Graduating from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris in 1971 (in Pierre Schaeffer's class), he has proved able to bring to video the technical and linguistic experience of the school of musique concrète. As a researcher, Robert Cahen was head of experimental video in the research arm of the Office de Radio-Télévision Française (70/76) and has been a pioneer in the use of the electronic instruments.

Treating images like sounds to be organized and transformed, his works offer a prime example of the possibility of interchange between the models and parameters of the image and those of music.

Regarded as one of the most significant figures in the field of video, his work is recognizable by its use of slow-motion and in the manner in which it explores the sound-image relationship in constituting a poetic universe.

Robert Cahen's works invariably feature certain fundamental ingredients: the juxtaposition of fixed and moving elements; oscillation and multiplicity of viewpoint; the physical experience of the work as spatial arrangement.

In his very first video in 1972, L'Invitation au Voyage, he manipulates his images, rendering them malleable. In 1983 he shot the thirteen-minute fiction video Juste le Temps, regarded as a landmark piece in 1980s video art, its key characteristic being the use of slow motion to render visible "time restrained"... 

His piece 7 visions fugitiveswon the top prize (Videokunstpreis) of the ZKM and the SDR in 1995. In 1992, Cahen became a laureate and beneficiary of the Villa Medici "Hors les Murs" scheme. Awarded an artistic commission under the aegis of Espace Public in 1995, he realized a permanent video installation in Lille (France), Allée de Liège, EURALILLE.

His debut video installation shown in 1997 at the FRAC/Alsace was entitled "Cahen s'installe." Since that time his video installations have been presented in Italy, Germany, the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Peru, Poland, Morocco, Chile, Argentina, France, China, Vietnam, Azerbaijan, Yemen. Uzbekistan, Japan, and Australia, etc.