of the survival of images (2013)
of the survival of images (2013)
for custom GLOBE controller, video and sound
instrument design, video and sound by Butch Rovan
movement by Ami Shulman
Premiere: March 15, 2013, University of Glasgow, UK.
Cramb Artist-in-Residence.
Video performance: March 23, 2013, Grant Recital Hall, Brown University, Providence, RI.
Butch Rovan performing.
of the survival of images (2013)
for custom GLOBE controller, video and sound
instrument design, video and sound by Butch Rovan
movement by Ami Shulman
We shall never reach the past unless we place ourselves within it. Essentially virtual, it cannot be known as something past unless we follow and adopt the movement by which it expands into a present image, thus emerging from obscurity into the light of day.
–Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory
of the survival of images belongs to a larger ongoing work for music, video, and the moving body, called Studies in Movement. It draws inspiration from Henri Bergson, whose meditations on time, matter, and memory offer a philosophical framework for the multimedia experience. The piece features the GLOBE, my custom wireless music controller, an instrument I designed to capture performance gestures in order to control real-time synthesis and video. The video footage presents the image of my longtime collaborator, the South African dancer Ami Shulman. Together, my performance onstage and her performance onscreen form a visual counterpoint that draws out, in sensory form, the ideas contained in Bergson’s text.
About Ami Shulman
Performer, educator, artistic advisor and rehearsal director, Ami Shulman trained in the performing arts in South Africa. She danced with Compagnie Marie Chouinard and Compagnie Flak for several years and has collaborated with videographer Butch Rovan, most prominently on the interactive installation piece, Let us Imagine a Straight Line. Ami has assisted in setting new and existing choreographic works on the Ballet BC and the GoteborgsOperans Danskompani and was an assistant choreographer for the Cirque Du Soleil 's production of One. Based in Montreal, Ami teaches contemporary technique and has taught at the Juilliard School; the Rotterdam Danse Academy; the National Theatre School of Canada; Jacob's Pillow; the Cirque Du Soleil; the Alvin Ailey School; L'Ecole de Danse Contemporaine de Montreal; Ballet Divertimento and the Springboard Project, among others. Ami is the artistic director on tour for Compagnie Marie Chouinard and she is the artistic advisor to Jose Navas. She has been a movement consultant for various theatre productions including the Grand Theatre Junction's Lucy Lost Her Heart, Repercussion Theater's Macbeth and Yael Farber's The Crucible and Kadmos. Ami is a Feldenkrais practitioner and she continues to tour extensively in the various aspects of her expertise in movement and art.