Barbara Sykes-Dietze

Barbara Sykes (Barbara Sykes-Dietze) (born 1953) into a family of artists, designers and inventors. Since childhood, she has produced work in a variety of different art forms. In 1974, she became one of Chicago's pioneering video and new media artists and, later to include, independent video producer, exhibition curator and teacher. Sykes is a Chicago based experimental video artist who explores themes of spirituality, ritual and indigeneity from a feminist perspective. The research lab known for developing the Sandin Image Processor, a video synthesizer is similar to synthesizers used to create music. The Image Processor allows for abstract analogue visuals to be created using analogue computer graphics, a new technology at the time. The lab was known for its Electronic Visualization Events (EVE), where live performances combined music and video processing in real time.

As a student of this new technology, Barbara Sykes quickly developed skills using the Image Processor and produced a large body of groundbreaking work, that includes Sykes's historically significant performances with Tom Defanti of The Poem during EVE I, 1975, and Circle 9 Sunrise during EVE II ,1976, at a time when such real-time performances were the first of their kind. Before earning an undergraduate degree, Sykes enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, SAIC, emerging video program in 1979, and obtained her MFA in video, computers and performance in 1981.

While a student at the UIC, Sykes worked at their Media Production Center and as a freelance videographer and editor, producing dance, instructional and documentary videos. Concurrently, she was a UIC teaching assistant for graduate and undergraduate classes, providing instruction on the Sandin Image Processor, field production and editing. In graduate school at SAIC, she became proficient on the Rutt Etra Synthesizer and worked at the Video Data Bank co-coordinating Recent Work, a traveling video art exhibition, and documented visiting artists, including Ellen Fisher's performance, Call Her Amedia. She was also a broadcast post-production editor and cameraperson for a weekly Greek variety program that aired on PBS in Chicago and shot Chicago dance performances in order to fund her tuition. While this later work is different in process, there are clear relationships to her earlier work, as is evident in Electronic Masks (1976), which demonstrates a blend of image processing with themes of spirituality. In a statement about the film, Sykes describes that "from birth to death, special rights and ceremonies mark the important events of one's existence, assuring a symbiosis of body and soul with the divine. This deep relationship between the people and their gods are reaffirmed through daily activity. At times, the person symbolically becomes god, strengthening their own sense of sacredness and self-respect." In 1981, Sykes curated Video: Chicago Style, which was exhibited at Global Village in New York City, and was additionally screened on Manhattan Cable. This exhibition eventually grew into Video and Computer Art: Chicago Style, which she presented along with Sykes's Retrospective, her one-woman exhibition, throughout Japan, Australia, Spain and was the first woman video artist to present in China, 1988-1989.

Sykes was a tenured, Professor of Television at Columbia College Chicago from 1982 to 2005. She taught experimental video production and advanced and intermediate level field productions and editing courses. While at Columbia College, she also served as video coordinator and as initiator and director of the visiting artist and lecturer series for the Department of Television, organizing lectures by industry professionals and artists such as Gene Youngblood, author of Expanded Cinema, Barbara London, curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Marlon Riggs, filmmaker and gay rights activist, and Rafael Franca, which occurred in conjunction with "Brazilian Video Art", the first ever exhibition of Brazilian experimental video work in Chicago.

In 1996 and 1997, Sykes was a featured artist in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago's retrospective exhibition "Art in Chicago, 1945-1995" and included in the companion book produced for this show. In 2016 Sykes took part in Celebrating Women in New Media Arts, a panel symposium held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The symposium highlighted women who have paved the way in the male dominated field of new media. Joan Truckenbrod and Claudia Hart were among some of the participants who shared their experiences making technological artwork as women, and some of the challenges they faced. The symposium preceded and helped to promote the 2018 release of the book New Media Futures: The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts published by the University of Illinois Press. New Media Futures captures the contributions of twenty-two trailblazing mid-western women creators that were integral to the development of the digital arts and at the forefront of social change, technical innovation and artistic inquiry. New Media Futures featured artists and contributors are Barbara Sykes, Ellen Sandor, Donna Cox, Janine Fron, Carolina Cruz-Niera, Tiffany Holmes, Maxine Brown, Brenda Laurel, Copper Giloth, Jane Veeder, Martyl Langsdorf, Annette Barbier, Joan Truckenbrod, Claudia Hart, Margaret Dolinsky, Dana Plepys, Colleen Bushell, Nan Goggin, Mary Rasmussen, Sally Rosenthal, Lucy Petrovic and Abina Manning. Sykes and the other women in New Media Futures have participated in its book tours and HerStory presentations.

In 2018, Sykes' work By The Crimson Bands of Cyttorak was included in the Chicago New Media 1973-1992 exhibition curated by .

+