Of the North is a video installation that uses recordings of the Icelandic landscape, which are transformed into spherical, rotating objects resembling planets with the help of Boris software. The first performance is considered to be the presentation that took place in Canada in 2001, during the Montréal en lumière festival. The large-format image of a spherical object was projected onto a metal and glass periscope in the darkened area of the atrium of the Place des Arts. Steina Vasulka further developed this motif in projects called Spheres and Seven Spheres, respectively. It was a multi-channel gallery video installation (3 and 7 screenings). The projection areas were either hung in the exhibition hall (see Spheres_demo, Vasulkas archive), alternatively, the videos were projected on a wall from 12 monitors (Vasulka.org, photo, documentation for ...Of the North).

Author: Steina Vasulka

Year: 2001 (Seven Spheres, 2002 /Foundation Langlois/)

Prequel / Sequel: … Of The North is a sequel to Orka (1997). The videos presented as part of the Orca installation were processed using Boris software to become spherical, rotating objects.

Artistic medium: video matrix

Technical medium: 1, 3, 7 or 12 sphere projections (Three-channel video, three-channel audio, variable length.

Tool: Boris (software)

References: BAROK, Dušan. Steina and Woody Vasulka. Monoskop.org [online] URL
SPIELMANN, Yvonne. Video and Computer. The Aesthetics of Steina and Woody Vasulka. c2004, The Daniel Langlois Foundation [online] URL
VASULKAS. Vasulka.org [online] URL