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EXPERIMENTAL MEDIA
When presented with such a broad range of options as the Experimental Media module contained, I became very over whelmed with the very large scope of the areas it was possible to work within. Narrowing this down to a hand full of techniques that I wanted to work with was challenging and required a lot of thought. I was, however, fortunate enough to have a very good idea of the narrative and content I wanted to create if the way that would be presented had not been immediately apparent. Such is the nature of experimental media.
PRE-PRODUCTION I have had an idea gestating in my head for several years about a deep-sea diver sinking to his death deep below the waves. I had always considered this to be an image that could carry a deeper metaphor for sinking into the depths of the human psyche and ultimately coming to accept the fate that lies immediately ahead for him. Having chosen the central idea for my experimental media film, I then set about trying to find an appropriate technique to make the film a reality. Although I had originally conceived this idea as a live action short film I knew almost immediately that filming with an actor in a large body of water would not be an option as this would be a logistical nightmare that would carry serious health and safety concerns as well as being far beyond the capabilities of my limited experiences with film making at this point in time. The time I had available to produce this project in would also be limited and filming underwater is something that requires very thourough preparation and specialist filming equipment such as costumes that double as life support for the actor and crew. Knowing that I would not have the time or resources to take a literal approach to creating this film I then set about looking for a more abstract way to approach creating the film. After attending a camera less film and expanded cinema workshop at the Cube Microplex in Bristol, where members of my class created a film by scratching and drawing directly on to 16 mm film, I decided that a scratch film would be a good way to present this idea as the sense of motion that is achieved by scratching lines and grooves into film stock would lend itself very nicely to creating a sinking feeling. These sections of the film form the backbone that the central idea is pinned to and rank among the most successful parts of the finished film. With the core ideas I would be working with fixed in place, I then started to gather the materials that would be needed to create a scratch film. The first thing I would need would be 16 mm film stock. This proved to be hard to find for a reasonable price as film stock is no longer manufactured due to the rise of cameras that shoot on video and more recently digital formats. This is the main drawback to working with an analogue medium of film that is becoming ever increasingly antiquated. After spending several days searching the internet and seeing if I could acquire film from a few contacts that had been given to me, I decided the cheapest option would be to purchase 200 feet (roughly five and a half minutes) of black leader from a seller on E Bay. This took several weeks to arrive as this seller happened to be located in America. I should have taken this eventuality into account sooner and started searching for film stock earlier on in the process as I ended up losing two weeks of time that could have been spent working on and refining the film. Thankfully I had the items I needed to scratch and colour the film to hand already. These included a craft knife and several surgical scalpel blades that I have used in the past to build model kits with and a pack of Sharpies permanent marker pens. Overall, aside from the slight problems acquiring film stock, I am very happy with the way the pre-production phase went. On many a level this phase progressed very smoothly if perhaps a bit slowly to begin with. The ideas came very naturally to me and from that point onwards there seemed to be only one logical way to connect and actualize them within the context they needed to be presented in. PRODUCTION Once the film had arrived I was ready to start creating Void Dive. Working on the desk in my bedroom I measured out several one meter strips of film, five seconds in length each. I would have liked to have worked with longer strips but due to the confined space I had to work in this was not possible without becoming unwieldy to handle and store the finished strips to be edited. As I was working with black leader the main bulk of the images are scratched into the emulsion of the film and then coloured on the opposite side with permanent markers. It felt very good to have a craft knife back in my hands as I spent a day reacquainting myself with the weight of it by making some test scratches on short one second strips of film to gauge how much pressure I needed to apply to remove the emulsion. I also quickly discovered at this stage that handling the leader left sticky finger prints that bits of emulsion, dust and other particles would attach to and sometimes made it hard to scratch the film with accuracy. From this point on I started to wear disposable vinyl gloves throughout the production process to cut down on this. For the two sections that feature the diver sinking ever deeper I scratched most of the black emulsion away from the leader. This became very time consuming and left behind a lot of particles that attached to this strip of film. On the plus side, it also left a lot of texture on the film that when combined with an uneven coat of colour due to the attached particles lends a hazy look to these sequences that makes it look like there is a barrier of water between us and the diver. These kinds of happy accidents happened a few times when working with this technique and have left me with plenty of ideas to try out on future scratch film projects. To provide light while I made the scratches and coloured the film, I used a bed side lamp with a bendable neck. If there is one bit of kit that I didn’t have while creating Void Dive that would have made the experience easier it would be a light box so I could move the film as I scratch and not go against the grain of the emulsion and move out of the lamps narrow focus of light. During some of the sections in the finished film, mostly when going frame by frame, I think I scratched the images a bit too large for the borders of the frame. As a result, the images are slightly off center and appear to be cut off at the edges. This is most noticeable during the three sections with images of fish as the tail fins are cut off on the left side of the frame but is also noticeable during the two sequences that feature three-pronged trident like images. To create the two air bubble sequences, I used a safety pin to punch tiny holes into the film frame by frame. This is the section of the film that took up the most of my time but I think the finished result is more than worth it. Having a magnifying glass would have allowed me to cut down on the amount of green and yellow marks on the film where I accidently nicked the top layer of the emulsion with the pin but unfortunately, I didn’t have access to one that didn’t have a very scratched lens that made it unusable for precision work. I really like the section with the flashing, coloured orbs. They look very much like the wide open, startled eyes of the diver. I created this section and the section with the thick wavy blue lines by applying small drops of Domestos bleach to the film. This melted away the various colour layers of the emulsion and left the smooth, clear backing of the film underneath that could be coloured on the opposite side. This is something else I would defiantly like to experiment with further in future scratch films. The three sections with the fish I am mostly disappointed with. I didn’t have much time left to scratch them out as precisely as I would have liked and I think they jump about a bit too noticeably in the frame as well as the above stated issue with scratching them too big. They look kind of goofy and not at all like the haunted, savage deep sea life that I tried to model them after. I should have spent more time planning their appearance before I placed scalpel to film to better define their relation to the diver. I’m happy with the way the colour scheme conveys sinking further away from the surface moving from aqua, light blue, deep blue and finally purple to represent the bottomless void of the deep sea. The bright colours against the black background are very representative of the bioluminescent lights that many deep-sea fish rely on to survive in the dark depths of the ocean. Working with clear film would have been to easier to colour but I felt that a black background was essential to portraying the void of the diver’s psyche and the deep-sea environment. POST-PRODUCTION: SPLICING FILM One of the things that attracted me towards creating a scratch film had been the opportunities it afforded me to work with analogue methods of film making, opportunities I probably would not have had otherwise due to the antiqued nature of working with analogue film. One of the process’s I was most looking forward to trying my hand at was editing Void Dive with an old-school film splicer that I had brought from E Bay. The Federal model of splicer I purchased is designed to be used with film cement that sticks the strips together. I couldn’t purchase any cement that would arrive in time for me to meet the deadline for the experimental media critique so I opted to buy a reel of super clear splicing tape instead. After watching a few videos of splicing techniques on YouTube I quickly figured out that it would be possible to adapt the techniques they showed for using film cement to using film tape instead with relative ease. The main disadvantage I found with splicing film together using tape is that there is a slight gap in the seams where the two bits of film meet. This gap could be less than a millimeter wide but will still show up on the finished film as a big, bright line that will stretch across the entirety of the frame and be very jarring in a way I had not intended it to be, even if it is only visible for a frame or two. To compensate for the above problem, I coloured the tape over the gaps with a black permentant marker. When feed through the projector this made the gaps appear to be a deep red colour, even with two coats of the permanent marker. This isn’t ideal but is stands out less than a large, bright white line. I should have considered film splicing techniques earlier in the process when I would have had the time to buy some film cement that would leave no gap at all between the two strips. Having said which, there still could have been an issue with stripping too much of the emulsion away at the seams to cement the two strips together which would also have exposed the projector light under the film. Another problem that ended up being more time consuming than anything else was that I had to cut out each individual sprocket hole that I had placed the tape over, three over the width of two frames, for each of the twenty-two splices in total that I made. I’m very good at handling a crafting knife but I still managed to cut myself on the knuckles while doing this, not a pleasant experience at all. Aside from the above mishap, I found splicing film together to be very relaxing and soothing. I’ve always been a great proponent of the satisfaction and joy of creating something with my bare hands and a process such as this sums up exactly why it has always appealed to me. POST-PRODUCTION: TELECINE In order to have a digital version of Void Dive that I could import into Final Cut Pro to add sound to and present at the critique, I would have to play Void Dive on a projector and record the projection with a digital camera. This process of transferring analogue film to a digital medium is known as a telecine. I booked out one of the photography darkrooms for a day and projected Void Dive onto the door with an Ampro Stylist 16 mm projector that I had brought from E Bay. I recorded the projection with a Canon C100 camera and a 24-105mm lens. It ended up taking a good four to five hours of playing Void Dive back, refining the settings on the Ampro Stylist and the C100 to finally arrive at a recording I was satisfied with. The main problem I encountered during this process was finding the right balance of focus on the projectors lens and the camera lens. As Void Dive is just over one minute long and most of the individual sections that make up the film only a matter of seconds, it was next to impossible to record the entirety of the film in sharp focus as I had very little time to change the focus on the camera or projector. Because of this most the telecine is slightly out of focus. This is not unbefitting for a film that is set underwater where human eyes are incapable of focusing sharply nor is it something that I had originally intended. I would put this down to being a slight but still happy accident. POST-PRODUCTION: DIGITAL EDITING After I had a telecine of Void Dive that I was happy with, I then imported the footage into Final Cut Pro. I had already decided that I wanted to keep the footage as true to the original 16 mm film as possible so the only changes I made was to reverse the footage so it played in the order I had originally intended. I then cut out the one or two frames that showed the bright white line over the course of six splices that I found very distracting. POST-PRODUCTION: SOUND For the sound, I wanted to create the appropriate ambience of being in a void of water and mind. I had originally considered purchasing a hydrophone, a microphone that is designed to record underwater, so I could record my own sound. Unfortunately, hydrophones are very expensive due to the specialist conditions they are designed to be used in so I had to fall back on field recordings made by other people. I layered and mixed three individual field recordings I found on Freesound.org, the first a distant bass rumble to add an ominous sense of the impending void the diver is forever passing through. The second field recording conveyed the gentle swishing of the water around the diver and the distant motion of the waves above him, the detached sense of calm and peace that the diver is constantly moving away from. The third recording is the sound of the divers respirator that features dripping water and the movement of the divers body. This recording I imported into WavePad and stereo panned from the left speaker to the right speaker over the course of the film to further add to the sense of sinking before layering it with the other sounds in Final Cut Pro. I would have liked to have added a few more sounds into the mix but having tried this, I found them a bit overwhelming for a film that runs for one minute in length. SUMMARY I very much enjoyed working with this technique and the raw, hands on approach to film making it afforded me. I have learnt a multitude of new skills related to working with film stock and film projectors that I would like to develop further. I already have plans to use scratch film techniques for a series of poetry videos I will be creating for a friend of mine and am looking forward to working with 16 mm film again soon in the future. THE FINISHED FILM CAN BE VIEWED AT: https://youtu.be/N-z3CRNL6JY A telecine is the process of transferring footage recorded on analogue film stock and played back on a projector to a digital format for the purposes of archiving. This can be achieved in many ways from more complex set ups that are designed to capture the film frame by frame to home D.I.Y set ups that record the film with digital cameras as it is projected. If I am to create a scratch film on 16 mm film stock then I will need to telecine it so I can import it into modern editing software to add a sound a soundtrack and present it at the critique and media showcase. I will use one of the darkrooms at the college, the Ampro Stylist projector I have just purchased and a Canon C100 camera to do this. I have decided to purchase a fully working 16 mm projector from EBay as it is essential that I can telecine the finished assembly of Void Dive. While looking on the internet I found a PDF of the manual that accompanies the vintage model of projector that I have purchased. This will come in very handy as I have never used an old-school projector before and will give me an opportunity to practise threading film through the projector before I attempt the final telecine.
When editing 16 mm film leader I will not have the luxury of being able to use a computer and my chosen editing software package to assemble Void Dive. I’ve been looking at some videos on Youtube for a general idea of how analogue editing with a splicer works. I have purchased a Federal splicer from EBay that is very similar to the one that features in the above video. As the Federal splicer is designed to be used with film cement and I was unable to purchase any that would arrive in the time frame I need it for, I will be using a roll of splicing tape to edit Void Dive instead. The above image is a collection of the tools that I will use to scratch and colour the 16mm black leader I will create Void Dive with. After working with a few ideas on test strips, I quickly found out that it’s very easy to cover the leader with sticky finger prints so I will be wearing disposable gloves to create the finished piece. This is a short video of lighting tests that I carried out in the TV studio. I like the shot that is turned on its side the most. Moving the curtain that the light is shining on makes the light strongly resembles the rippling of waves. I would like to incorporate this into my film somehow. The main thing I learned from these lighting tests is how thin and fragile lighting gels are. Over the course of an hour spent in the TV studio, they crinkled and warped very quickly under the studio lights I will purchase some high quality, high temperate resistant Rosco gels to use for my instillation at the Cube. I put this video together today to test out the stereo panning function on Wavepad and final Cut Pro. This turned out to be a lot more easier than I thought it would be and, aside from a bit of time spend converting a mono sound clip to stereo, very quick to achieve as well. I’m very happy with the results. Sound will be a very important part of immersing the audience for my instillation into the underwater environment I want to capture and giving them the sinking feeling that is crucial to the experience. Unfortunately, I can’t pan from top to bottom only left to right so the full effect of sinking from top to bottom can only be achieved by tilting the head to the right while listening to this. During the instillation, I will take the left speaker and place it above the screen and place the right speaker on the floor so the sound will pan from top to bottom instead of left to right. This is a proposal for my experimental media project. NAME: Clay Sandford
TITLE OF PROJECT: Void Dive SYNOPSIS: A deep sea diver sinks ever deeper into the dark depths of the ocean, reflecting on his past while encountering various forms of deep sea life and ultimately coming to accept his place amongst them. OUTLINE OF PROJECT: I wish to present my project as an instillation in a dark, enclosed environment that will evoke a sensation of sinking underwater. I will utilize lights and blue gels, one on each side of the stage and one on the roof to create a sense of depth and a smoke machine to add a touch of moisture and density to the air. I will draw on and scratch 16mm film stock to create a sense of sinking ever deeper below the waves. This will be played on the cinema screen in a loop. I would also like to project images of the haunted and savage deep sea life that resides in the dark depths onto the screen periodically throughout the runtime of the instillation. I will play underwater field recordings through two speakers, stereo panning from above the screen to below in order to further enhance the sensation of sinking. LOCATION WITHIN CUBE: I would like to use the stage at the Cube, enclosed in black curtains, to present my instillation. DURATION: 2-3 minutes played on a loop for 40-60 minutes, possibly before main screening begins. EQUIPMENT NEEDED: Cinema screen, projector, smoke machine, 3 lights (possibly stage lights) each with automatic dimmer switches, blue lighting gels, 2 speakers to place above and below screen, audio player to play field recordings from. The Experimental Media Arts showcase will be held at the Cube Microplex in Bristol on Thursday 18th of May. Here are the two areas within the Cube that I am considering setting my instillation up in. THE MAIN STAGE The main stage is a good size that will create a feeling of depth and open space. I like the curtains at the back beside the screen. I could set two lights up off to the sides of the stage to shine some blue light over the curtains, slowly dimming to blackness during the run time of my film to create the appropriate ambience. I would also like to shine a light at the ceiling above that will also dim over time to further enhance the feeling of depth. My only worry about using this location is that I wish to use a smoke machine to create some density to the air and add a little touch of moisture to it. This could be a problem being so close to the cinema screen. SEATING AREA This seating area is much more smaller and compact that the main stage and has much more of a comfortable feel to it that could be counterproductive to the tension I wish to create with my instillation. The red colour of the back wall would mean that I would have a hard time lighting with blue gels unless I covered it somehow. The main element that I like about this area is the slopping roof that, if lit properly, could be manipulated to convey a sinking feeling. Given the choice though, I would rather prefer to use the stage. Created in 1999 by Austrian animator Barbel Neubauer, Firehouse features an abstract series of images made by exposing organic materials such as leaves and stalks on to 35mm film using a flashlight. The music that accompanies the images, composed by Neubauer, is of a highly rhythmic and electronic nature, creating a strong sense of juxtaposition between the organic nature of the imagery and the electronic pulse of the soundtrack. Colour is used to great dynamic affect in this film. Half way through, the screen turns to white as the synthetic pulse of the music strips back to a distant throb. When the drums kick back in again, the colours return in the form of thick blocks of stone. "Animation is not the art of drawings that move but the art of movements that are drawn" Norman McLaren This short, simple and lively experimental film, created in 1940, features a series of blue dots that appear to fall across the screen in various directions. Both the images and sound are created by drawing with pen and ink directly on to the film strip. This is a simple technique that yields interesting results. A strong sense of falling is achieved by the dots becoming smaller with each successive frame until they disappear into the far distance below. Matching the images, the sound descends in unison with the flow of the images. This sense of motion is what draws me towards using the camera less film technique to create my experimental media piece. This short documentary from 1951 gives a revealing glimpse into the process and techniques that Norman McLaren used to create sound for his films by drawing directly onto the sound strip of the film. I’m looking forward to experimenting with these techniques to create sound on the film stock I have purchased to create my experimental media piece with. I think the kind of sounds that this will produce will work well accompanying the images of the deep-sea life as they increase in pace and give them a strong sense of cutting in from the back of the Diver’s psyche. Having watched this, I’m now wondering if Pierre Hebert used a similar technique of creating sound directly on the film strip for the harsh percussive rhythms in his film Op Hop Hop Op. This 1966 hand-made scratch film, created by Canadian animator Pierre Herbert, is made from 24 black and white geometrical shapes rapidly rearranging and combining, often creating new abstract patterns as they overlap in the space of a single frame. The music that accompanies the images is an abstract form of clicking and popping percussion that is rigid and sharp in its rasping precision. It matches the breakneck flow and pace of the images perfectly and creates an interdependence between image and sound that plays with the viewer’s perception of shape and rhythm as well as negative and positive space. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from this film as it watched. It is a complete assault on the senses and highly arresting in its uncompromising and stark presentation. With my own film, I would like to show images of the twisted deep sea life for single frames to give them a subliminal quality then, as the Diver sinks ever deeper, show them for an increasing number of frames to signify that he is starting to accept his place among them. Compiled and published by Canadian experimental film maker Helen Hill, Recipes For Disaster is a guide to working with hand crafted and camera less film. The booklets 95 pages include contributions from thirty seven artists and film makers who share their personal techniques for creating animation directly on film stock. This has been a fascinating read that has taught me the basics of camera less film such as what tools to use to scratch film and apply colours with as well as how household items such as bleach, salt and vegetable oil can create interesting textures and patterns when applied to film. I’m sure I will be referring to this treasure trove of inspiration and knowledge a lot during the course of creating my own camera less film. This is one of Spanish film maker Joaquim Puigvert’s early experiments with a technique called Camera less film that involves scratching and drawing images directly onto film. I really connected with the sense of fluid motion and raw physicality that this short experiment communicates, a sense of motion that could transfer very well to my diver’s free fall into the depths. This week I will purchase some film stock and experiment with various different shapes, motions and colours in order to give the viewer of my instillation an immersive feeling of sinking ever deeper into the sea.
On Tuesday the 17th of March, me and my class attended a workshop on camera less cinema at the Cube cinema in Bristol where we created a short film by drawing and scratching 16mm film stock.
I very much enjoyed this method of working with film. I haven’t done much drawing in recent years but this workshop has rekindled my love for a more raw and hands on approach to creativity. I defiantly intend to expand upon this method for my experimental media project and for a short poetry film I will soon be creating for a friend of mine based on the theme of suicide. Cube Workshop1 from Richard Edkins on Vimeo. Batou: “So… What’s it like to swim in the sea?” Kusanagi: “I feel fear, anxiety, isolation and darkness. Sometimes I even feel hope” Batou: “Hope? In those deep, dark waters?” This is one of favourite scenes from Mamoru Oshii’s philosophically inclined cyberpunk animation Ghost in the Shell and is a very expressive example of a character losing themselves amongst a void of darkness. Major Motoko Kusanagi takes both a literal and metaphysical dive in the dark ocean and her Ghost (a term created by the United Nations to signify the difference between the human soul and the soul of a cyborg) This scene starts of in the deep sea as Motoko losses herself in the depths of the existential crisis that her character faces. As the ballast tanks pull her out of her freefall into the darkness, she floats back to the surface towards a warm, embroyonic vibrant reflection of herself that disappears as she touches the surface, an image that represents the person Kusanagi wishes to evolve to become but cannot due to being confined by her work as a part of Section 9. This scene strikes a very serene, calm and reflective tone that is the polar opposite of the tone I wish to achieve with my experimental media project. This video instillation, created in 2000, by seasoned American artist Bill Viola really caught my eye because of its use of water to express a deeper more human, spiritual meaning. This piece is quite terrifying yet serene and at the same time. This comes as no surprise to me after learning that Viola almost drowned when he was a child, an experience that has clearly imprinted itself deep into his psyche and reflected thematically in his work, a large amount of which involves water in some way. The man’s arms, outstretched to resemble a cross as he plunges into a dark abyss of water, bring to mind the ascension that the video is named after when he starts to rise towards the surface then sinks deeper into the dark below. Once he has sunk beneath the frame, shafts of blue light penetrate the surface as it is slowly engulfed by the darkness. This ending has really inspired me and captures a similar feeling of sinking and being engulfed by the void that I wish to communicate through my own instillation. This album contains 16 of Burroughs early cut-up tape experiments and spoken world pieces. White noise is inter cut with field recordings, samples and user manipulations, twisting and stretching the sounds in a series of collage based recordings. Listening to these recordings today, over 5 decades after they were first committed to tape in some cases, I’m struck by both the degraded crudeness of the techniques employed and just how widespread and polished they have become in the years since as other sound artists have taken their inspiration from them. I’ve been fascinated with the timbre of Burrough’s voice ever since I first heard it looped at the start of a Dälek track called Images of .44 Casings, his ravaged, croaky, insectoid voice intoning “images, millions of images, that’s what I eat” over and over in a paranoid but authoritative flow. It would appear that this duality would define his work in both what Burroughs expressed and the techniques he would use to express them. This sound instillation was created by Matt Davies and Milo Newman by taking field recordings from several boat trips off the coast of Dunwich where, in the early 14th century the sea reclaimed a large portion of the towns coastline. The recordings were made by hydrophones, microphones designed to be used underwater, that capture the slight and shifting sound of the heavily silted water that flows over the submerged parts of the city. I must admit, I didn’t find this to be very engaging. When listening, I could find no form of narrative, structure or dynamics to guide me through the sound. Maybe if I had heard it in its original 12 channel mix, where the subtleties of the recordings would be more apparent and in the appropriate surroundings it would have left more of an impact on me. Maybe I just didn’t understand the intention behind these recordings. Listening to this has however made me think about how important the connection between sound and space is when designing my instillation. Using that space wisely will help convey the sense of sinking that I want to achieve with both the sound and the visual elements contained in the space around the sound. Looking to Doug Aitken’s work again for inspiration, I started reading about one of his early instillations, New Ocean. In terms of layout and mood, this is very similar to the sort of design and feel I want to achieve with my project. New Ocean utilises various video screens and a cold, blue colour palette to convey a wet, frozen feel. I particularly like the round screen hanging from the ceiling that gives the mostly dark, negative space of the instillation a feeling of depth. Such a feeling would be very appropriate for my own project and by hanging a screen or light from the ceiling that could be varied in brightness, I can achieve a sense of The Diver sinking ever deeper into the dark ocean. Filming under water can be painstaking difficult, a logistical nightmare that is fraught with health and safety concerns in often very dangerous conditions. One need only look at the long and troubled production history of James Cameron’s 1989 film The Abyss, set almost entirely in an underwater deep sea drilling platform and the ocean surrounding an abyssal plain, in order to understand why no other film maker has been willing to take on the responsibility of shooting so extensively under water ever since. It’s not for nothing that several key members of the production crew often refer to The Abyss as “The Abuse” instead! For these reasons I realize that it will be next to impossible to portray an underwater environment on film that is actually submerged in a volume of water with the experience and resources I have available to me now. Using the Abyss as an example, a realistic underwater environment can be achieved through a level of darkness, density of air, appropriate lighting and proper filtering of sound as in the scene when a downed nuclear submarine is discovered on the ocean floor. Having considered the above problems and how to overcome them I’m thinking of my project in terms of being presented as an instillation in a room or enclosed space that can be designed to represent the feel of being in an underwater environment as opposed to being presented exclusively on film where I will have to shoot underwater. This space, if manipulated successfully, would also allow a much deeper level of emersion for those interacting with my project, a level that could not be achieved by just viewing images on a screen. This would also allow my audience to connect on a deeper emotional level with the subject of my project. Doug Aitken is a Californian artist who works in a wide range of different disciplines such as photography, multi-channel video and sculpture. His 2016 site-specific instillation Underwater Pavilions really caught my eye. Moored to the ocean floor at varying depths off the coast of Catalina Island, California, this temporary instillation features three geometrically designed sculptures made from an environmentally friendly, reflective material that divers and snorkelers can swim through, presenting them with a kaleidoscopic view of the ocean. The organic flow of the ocean currents and the life within ensure that no two viewings of this instillation will be the same as the sculptures are constantly in motion. I’m really drawn towards the feel of this kind of organic flow, as opposed to the rigid, static view point that modern technology often presents us with, and would like to incorporate it into my project somehow. |
AuthorMy name is Clay Sandford and I am currently studying an FDA in Film and Media Production at University Centre Weston. I have a keen interest in directing, cinematography and camera operating. Archives
April 2017
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