My exhibition piece:
‘The Flesh’ is a moving image and sound piece. The blend of images and footage of nature; a frozen pond, plants, trees and panoramic views looking over Dorset, combined with coloured wax in water; Pastel shades of blue, orange, pink and yellow turning slowly, create a surreal and fantastical narrative. Obscure sounds such as pens clicking, low hums and harmonies take the viewer from one frame to the next at various speeds, moving in time with the imagery, giving them the power to connect the two. It slowly builds into a crescendo throughout and for the last minute it peaks into a rhythmic audio track, combining esoteric and fantastical images and footage of wax within nature.
The starting point for this work was through the process of the material, using chance as this process, using a random number sound chart as a starting point for creating sound and using melted wax into water for the material and filming the process. The colours, informed by Karla Black’s child-like colours in ‘At Fault’, 2011. Following this I gathered footage from nature, informed by my research into the Anthropocene. I chose the site of St Catherine’s Hill in Dorset as there is tree felling and various other habitats that I wanted to include as imagery for the Anthropic narrative.
The work was successful in its use of harmonic sounds combined with collaged moving images. This was inspired by current contemporary artists Laure Prouvost and Rebecca Lennon in their successful use of combining images and the voice to create non-linear sound and visual language. This synergy creates an eerie, confused and disorientated feeling and flow to the film. There is also some humor in places which provides the viewer with a moment to relax and shift their consciousness to a less intense feeling. The viewer is invited to explore not only their visual and auditory senses, but also the sensation of wanting to touch as there is a tactility and organic-ness to the wax. The organic forms are dream-like but also extra-terrestrial; Like a being seeing Earth and its nature for the first time or like it is slowly integrating with it. The ‘being’ concept was informed by ‘The Expanse’, a television show I have been watching. The slow revealing of the wax throughout the film is curious and intriguing and I was surprised to find it has been noted by peers as erotic towards the end.
The work could have been pushed further by extending the run time of the soundtrack in the last minute and extending the symmetry of kaleidoscopic footage towards the end as this was a successful part and feel that viewers could have watched for longer.
I made the decision to exhibit the film online with an instruction to the viewers to use headphones and to watch it full screen. This was to promote an immersive embodied experience for the viewer through sound and imagery. This was informed by research into Merleau-Ponty's notions on perception and psychology of the senses by producing imagery which could heighten the consciousness and produce a subjective individual feeling. This decision resolved the initial research question I had around creating an embodied experience for the viewer.
As a group whilst curating the exhibition, we named the exhibition ‘Interactions’. My film sits well within this by providing an interaction between the viewer and themselves, an interaction between object/wax/being and Earth/nature/environment, and an interaction between the voice and moving image. Providing an online exhibition has opened new ways and techniques for people to interact with and experience artwork. If this were to be an exhibition in person, my plan was to project the video onto the wax piece itself to give another interaction between objects.
This moving image and sound piece show evidence of a development in my practice from filming the process of materials alone in unit one, to forming it into a finished coherent but abstract outcome/narrative in unit two. I have furthered my editing skills in Premiere Pro and sound recording and producing in Ableton. Both of which has informed my practice and given me insightful skills to expand further into my practice going into the next unit. To further extend the experimentation of sound, the voice and moving image I aim to experiment more, research more and take down primary research from viewers that have watched 'The Flesh’ to inform the next steps for moving forward within my practice to explore the embodied experience and consciousness. The materials I intend to experiment with are binaural headphones and microphones to record sounds and the voice, to think about how I can exhibit in an open space with multiple screens to provide a multi-sensory installation experience. I also intend to research into specific sites of interest, particularly in relation to protected habitats of nature.
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