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 television (SSTV) 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 and 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 an illusion of movement, Kac explored the live process of image formation.

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