In CONTACT Steve Gibson operates simultaneously as a one-man
band and a live video editor by triggering both the music and images in real-time.
The programming allows Gibson to match Adams' images to specific musical events.
Special behaviors were used to create a database of relationships between musical
action and resulting changes in the images. For example a note is struck and a
related image is triggered. Additionally moving sliders and control knobs on the
synthesizer applies effects to both the music and the images, creating a
puppet-dance of image in perfect synch with the music. This brings an improvisatory
quality to the visual composition, freeing it from the limitations of the playback
head.
CONTACT is aesthetically situated between electronica, improvisation, video montage,
psychedelia, techno, and industrial culture. CONTACT explores the sense of impending
technological apocalypse that is quickly becoming the dominant cultural meme of the
new millenium. The music veers between the chaotic and the expressive, thematically
mimicking the sci-fi samples. The images verge on the subliminal, mixing
technological formalism with political catastrophe. In performance the imagery is
broken down by the music, torn apart by effects and spliced together in a
synchronous flow of sound and vision. Borrowing dialogue from classic sci-fi such as
Alien, Twilight Zone and 2001, CONTACT creates a genuine cross-pollination between
the forms of spoken word, music and image by treating the sampled materials as a
placeholder for the current culture of paranoia. Above all CONTACT is conceived as
an expressive piece which displays both the excitement and the fear engendered by
technology.
