Draft:Michael J. Masucci

Michael J. Masucci (b. Nov. 24, 1952) is an American artist, curator and arts advocate whose work involves elements of cinema, visual art, performance art, music, digital and video projection and installation. He has been profiled in a number of publications and media, over the decades, including the LA Times. , Slate, KCET and KPCC.

His work was included in the Getty’s first iteration of its on-going series Pacific Standard Time (2011), as chronicled in the exhibition catalogue: COLLABORATION LABS: Southern California Artist and the Artist Space Movement. Additionally, he moderated a panel on performance art as part of Pacific Standard Time, presenting his thoughts one early EZTV.

He was asked to participate the subsequent Getty pacific Standard Time, reading a translation of Latinx writer Jorge Luis Borges’ “A Universal History of Infamy: Virtues and Disparity.”

A founding member of the seminal Los Angeles-based media arts group EZTV (not to be confused with the BitTorrent of the same name), he has served as Co-Artistic director (along with founder John Dorr), since 1986, and has served as Director, since Dorr’s death in 1993.

In 1999, the American Film Institute, in honor of EZTV’s 20th Anniversary, gave a series of panel discussions and screenings, including the premiere of Nina Rota’s profile on EZTV founder John Dorr, in which Masucci is interviewed.

Within his many functions at EZTV, he co-created, along with art historian/curator/collector Patric Prince (1946-2021) CyberSpace Gallery, an early gallery dedicated to digital art. At an exhibition on Prince at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the curator states:

"As one of the first galleries dedicated to digital art practices, it literally put digital art on the map and gave artists an opportunity to bring their work to a wider audience."

Masucci’s artworks.
Masucci has created a broad spectrum of works in video, installation, performance, music and dance. Starting out as a still photographer, photo-muralist and rock musician, playing in many bands in his original home of New York City, before permanently moving to Los Angeles in 1982.

His experimental video motion paintings, “Standing Waves”, profiled on a local PBS broadcast were created in the early 1980s. These real time animated works combined a hot-rodded collection of early desktop computers, such as the Atari 8-bit series and early Atari video synthesizers, with standard definition analogue video equipment, such as multi-camera (each equipped with plumbicon tubes). The early tube-driven cameras had the technical flaw of creating a visual smear when passing quickly over a bright light source. It was commonplace in the 1970s for some video arts to create ‘video feedback,’ by pointing a camera at a monitor displaying their own image. He considered what he was doing at the time to be the electronic equivalent of ‘action painting,’ integrating elements of live performance with image making. Masucci greatly expanded this capability with a number of increasingly sophisticated hardward configurations, operated through video production switchers (aka Special Effects Generators), time-base correctors, proc amps, and several cathode ray monitors. The custom-built rigs, designed, engineered and constructed by Masucci, would be capable of producing video feedback loops, but layered and composited in real-time because of the multi-camera/switcher technology. This gave a much more complex look that competing video feedback loops of the time. The computers would be used to create color and pattern sequences that would be fed into the feedback loops.

Masucci subsequent work involved surrealistic explorations involving themes such as consciousness, identity, gender stereotypes, as well as series of projects delving into the conspiracy theories involving UAPs (aka UFOs), especially, for example in his 1992 “Deposition,” the possibility of alien abduction experiences. Such early videos (in collaboration with Kim McKillip), presented prior to the mass popularity of the subject by TV shows such as the X Files, led the LA Times to state:

“Michael Masucci and Kim McKillip’s striking and original “Deposition” combines surreal imagery and haunting narrative to evoke the experience of post-abduction trauma--and, daringly, relate it to the UFO phenomenon.”

He collaborated with a number of individuals, including Dr. Timothy Leary. Leary granted Masucci, along with interviewer Natasha Vita More and the EZTV team, the privilege of conducting what is possibly the last on-camera video interview. The resulting documentary profile premiered at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London.

Other notable projects include his 2003 “Quantum Entanglement,” a surrealistic feature- length digital narrative, that was commissioned and premiered on the opening day of SIGGRAPH’s 30th anniversary conference at the San Diego Convention Center. The piece won a Telly Award.

There were several unexpected ‘hits’ that Masucci created, including the improbable 1986 “WestHollywoodSign.” What began as a joke,imaging a sign, mimicking the famous Hollywood Sign, outside on a hill in the EZTV parking lot, became a widely publicized, and much- loved community symbol, surviving for about 5 years, as people continuously stole letters, until the entire sign disappeared.

In 2014, the University of Southern California’s ONE Archives and Museum, acquired a number of early works of EZTV artists, including a number by Masucci. A three-month series of exhibitions, screenings and panel discussions were staged to celebrate the acquisition, and EZTV’s 35th anniversary. In an Artforum review of the exhibitions, a video by Masucci documenting an early West Hollywood Pride Parade was hailed as:

“The most transfixing piece in the show”

In addition to the exhibition, panels and screenings, the final of the three-month USC tribute to EZTV included “Fly-By,” a multi-media performance piece in collaboration with Donna Sternberg & dancers, Kate Johnson, Joan Collins of LA ACM SIGGRAPH, composer David Raiken and transmitting live-real-time animated digital avatars from The Hague, Netherlands, as an innovative example of telepresence performance, Vanessa Blaylock Dance Company.

Earlier experiments with telepresence include a 1987 primitive text chat between EZTV in West Hollywood and Arthur C. Clark in Shri Lanka, for the KPFK radio show on science fiction “Hour 25,” and several collaborations in 1990 with Electronic Café International, including one with video artist/musician Ulysses Jenkins.

Masucci considers himself to be a type of cultural ambassador and describes what he does as ‘art as anthropology’. He navigates between a number of subcultures and lifestyles, including early documentation of the DEFCON computer hacker conferences.

Masucci has lectured widely on subjects ranging from digital art history, cyber security, and transhumanism. He gives talks discussing the similarities between computer hacking and performance art. Among the variety of venues he has presented are the Digital Be-In, the American Film Institute, the Institute of Contemporary Art, London , the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time, Hacker Halted , the College Art Association , Hack in Paris , Paris Disneyland , CalTech , the New School/Parsons , Bergamot Station Arts Center , Humanity+ , CryptoMondays LA , AI LA at LMU , and the Global Investor Podcast.

Masucci holds a J.D. degree from California School of Law, and holds certificates in film production from UCLA, Graphic Design from CalArts, Music Production from Berklee College of Music, Entrepreneurship from U Penn, Wharton, cryptocurrency from the MIT Media Lab, conflict mediation and resolution from Cornell and CalStateLA. He did coursework at Harvard, the City University of New York, and Santa Monica College.

He is the recipient of the Cine Golden Eagle award (for his 2005 PSA “Art Makes Us Human” ), and several Telly Awards for his work in video.

He has served as Chair of the Santa Monica Arts Commission, for which he has been awarded three commendations from the Mayor of Santa Monica and its City Council.

He is a member of UC, Santa Cruz’s Center for Applied Values and Ethics in Advanced Technologies (CAVEAT).

He served on the Board of Directors for a umber of non-profit arts organizations, including Fringe Festival Los Angeles (in coordination with the Los Angeles Festival), Avaz International Dance Theater, Bethune Theatre Dance, the Santa Monica Arts Foundation, as well as on the Arts Advisory Board for the Los Angeles Clinic.

He is a co-founder of DNA Festival Santa Monica. He has served as Chair of the Santa Monica Arts Commission, as well as founder and Chair of its Media Arts Subcommittee, and Chair of its Bergamot Station Arts Center Subcommittee. He is the recipient of three special commendations from the City of Santa Monica’s Mayor and City Council for his contributions to the arts. He is listed in Who’s Who in American.