After engineer Bill Etra had experimented with the Paik-Abe synthesizer, he convinced fellow engineer and artist Steve Rutt to work with him on designing a new imaging device. Their Rutt/Etra Scan Processor was able to isolate, animate, and reshape particular elements of the video picture in real time by retiming the image relative to the signal–unlike the Paik-Abe synthesizer, which distorted the entire waveform. Paik, in turn, began making work with the Rutt/Etra video synthesizer, as did Woody and Steina Vasulka.

Steve Rutt 1945-2011
Bill Etra 1947-2016