody Vasulka’s multimedia constructions, is running at BERG Contemporary in Reykjavik until December 2025.
https://listart.mit.edu/exhibitions/steina-playback
https://buffaloakg.org/art/exhibitions/steina-playback
https://www.bergcontemporary.is/exhibitions/woody-vasulka-the-brotherhood
Author: Ivan Sean, c. 2024-25 | USA
© 10 Sensor Foresight
Period: 1970-2025 | Language: English
Core Concepts: Technology as a Medium, Immersion, Multi-Agent Systems
AI-Usage: Generative AI, source & output validation
Conflict of Interest: None
References: Playback, Steina, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge USA, 2024-2025 | The Brotherhood, Vasulka NTT ICC, Tokyo, 1998 | The Brotherhood, Vasulka, Berg Contemporary, Reykjavík, 2024-2025