Final show
Current position of project 2/12/05
I am presently still proposing to work with footage from Northern Ireland film and video archives. I will use footage from traumatic events that have become lodged in the memories of its population. I aim to remove their actions from the context in which they happened, extracting human figures from their geographical position within the footage, and placing and re-animating them within more neutral digital spaces, allowing figures from different times and spaces to perform a kind of melancholic dance. The extracted figures will be thrown out of focus just enough to avoid categorization by the viewer, suggesting a more universal experience of people caught up within conflict and changing territories, touching on their dislocation, loss, willpower, strength and similarity of circumstance. I want the figures to have a sense of searching for understanding.
I also think of this blurring as representing a beginning of forgetting, of fading memory. I want to consider this idea of loss of memory as new beginning, specifically relating to the notion put forward by Susan Sontag In her book “Regarding The Pain Of Others”. Sontag wrote, “The belief that remembering is an ethical act is deep in our natures as humans. Heartlessness and amnesia seem to go together. But history gives contradictory signals about the value of remembering in the much longer span of collective history. There is simply too much injustice in the world. And too much remembering (of ancient grievances: Serbs, Irish) embitters. To make peace is to forget. To reconcile, it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited”.
At present I propose to present these images together with aerial video footage captured from a kite, gathered from positions within the North of Ireland, geographically of significance to myself, images that oversee the landscape and population beneath. I have built a large Rokkau kite and a lightweight self-leveling video camera harness to enable me to shoot aerial video. I will be using this kite setup a lot from Xmas to Easter to collect footage from the air above the Irish border and around the coast. As this idea develops there is a possibility that it could form part of a separate piece to the main one above, as I have a worry the kite images could water down and confuse the figurative work.
I will have a soundtrack also constructed from archived material, newly recorded material (mainly voice and often abstracted) and computer generated abstract soundscapes. The sound will act as a kind of lens with an ebb and flow of focus, adding focus at points, hinting at possible narratives, then receding back towards a more abstract soundscape, drifting, giving the viewer only brief lucid moments. I see this work conveying a sense of time slowing, an opening up of space, of being
Final presentation for MA show
At present I see my final show being an installation comprising five LCD screens arranged to create five edges of a hexagon with 40-50cm spaces between edges of adjacent screens, the sixth side being the entrance to the installation. The screens will face inwards and will display a combination of aerial footage of the land and my extracted figure footage. There will be 1 directional speaker suspended from the ceiling above each screen giving a screen specific whispering soundtrack, and a single speaker above the entire installation providing a more ambient soundscape.
I am presently still proposing to work with footage from Northern Ireland film and video archives. I will use footage from traumatic events that have become lodged in the memories of its population. I aim to remove their actions from the context in which they happened, extracting human figures from their geographical position within the footage, and placing and re-animating them within more neutral digital spaces, allowing figures from different times and spaces to perform a kind of melancholic dance. The extracted figures will be thrown out of focus just enough to avoid categorization by the viewer, suggesting a more universal experience of people caught up within conflict and changing territories, touching on their dislocation, loss, willpower, strength and similarity of circumstance. I want the figures to have a sense of searching for understanding.
I also think of this blurring as representing a beginning of forgetting, of fading memory. I want to consider this idea of loss of memory as new beginning, specifically relating to the notion put forward by Susan Sontag In her book “Regarding The Pain Of Others”. Sontag wrote, “The belief that remembering is an ethical act is deep in our natures as humans. Heartlessness and amnesia seem to go together. But history gives contradictory signals about the value of remembering in the much longer span of collective history. There is simply too much injustice in the world. And too much remembering (of ancient grievances: Serbs, Irish) embitters. To make peace is to forget. To reconcile, it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited”.
At present I propose to present these images together with aerial video footage captured from a kite, gathered from positions within the North of Ireland, geographically of significance to myself, images that oversee the landscape and population beneath. I have built a large Rokkau kite and a lightweight self-leveling video camera harness to enable me to shoot aerial video. I will be using this kite setup a lot from Xmas to Easter to collect footage from the air above the Irish border and around the coast. As this idea develops there is a possibility that it could form part of a separate piece to the main one above, as I have a worry the kite images could water down and confuse the figurative work.
I will have a soundtrack also constructed from archived material, newly recorded material (mainly voice and often abstracted) and computer generated abstract soundscapes. The sound will act as a kind of lens with an ebb and flow of focus, adding focus at points, hinting at possible narratives, then receding back towards a more abstract soundscape, drifting, giving the viewer only brief lucid moments. I see this work conveying a sense of time slowing, an opening up of space, of being
Final presentation for MA show
At present I see my final show being an installation comprising five LCD screens arranged to create five edges of a hexagon with 40-50cm spaces between edges of adjacent screens, the sixth side being the entrance to the installation. The screens will face inwards and will display a combination of aerial footage of the land and my extracted figure footage. There will be 1 directional speaker suspended from the ceiling above each screen giving a screen specific whispering soundtrack, and a single speaker above the entire installation providing a more ambient soundscape.
posted by Phsteve at 2:46 PM
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