Three Transitions (1973)

Peter Campus' early work engaged his interest in the psychology and the physiology of perception, and was informed by the Minimalist aesthetic of the late sixties and early seventies. Especially, his video art is concerned with exploring the subtle balance between remote but penetrating and formal, but unsettling, elements.
One of his most important single-channel works is Three Transitions in which he uses chromakey processors and video mixers to create videos in the studio. This video engages this new method of perceiving oneself, Campus is watching himself live as he goes through the motions for the camera.



In three short exercises, Campus uses basic techniques of video technology and his own image to create succinct, almost philosophical metaphors for the psychology of the self. In these concise performances, he presents three introspective self-portraits that incorporate his dry humor. As Three Transitions moves between deadpan humor and seeming self–destruction, Campus explores the limits of visual perception as a measure of reality.
In each episode, Campus displaces an image of himself and eventually eradicates it. Three Transitions deals with duality in an ironic way, also with the video space made with this technological tool. The question of self is important, as the performer tries to expose the illusions the artist has set up.
Campus employs video's inherent properties as a metaphorical vehicle for articulating transformations of internal and external selves, illusion and reality. The tape's precise formalism and simplicity of execution advance the psychological wit and symbolic content.