I went to the Botanical Gardens to see Lyndsay Mann’s work screening at Inverleith House.  What interested me was the presentation, how the videos are edited together and the sound techniques she has used.

Her work was projected onto a white wall with two speakers beside the screen. Seeing this exhibition was key for my research, as it made me think more about the importance of sound in filmmaking. I realised how important it is to go to an exhibition to view how the artist intends to present it.  I had seen the film before coming to the exhibition, I felt the presentation of the work more effective than watching on my laptop. The gallery atmosphere is important to what it added to the work. When present in the room, I became aware of the sounds around me interacting with the sounds in the film. As some sounds were so quiet that they blended into my own present sounds. The film includes white noise within each of the rooms, thus arising this awareness of all the sounds in the screening room as-well. The senses are heightened due to the sound techniques in the film. This experience made me want to re create it within my own work, heightening the viewers senses.

There is a use of repetition which connects to familiarity.  The folding paper is a repetitive process, to portray this with film techniques. The video and sounds are looped and layered with the voice over and the sounds of another room.  I find that re-filming  the videos as they are being projected adds this quality of white noise from the room, layering more sounds, the bad quality of the projector alters the sounds too. Mann uses a technique where the audio doesn’t necessarily match up with with visuals, something I have experimented with myself. The quality of the sounds is atmospheric and important to the success of the film. To recall what happened and what is happening.

I felt my eyes wander into the next room and into the green outside while sitting on the bench positioned to view her work. I felt this paired nicely with her work as it includes lots of greenery  in the film. I found the filming of the trees blowing in the wind with a mixture of the sounds of bird song effective.

The change of size of the video suggests a different camera, of worse quality, similar to the video camera I use in my work and matches this amateur filmic quality I want. This film feels both personal and informative.

 

Nov 18, 2020

https://vimeo.com/479763726

Nov 16, 2020

As I said in Jem Cohen’s film chain, they have documented people passing through places their day to day lives, making us recall what once was there. An idea that has influenced my work.

In Before Sunrise, the last scene (skip to 2:20) does this same thing – instead within a narrative that the viewer will recognise – passing through all the places the characters had previously been in the film but without them in the frame, creating a melancholic effect. Representing their relationship as ephemeral.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9phDoEXono

As similar absence is documented in Martina Mullaney’s work on homelessness. We find out more about the homeless people through the mattress they’ve slept on than a direct portrait.

Nov 15, 2020

http://www.rosymartin.co.uk/too_close.html

Rosy Martin’s Too Close To Home,  has influenced some themes within my work. She explores familiarity, melancholy, everyday, nostalgia and ephemerality.

In this essay:

“I photograph in order to hold onto the moment, the place, the trace which I cannot stop, cannot keep, cannot hold.” She explores the loss of her father. Photographing her old house, with a shallow depth of field.

“Photographs do have a way of telling stories, or rather people who view photos will project stories upon them” Within my own work I am currently building a narrative. Memory is played here, as to remember something is it automatically altered. The viewer  can create their own narrative to my work, through I also have themes of familiarity and the ordinary, through the recollections of everyday.

“I enable the audience to project their own meanings upon the images, which symbolise and stand in for the continuity and discontinuity of change over time.”

 “I aim to create a sense of recognition in the audience, through association with the ordinary, everyday and also the timelessness of certain words and the images”.  Rosy Martin is making work about her father and their relationship, whilst also wanting to make work that the viewer can connect with. 

“telling ourselves stories all our lives, watching the soap operas, listening to our friends’ anecdotes.” She describes the longing for narrative and meaning. This connects to how we view and perceive things (films, stories, books) to make day to day living more interesting. Stated in ‘Art Rules’ Grenfell and Hardy (2007)  “Bourdieu expressed increasing concerns about the role of the media and their insatiable demand for novelty, the dramatic and the controversial”.

Grenfell, M. and Hardy, C., 2007. Art rules: Pierre Bourdieu and the visual arts. Berg.

“Photography offers this opportunity, to confront in isolation elements of lived experience, made strange by their sudden removal from the continuum of  day-to-day living. This re-encounter with the image allows transient and ephemeral elements to be reconsidered.”
Ideas of taking the everyday mundane out of its context and viewing it as a removed piece from reality, the viewer will think of it differently, will find it more interesting. Fleeting moments are now reconsidered and re-valued. Constructing situations within the viewers mind.

http://www.rosymartin.co.uk/tooclose_essay.html

 

Nov 15, 2020

https://vimeo.com/user125524264/review/479134833/36796801a2

Filming a space, recording the sounds of a space, and photographing a space.

Nov 13, 2020

In the videos I have noticed a repetition of the outside and the inside interacting. For example, from the inside I video the outside through a window, and vice versa. Outside being reordered and presented inside. There is an appreciation of the sublime beauty of everyday.

Recording Rhea watching the video and using this as the way to present my work in order to make it more intimate, as intimate things can get during Covid. I film the side of our oven cooker and the frame of the door showing the work in a domestic setting. Rhea is sitting too close to the projection to the point she literally cannot see it, we see half of the video is covered by her own shadow and shown onto her green jumper. The shadow of her watching and the shadows of myself watching are soft and add structure to the work and link to images shown within it. Social engagement is recorded in the audio, being present in an exterior space.

Rhea being present in the domestic – her hair is not perfect, she is unpolished and unposed. The short depth of field creates a feeling of limited space, being stuck – which is heavily inspired by the times we are living in today. Rhea is inside while watching outside scenes, her green jumper symbolises her connection to the greenery outside. The paradox of being Inside an enclosed space while thinking about an open space. The projection isn’t clear as it is shown during the day, it is not dark enough to see the images clearly, here is questioned how important the videos are to be seen or if the recording of the viewing is more relevant. This way experiencing the viewing of the video  instead of the video itself, and how it has made the person viewing feel.

Through videoing I capture ephemeral moments that would’ve been forgotten if they were not documented.

I have filmed rhea on video twice trying to squeeze a rose-hip, this way I want the viewer to recall the first time too, the repetition, deja vu, Rheas habits.

My videos include themes of amateurism, they are casual, hand held, not forced, in and out of focus, unprofessional, casual conversations heard by myself and friends, distorted and altered by projection – all relating to the theme of amateur film making, a home video effect for nostalgia.  My videos could be described as transient moments documented and therefore recalled, reconsidered and revalued.

 

Nov 7, 2020

Experimenting further with the idea of viewing something. I filmed myself watching and Rhea watching the videos. To be present in the video I sat myself and rhea right in-front of them, blocking our own viewing of the video, but adding our presence.

https://vimeo.com/476254069

https://vimeo.com/476251646

https://vimeo.com/476251193

Nov 6, 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M49Gp28lYhw 

(watch at 7:01)

Watching a projection of home videos. Quality of video is altered.

Oct 30, 2020

https://vimeo.com/473368534

The overlooked, mundane, familiar and normal ‘nothing to write about’ situations. So often people are looking but they are not seeing, in my work I wanted to show the idea of seeing through my lens.

Sound is an important concept I use in my work, without sound we aren’t  truly getting the feeling of a video we are watching. I am interested in using foley as a technique.  The sound of the birds and the wind in the trees, a phone call with my dad. Simple pleasures being the appreciation of a reflection/sound of cars passing in the distance, a familiar face etc.

Everything we do is somewhat on purpose even when we don’t realise. My work seems random with the things I document, but why do I record the things I do?  I am hoping as I continue to do this I will recognise a recurring theme, so far I have found that I always seem to zoom in, I always focus on movement, I like using an old digital video camera as a medium, I like recording white noise. I try to find familiarity in spaces Im not familiar with, finding the same small beauties in serval different places, ephemeral things, therefore to me – meaningful to document.

Projection onto a white sheet, is something I originally used to distort my videos, making the quality even worse in attempt to create a feeling, nostalgia. I re recorded the projection as it felt nostalgic to me to watch it from the perspective of being in the room and watching the video while being projected.

The video camera is symbolic to old home videos. The idea of viewing and watching something is interesting to me. Opposed to mind numbing tv shows and films, that hold our attention through violence, romance, action, tension – it making it easy to grasp attention, my videos are different. They challenge the viewer to watch – they need to truly see.

Finding the idea of viewing interesting I thought I could re record my videos projected while people are also in the room watching it. Maybe film myself watching it. Similarly to the scene in American beauty as they watch the video of the plastic bag – we don’t get to see the full video they are watching what we see and experience is the act of them viewing it and how it has made them feel.

Oct 29, 2020

https://vimeo.com/470557801

https://vimeo.com/manage/470558011/general

 

Here I have taken videos I recored of shadows and the geometric shapes they produced from the light coming in through the window which I pan to then reveal what is outside the window. I play on the silence from being inside to observing movement outside, I wanted a feeling of warmth and comfort from observing the outside from the inside. Projected onto a bedsheet and then re filmed. This is my first step into experimentation and creating different feelings/textures to add, distorting original video.

Oct 27, 2020