Electronics engineer Richard Monkhouse had intermedia plans when he created Electronic Music Studios, including building his own image-processing device. Monkhouse was inspired by the Whitneys. After attending a lecture by John Whitney Sr., Monkhouse started constructing videos out of 16mm loops of computer graphics displays, feedback, and oscilloscope patterns. He then added video synthesis to his multimedia quiver, producing videos such as Shine On You Crazy Diamond (1977) and Transform (1978). His “spectre,” later titled the Spectron, was capable of colorizing monochrome imagery in a variety of ways. The Spectron was digital and represented an effort to refine direct video synthesis.

Peter Donebauer and Monkhouse made a number of live-to-tape performances between 1973 and 1983. For 1978’s Merging-Emerging, Donebauer worked with two dancers, a lutist, and a violinist. The performers and video artists could all see and hear one another and could adapt to the audio and video as it occurred in real time, creating a feedback loop of player and technology, music, dance, and video. Donebauer conceptualized his work in terms of other arts, particularly music, Zen calligraphy, and gestural painting.