Scratch Video a mutant hybrid of scratch DJ music and guerrilla TV

scratchvideo/evolution/personalcomputer/trigger_software

The history of media is filled with examples of technologies originally created for one specific purpose, until eventually new applications for the technology evolve. When Edison invented the phonograph, he believed "the main utility of the phonograph, however, being for the purpose of letter writing and other forms of dictation." (Clark 80) He barely foresaw using the phonograph to play music, let alone evolving into an instrument.

MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) was released in 1981, allowing musicians to input data using familiar instruments, such as a piano-like keyboard. The user could manipulate any sound sampled into the keyboard's memory. MIDI instruments were extending sound manipulation, and the technology had still not reached its full potential.

Twenty years later, new applications for MIDI make it a tool to manipulate both image and sound. "Trigger" software is an application which call up samples stored in the memory of a PC. Using a MIDI keyboard, the user can play with images, or link video samples to MIDI audio sounds so that the same image and sound will always play simultaneously. Examples of trigger software include the EBN Video Control System and X<>Pose. Coldcut's VJamm is trigger software designed expressly for realtime visual manipulation:

"As well as playing samples from the supplied banks and loading your own, you can also reverse, pitch, speed up and slow down sound and video simultaneously in real time, set start- and end-point markers to cut clips up to sun-frame accuracy, trigger and synch via MIDI, and output to a full screen." (Computer Music 80)

Copyright 2000© Hart Snider