by RAF KATIGBAK

The brains behind San Francisco’s forward-thinking Orthlong Musork record label, photographer/video artist Sue Costabile and musician/software programmer Kit Clayton, are currently in London working hard on a new show. Their work across the pond will be briefly interrupted this weekend as they appear at Montreal’s Elektra festival for a performance of their latest work—entitled “Interruption.” This cutting-edge crossbreeding of theatre, experimental sound and video art sees Costabile and Clayton lying down, each with a video camera and a microphone suspended close to their faces. The microphones are connected to a custom-built audio/video processing system (designed by Clayton) that takes direction from the sounds heard by the microphones and the images seen by the cameras. The pair then interacts between the live, narrative audio/video stream and a pre-recorded audio/video stream controlling what you see and hear with their movements and voices.

This innovative, immersive and deeply intimate interactive show has taken the pair from the New Forms Festival in Vancouver (where it debuted) to Rotterdam’s Dot.nu festival. The Mirror caught up with Costabile on a short break while she was visiting London’s Tate Modern Museum, a seemingly fitting place to discuss the state of contemporary video art and laptop music.

Mirror: In the realm of new media, there’s been a lot of talk of the advancement in sound processing and the whole laptop music phenomenon. Has there been similar movement in the video world?

Sue Costabile: The tools for music have been way ahead of the tools for video for a long time. Right now a lot people are still using these pretty standard video mixers that haven’t changed since the ’80s, with these effects that are kind of cheesy. But now with new software, I think it’s an exciting time for video artists. Unfortunately some of the tools are inaccessible, they’re either expensive or you need to know more technology than people want to know, but I hope that people start learning the tools because I think it’ll really change what people are doing.

M: Some people argue that making all this powerful technology so widely available isn’t necessarily a good thing, saying that with everyone trying to do it all themselves, the quality of music is suffering.

SC: I do think that there is a lot of mediocre music that has been coming out lately, so I sort of agree. A big difference from music in the past is that now, everyone can do it. But I don’t think you have to do everything, and I think people need to realize that. They don’t need to be everything and that maybe they’ll find one strength and go and ask for help to finish up the rest of it. In one sense I think it’s great that people can express themselves and make music that easily. But I think people aren’t finding self-expression in it, for whatever reason, because they’re trying to do too much at once or because they’re using software that does too many things for them. It just seems that there are not that many personalities that have come out and said, This is the music I wanna make, and I’m gonna make it. The hardest part of any art is having a vision and actually being able to accomplish it. It’s also that people are young and the scene is young. It takes time for people to hear what happened before, and for the criticism to come around for the whole thing to develop.

Everyday fantasy

M: Let’s talk about Interruption. How did the idea for the performance come about?

SC: Our main motivation was two-fold. One was to do something that was more of a theatre piece and more of a human performance element to it, and the other was to do something that merged audio and video from the beginning, instead of trying to link them together later, which is often the case. Also, the tools were available, so it seemed like an interesting way to try and use them.

M: From the description of the show, it sounds like you guys play a lot with the idea of fantasy.

SC: It’s not necessarily fantasy in the same sense that most people think of fantasy, but more how we see reality, which always has some element of fantasy in it because we’re interpreting it. The things I take pictures of and the things Josh and I like to videotape are things that most other people wouldn’t be photographing or videotaping, so the images are things we notice in the world and what we find beautiful. It’s about how everyday things can become fascinating if you look at them the right way or for the right amount of time. So that’s sort of the fantastical element. It’s intimate in that you’re drawn into this sort of dream world of ours. It’s not like a fairy-tale fantasy. :

With Robot Lab, Gordon Monahan and Battery
Operated at Usine C on Friday, Nov. 15, 9pm, $15

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