Abstract
As a researcher and an artist, though one has a research trajectory, the spin-offs from that trajectory come thick and fast. My second Practice as Research Portfolio involves the re-presentation of iconic images and places. This comprises Mes Petits Cartes Postales des Beijing, Autumn Dusk Café Scene (Venice) and The American Dream (New York). The first two of these can be accessed at the URL above. In creating specific research parameters to capture images, one cannot but help to use those parameters in ways that differ from the original intent, in this case producing 3 meditative works. It is my research practice to take whatever I have made and then critically reflect on those creative acts and later through peer-reviewed articles disentangle what prompted a different research thrust from the original intent.
As a longtime cinematographer I have worked with the highest level of professional equipment but I began to feel I had better use a consumer high definition camera to see what was possible in the consumer domain – would creativity be hampered by lesser equipment, or, what possibilities might this limitation convey on the nature of the work created and how might that feed through into the viewing of that work?
So Postcards of Beijing (Mes Petits Cartes Postales des Beijing) is a response to the French artist Robert Cahen (Cartes Postales 1984 – 1986) which episodically reflected on the sense of place and space. In this work the technical specificities of the smallness of the equipment meant I could film without being discovered but I wasn’t interested in ‘secret’ filming, rather the issue of its ubiquity in relation to how people would respond to the act of filming. I also used a laissez faire technique of placing the camera without thought, not being able to see what it was capturing and waiting until people had obviously passed through frame – then in the edit order the experience. In Autumn Dusk Café Scene I decided to give myself a different constraint: in this case a short time to gather the footage – 30 minutes – start and end on time – then order the experience. In The America Dream, I decided that I would position the camera again without attention to frame, then use a device I had used in Myth and Meaning in the Digital Age, that of ringing people in history, be they Pythagoras, Cromwell or a future president of Russia – but never get through. In this case I was ringing Benjamin Franklin. In exhibition, these works are displayed either projected 7 foot by 3 foot or on a large plasma. I have spoken of the research outcomes in articles and papers at various international conferences.
Translated title of the contribution | Three Unavoidable Moving Image Works Created on Consumer HD Cameras |
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Original language | English |
Place of Publication | Various (1st Exhibition, Salisbury) |
Media of output | Screening |
Publication status | Published - 1 May 2008 |
Bibliographical note
Medium: Digital Single Screen ArtworkEvent title: Various (1st Exhibition, Salisbury)