AllMovie

Even though it's the video that launched a million art school knock-offs, Dana Birnbaum's Technology Transformation looks as fresh and spectacular today as it did in 1979. Birnbaum was one of the first to recycle TV footage and reedit it into a new video, one that both comments and distances itself from its source. Through a repetitive reediting of a scene of Wonder Woman undergoing her transformation into a superhero, Birnbaum creates a work whose length belies its range of commentary. It's a piece that touches on the nature of television, the progress of technology, and our utopian belief in it. In addition, it's a video whose technique quickly developed a new vocabulary for the arts.