Sainte-Marie breaks bonds that bind artists to studios

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Embrace technology as a way to create work independent of the large corporate studios, innovative recording star Buffy Sainte-Marie told about 100 potential converts as a high-tech workshop during this month's Dreamspeakers Festival in Edmonton.

"(A computer) makes it possible for you to be a recording artist or film-maker at home, which is really about blowing people's minds," says the two-time Juno award winner.

"This is causing social upheavals because for a long time it was the big guys who controlled artists and the medium.

"But the cat's out of the bag and we're not going back in!" she says in apparent reference to many artists' newfound control over their work.

Usually found editing music recordings, on this morning she was making her political points while demonstrating the basic functions of Adobe Photoshop-digital computer software for altering video and photos.

She's at ease with the intricacies of the equipment, having started 11 years ago "before Macs were even out on the street.

"The same day I got it I wrote a song and drew a picture and it's gone on like that ever since," says Sainte-Marie.

She uses a Macintosh at her home in Hawaii to write, paint and compose. Her latest album, Coincidence and Likely Stories, was also created there.

"The computer doesn't make the music. It just records human choices," a festival promo package quotes her as saying.

Sainte-Marie can create any instrument, such as bass, drums, strings or guitar, through a computerized MIDI. After arranging the music she dials up a London studio where the recordings are sent via modem by using the CompuServe on-line computer network.

The mixed-blood Cree spoke about the dilemma for Native artists who find themselves being drawn away from their home and heritage. While she's rarely home herself these days she see technology as a means of empowering most artists to keep in touch with their roots by spending more time at home creating and less on the road.

"Some of you are like me, you love the reserve but you're bound for the outside world. This is a wonderful upcoming field because I can be performing and going to interviews all day but then I can go back to the hotel room and continue working on a record."

She pointed out that her role that day was to convince the audience not to be intimidated by computers.

"If you can drive a car you can use a computer. If you're an Elder on a reserve or a mother at home you can use a Macintosh."

"I want to turn on your switch and let you go"

But there's a conspiracy brewing, she believes, to steer artists clear of computers.

"The creator has given some of us this gift for creativity and I believe we don't always us itbusiness people would like you to believe they have (the creativity) and want you to go to them for it.

"These people made you afraid of technology for the same reason they would have you believe most artists must go to art school.

"But you have the creativity within yourself," she says after acknowledging that her own PhD in Fine Arts only succeeded in teaching her how to be a student.

For two hours Sainte-Marie played with the artistic tools of the software-defacing a huge self-portrait projected from the Macintosh to a screen on the wall. She demonstrated drawing with both a mouse and pen-like object and zoomed in and out. Brush stokes demonstrated included an airbush effect and even a "smudge".

"Basically you're doing the same stuff you'd do in a regular studio," she told the mixed crowd of both techies and artists, "by manipulating the color, shape and line to produce museum quality work."

"One great thing is that with digital art you can test things out-artists like that kind of stuff"

During the second half of the workshop, Stan Jackson, a well-known National Film Board editor/director, entertained the audience with a demonstration of the latest AVID digital film editing system.

A member of Alberta's Whitefish Lake band, he chose to work with a clip from st year's Forrest Gump movie. By hand-picking frames from along a graduated ruler it wasn't long before he had Forrest running from the high school bullies at twice the speed while his sweetheart repeats over and over 'Run, Forrest, run.'

"It can be a dangerous tool," he quipped to the crowd, "because you can make anyone say anything by taking a word here and there and playing with the inflection."

"Morphing", in which one image, such as a head, transforms into something totally different, is one of the more spectacular spin-offs of the new system.

But the most impressive benefits of editing through the new technology are in time savings as frames flash on the screen with each click of the mouse. Instead of manually searching through 15 minute of tape for a clip, he says the editor now has "instant accessibility" by searching along the ruler.

Chatting to Windspeaker after her presentation, Sainte-Marie was adamant that the newspaper publish both her internet E-mail address and home page address in Hawaii where fans can access her works.

Here they are:

E-mail: bsm@aloha.net

Home page http://creative-native.org/~bsm/