Edit 1
This is the first edit of my video. Im not happy with the order of visuals and the sound. I want to extend and push it further. There are gaps in it that I don't like, they're too long. So I need to shorten the time in between shots to evoke the disorientation. I am still playing around with the sound and want to push this further too by making a soundtrack in Ableton. I want to include more reverb to make the voice sound more eerie. My aim is to produce two - three soundtracks to go into the video. I want the beginning of the video to be melancholy but also harmonic. Then I want to build it into a crescendo as I think this worked quite well in the last video. Rather than finish it there I want to fade out and back to the original state pf melancholy with the choral harmonies again. The willow tree over the frequencies shot doesn't work aesthetically and I have to be more vigilant with what shots I put into the video. It doesn't evoke feeling in me, not as much as the other shots.
Edit 2
‘Wanderer’ is a moving image and sound piece. The blend of images and footage of nature combined with cymatics inspired imagery create a surreal, melancholic and disorientating narrative. Choral harmonies flow moving in time with the imagery, which gives the audience the power to connect the two. It slowly builds into a crescendo in the middle into a rhythmic audio track, combining textural and ambiguous footage of natural textures layered over rippling frequencies.
The development for my practice throughout this unit came from peer and audience feedback on the last video I made ‘The flesh’ and I went to Holten Heath, Portland and Corfe to gather footage. What stood out to me most was that the locations could be lots of places - which worked to its advantage. Following this I gathered footage from nature, informed by my liminal space aesthetics and psycho-geography. I became intrigued by the term, liminal Spaces. The word “liminal” is derived from the Latin word “limens,” which means threshold. When you’re interacting with a liminal space, you’re quite literally standing on the threshold between two realities.
Liminal space aesthetics relate to the unique and combined feeling of eeriness, nostalgia, and apprehension one gets when presented with such places outside of their designed context. (Fandom, 2021) Using this research guided me to get these images and the footage that goes with it. I was interested in not only connecting the viewer to a place I had been but to also provide an alternate way of viewing that place, like an altered reality and this came through post-production when using repetition and symmetry. Psychogeography, which relates to how different places make us feel and behave, It’s the intersection of psychology and geography. (Tate, ca2021) Coined by Guy Debord in 1955 and inspired by Charles Baudelaire’s concept of the flaneur, which is an urban wanderer. I liked Debord’s idea of navigating the urban environment to examine its architecture and spaces and the fact that it has its roots in the art movements of dadaism and surrealism which ‘explored ways of unleashing the subconscious imagination.’ ‘The drift is essential to psychogeography; it better connects walkers to the city.’ (Lyons, 2017.) Questions I asked myself were, could I explore this concept when I am out and about taking footage? Could I use nature and forgotten pieces of land to explore by walking/drifting instead of urban environments? Areas of land have memories as well as urban environments. Could these bits of land create nostalgia for the viewer? How could I experiment with how different places make me feel? I wanted to explore connecting the viewer to the land through video and sound. I called the video ‘The Wanderer’ inspired by my process when taking the footage and Baudelaire’s concept of the flaneur.
I concentrated on making visuals that could stir up the senses by collecting footage of natural textures and create an ambiguity to the video to provide a subjective embodied experience for the viewer. Feeling is an important part of my process. I wanted to allow the viewer to navigate their own feelings through visuals whilst watching it.
Manipulating the images of textures into a collage of moving images coupled with sound, I wanted to give a sense of disorientation but also create a sensory journey. Using the voice for this was successful because Sound is like smell, it gets inside the body and is very visceral. There is a strong Psychosomatic function – I create suggestion through the senses, causing emotions and feeling is an essential part of my practice. John Cage draws inspiration from nature and human emotion in his essay ‘Experimental music’ when he writes ‘Hearing sounds which are just sound immediately sets the theorizing mind to theorizing, and the emotions of human beings are continually aroused by encounters with nature.’ I created a cymatics speaker to extend my research and experimentation into the natural world. Cymatics is something I’ve done a lot of research on before and wanted to extend it and bring it into my practice again to look at how I could make sound visible and again create some tactility through moving images. Cymatics refers to the study of making sound visible, usually through placing particles on vibrating plates. I have used a Newtonian liquid of water and wanted to try a non-Newtonian liquid of corn starch and water. One problem I did encounter in the process of this was starting out with a speaker that was too small and the lens on my camera didn’t have the capacity to zoom in enough to capture the detail. I also tried using alcohol inks, but they just froze on the surface of the corn starch and water. I did resolve this by acquiring a bigger speaker, using a larger paint lid and using a macro lens.
I used a frequency generator on my phone, attached to an amp which attached to the speaker and the vibrations caused the liquid to create patterns. Adding paint and silicone to the mix gave super interesting results and more like the kind of thing I was after for putting into the finished video. It created a psychedelic aesthetic which is a running theme within my practice and creating another visual altered reality or world. I am less concerned with bringing human life to my films but rather gesture towards humanness and providing the audience with a phenomenological experience. When it comes to the Phenomenological, which is the study of consciousness or the object of experience. My interests lie with placing the audience into the work itself, by creating an experience for them. For everyone to be a part of it, the author, audience and whatever I am filming. There is an interest for me in understanding myself through creating the work and the audience to understand the self through experiencing the work. By giving the audience/viewer headphones to immerse them into the piece is a way I would do this in an exhibition space.
The work was successful in its use of harmonic sounds combined with collaged moving images. The viewer is invited to explore not only their visual and auditory senses.
I pushed the work further by extending the run time of the video.
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 and now pushing it further with creating a more coherent sound track all the way through that creates a real sensory journey coupled with the visuals. I have again 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 year. To further extend the experimentation of sound, the voice and moving image I aim to create an exhibition space with multiple screens to and headphones and test out my videos, 'The Flesh' and 'The Wanderer'.
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