Sherrie Rabinowitz (1950–2013) was an American video artist and a pioneer in satellite-based

telecommunication Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of ...

s art. She worked exclusively with Kit Galloway under the moniker Mobile Image from 1977 onwards. She co-founded the Electronic Café International (ECI), a performance space and real café housed in the

18th Street Arts Center 18th Street Arts Center is a nonprofit arts center in Santa Monica, California. 18th Street Arts Center amplifies the impact of artists on society. Conceived as a radical think tank in the shape of an artist community. It provides artists with cr ...

in Santa Monica, California, with Galloway. She died in 2013, from complications due to

multiple sclerosis Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease resulting in damage to myelinthe insulating covers of nerve cellsin the brain and spinal cord. As a demyelinating disease, MS disrupts the nervous system's ability to Action potential, transmit ...

Career

Optic Nerve

She studied at

University of California Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley ...

and was involved in the collective Optic Nerve, which created underground video and guerrilla television. Optic Nerve was one of the few San Francisco video collectives with women members in the 1970s. As part of Optic Nerve she collaborated with the architecture and performance collective

Ant Farm A formicarium (: formicaria or formicariums) or ant farm is a vivarium which is designed primarily for the study of ant colonies and how ants behave and for the enjoyment of ants as pets. Those who study ant behavior are known as myrmecologists ...

which was also based out of San Francisco. These projects include: ''Media Burn'' (1975), ''The Eternal Frame'' (1975), and ''Pier 40 Fire Clean Up'' (1978).

Mobile Image

From the mid-1970s onwards,

Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz Kit Galloway (born 1948) and Sherrie Rabinowitz (1950–2013) met in 1975 and worked collaboratively under the name Mobile Image. They co-founded the Electronic Café International (ECI), a cafe, networking centre, performance and workshop space and ...

created numerous art works which could be categorized as communication aesthetics, telecollaborative art,

telematic art Telematic art is a descriptive of art projects using computer-mediated telecommunications networks as their medium. Telematic art challenges the traditional relationship between active viewing subjects and passive art objects by creating interactiv ...

, cyber art, and digital theatre. One example of their work is the 1977 ''Satellite Arts Project: A Space with No Boundaries'', which created composite images of two dancers in California and two dancers in Maryland, and was supported by NASA. Another example is their 1980 satellite relay project ''Hole-in-Space'' which connected public spaces in New York and Los Angeles with live audio and life-sized video. Rabinowitz coined the phrase "We must create at the same scale that we can destroy" which would become the headline of Mobile Image's manifesto for their ''Electronic Cafe Network Project'' (1984) commissioned for the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics Art Festival.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rabinowitz, Sherrie American new media artists American women video artists American video artists 1950 births 2013 deaths People from Santa Monica, California University of California, Berkeley alumni Neurological disease deaths in the United States Deaths from multiple sclerosis People with multiple sclerosis 20th-century American women artists