In the 1980s Gretchen Bender (b. 1951, Seaford, Delaware – d. 2004, New York City, New York) was linked to the Pictures Generation artists for her video works and installations that appropriate elements from television, films and corporate aesthetics. Her work has been described as using ‘media against itself – to have it entertaining and critical simultaneously’. In 1984, through the artist Amber Denker, she gained access to the equipment of the Computer Graphics Lab at the New York Institute of Technology where she started to incorporate computer-generated images into her work.
Wild Dead (1984) brings together the logos of General Electric and AT&T among others, reproducing them alongside contemporary artworks and abstract computer graphics. These are set to a soundscape by Stuart Argabright and Michael Diekmann. Images and sound are edited together at a rapid pace that evokes the disrupted stream of remote-controlled television. ‘I think of the media as a cannibalistic river. A flow or current that absorbs everything’, Bender stated in an interview in 1987.
Another work by Gretchen Bender is shown on the basement floor, read here about Dumping Core.