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  Steina Vasulka
Trevor
  USA 2000
videotape – 11:00 min
 
Steina Vasulka was one of the first artists to develop an interface for video and musical performance, and the principle of interaction between sound and image runs like a thread through her oeuvre. It is a principle that has become generally accepted in video art in the year 2000, but the limits of which have not yet been reached since developments in technology and software offer ever further-reaching possibilities. The performances of Martin Sercombe & Sinead Jones and of René Beekman & Bruce Gremo at the 18th World Wide Video Festival are just a few examples illustrating the broad applicability of this. For the video 'Trevor', Steina has used Tom DeMeyeres' software Image/ine. The basic material is 35-second recording in which the vocal artist Trevor performs a wide variety of sounds. This material then goes through a variety of digital processes that gradually get more complex. Because sound and image remain linked, a kind of interactive audio-visual instrument is produced. Steina describes the analogy between video art and the composition and playing of music in the catalogue for Transmediale 2000 (Berlin): "Changing and mixing the images (…) reminds me of playing an instrument. I alter the style, timbre, dynamic and type of tone in a spontaneous and improvisational way." The video recording that acts as basic material, is comparable with a musical theme where she, as composer, adds lines of harmony and weaves them through it. She also does this in 'Trevor', but the video is also a little bit like a quadratic catalogue. The vocal artist demonstrates every sound that he can produce from his throat, and the video artist shows the various ways this material can be processed with Image/ine.

– Lies Holtrop
Software: Tom DeMeyer

Steina Vasulka, 1940, Reykjavik (Iceland)
Lives and works in Santa Fe (USA)

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