[2] Inspired by several family members who worked in the art world, he developed an early interest in photography, which his father taught him, and painting.
Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, Bruce Nauman, Yvonne Rainer and Joan Jonas were influential figures in his decision to begin making his own art.
[9] Campus' first video, Dynamic Field Series (1971), features a camera suspended above the artist, which he moved up and down using a rope pulley as he lay on the floor below.
In Double Vision (1971), Campus used two cameras and superimposition, beginning a more formal experimentation with the medium itself—a characteristic that recurs in his work to this day.
Other 1970s video work includes the influential Three Transitions (1973), in which the artist transforms his recorded image in three different sequences, using superimposition and chroma-keying technology.
[10] In Third Tape (1976), Campus manipulates a virtual self-image[11] into an abstract self-portrait by filming the performer John Erdman's reflection as he progressively throws a disordered array of small mirror tiles upon a table.
"[12] His interactive closed-circuit video installations include Kiva (1971), Interface (1972), Optical Sockets (1972–73), Anamnesis and Stasis (1973), Shadow Projection and Negative Crossing (1974), mem, dor, cir, and sev (1975), and lus, bys, num, and aen (1976).
[13] In A History of Video Art, Chris Meigh-Andrews describes these as works that sought to "deliberately confront the viewer with a self-image that defied or challenged normal expectations.
[18] Toward the end of the 1970s, Campus began to move away from interactive work toward large scale projection and an investigation of faces and heads as subject matter.
Campus' 21st century works reference both the history of film and painting, with the artist digitally manipulating his videos on a granular, pixel-by-pixel level.
[24] Commonly featured are seascapes and life in coastal communities located around eastern Long Island, Massachusetts, and the French Atlantic coast—a continuation of Campus' longstanding search for personal harmony in nature.
[25] Other important influences in recent years are the advance of 4K technology, which has further enabled the artist's experimentation with the video format,[26] and the cinematic concept of the "sequence," or the order that images appear in.
In 2017, a survey exhibition of the artist's work, entitled video ergo sum, opened at the Jeu de Paume in Paris.