Mobile Image Mobile Image Mobile Image

Mobile Image is an ongoing netart collaborative project founded in 1975 and spearheaded by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz. This duo sought to create a series of projects that allowed strangers to connect across geographical distance thanks to satellite imagery live streaming. From 1975 through 1977, the artists developed a series of projects dubbed “Aesthetic Research in Telecommunications”, and among them was the Satellite Arts Project made possible thanks to a general NASA invitation to submit proposals for Satellite experimentation.

Kit Galloway (1948-)

Kit Galloway is an American multi-media artist born in 1948 that focused their work on videography. During his young adult life, Kit lived in Paris and noticed the tremendous effect television was having on different countries. As he says within one interview: “I was seeing how most of the world apart from the United States had an international policy for telecommunications. But the United States, under the guise of 'free flow of information’ was putting forward a policy of first-come, first-served, screw you if you can’t get up there and park a satellite.” Kit met fellow artist Sherrie Rabinowitz in Paris and they quickly built a rapport and started working together under the moniker Mobile Image to create large-scale decentralized satellite communications with an element of digital theater, social experimentation, and free communication. Kit and Sherrie continued their work until Sherrie’s death in 2013.

Sherrie Rabinowitz (1950-2013)

Sherrie Rabinowitz was an American video artist born in 1950. She studied at University of California Berkeley and was involved in several subversive and underground video and television collectives. From the 1970s onward, Sherrie met Kit Galloway in Paris, and they quickly formed their own collective Mobile Image in 1975. Their work reached critical acclaim as they sought to bridge physical distance between others thanks to satellite imagery and live streaming. Rabinowitz is well known for coining the phrase “We must create at the same scale that we destroy”. In 1984, their Electronic Cafe Network Project was commissioned by the Los Angeles Summer Olympics Art Festival. They allowed satellite imagery to empower others to communicate across the world. Kit and Sherrie worked together under the same moniker until Sherrie’s death in 2013.