Sonia Sheridan fonds

Process: Telecopier (Xerox) and VRC (3M)

At the suggestion of her friend and collaborator Stan VanDerBeek, in 1972 Sonia Sheridan rented two Xerox telecopiers (model 400 Variable Remote Copiers) (a). She initially used them in the Generative Systems classroom to raise her students’ awareness about the conceptual and practical possibilities of these new communication tools (one of the telecopiers was at the Art Institute of Chicago, while the other was in Sheridan’s home). She then conducted a series of experiments with the machine in order to visualize the results of combining a variety of communications systems (telephone, thermography, etc.). By raising the needle of the telecopier at the receiving end, Sheridan changed the duration of the transmission and produced elongated or deformed images (b), (c). Another exercise involved passing an image produced by the Color-in-Color through the Variable Remote Copier system. The sounds generated during the transfer of the image from one machine to the other were taped and replayed over one of the VRCs. It then became possible to adjust the volume and in doing so modify the appearance of the image when it came out of the machine (it appeared somewhat stretched horizontally) (d).

Tool:
. Variable Remote Copier (VRC)