Conversation
Eduardo Kac, 1987

Eduardo Kac, Conversation, slow-Scan television (video transmission through analogue phone lines), 1987, 34.5 (W) x 42 (D) x 47 (H) cm [13.5 x 16.5 x 18.5 inches]

"Conversation" is a Slow-Scan TV work by Eduardo Kac realized at the Centro Cultural Três Rios, in São Paulo, on November 17, 1987.

Slow-Scan TV was an early type of videophone that allowed the transmission/reception of sequential still video images over regular phone lines.

It took from eight to twelve seconds to transmit each image.

Instead of considering each picture as a final form or the sequence of images as illusion of movement, Kac explored the live process of image formation.

Once an image was captured and transmiited, it served as the background for the next image, which was improvised live. This process was repeated continuosuly, thus producing what might be interpreted as an electronic palimpsest.

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