Day 4 Commentary on 2′ 45″

Section 1.
Find problem in loss of lux in video iteration in projection. The film will end up black if we continue with the image in pos. Opt to use the negativising option in the video camera. Discuss lighting state. Try fluoro to increase light in room as video camera exposure level is very dark. Fluoro NG. Negativising image solves this darkness problem.

Section 2.
16mm is now titled ’55 Seconds’, video titled ‘6 Minutes’.
Issues: sound
Did Raban actuually record it or did he just speak it live so therefore he appears on camera speaking it. In the video, in standard use, it is present as a matter of course. it is a positive action to have no sound. Discussion Curham/Ihlein about sound [no evidence of Raban’s use – does not appear on the frame enlargements which show entire frames inc edge marks and sprockets. No discussion in Hamlyn’s ‘Film Art Phenomenon’. Thinking through difficulty for Raban and ‘liveness’ in the spirit of the work means it is unlikely he did record sound [since confirmed he did]. LC and LI decide to proceed with sound work in its own right. Curham interested in the effct of these iterations – have not actuually heard the related sound pieces – ‘I am sitting in a room’ … Lucier (although I think we listened to this at Kellerberin). So the sound is particularly separate in the film version.

Section 3.
Discussion about the title for the video piece. Discovering that proposed 4’33” evokes more than we wish (Cage too present). Discuss meditation, discuss time length, propose 6 minutes in title – dispense with ‘groovy’ addition (and Cage) by dropping the seconds. Places the emphasis of this piece squarely on the time. Use the egg timer to delimit 6 minutes. For LC, 6 minutes feels very long (pace of my life very fast).

Section 4.
Things that come to mind:
Today great engagement with the video piece where yesterday, the video felt like it did nothing to shape or sculpt the time and space in which we are operating where the film felt like it was carving out, delineating a chunk of space in the way that Breath seems to.

Moment of deflation in discussion about the difficulty of the film – implication – complication/difficulty of the film unnecessary, uninspiring. Many things unnecessarily hard, hard for no evident gain [greater thinking about the space].

Section 5.
McCall and thinking
– related actions – acquired Camera Obscura measurements
– viewed room at c. 8.30pm. Light still present, still light in sky. Evident in sitting, looking that the sky line, building sky line is very beautiful and takes us outside of this space. Not sure still what this is all about, what the meditation is all about.

[Dev for Curham art practice in this project – in film one cannot ‘practice’ per se. Musicians take themselves through the works of composers, they flesh these out and inhabit them as actors do with scripts. In drawing or painting, mimesis is a tool. In this attempt at mimesis, we are realising our own specific problems but we are finding this in our own bodies. We are mapping the actions of these artists onto our own bodies by doing these actions. What we are discovering is that … [thought not continued].

Change the behaviour, the rest will follow [trying on some new behaviours – so may be all the Curham work is about trying to find tools for change, catalysts for change]. So in following the behaviour, actually in a sense we work backwards from the object to create the logic for our approach and as we go, we are filling this out. So we have an image of the Raban piece but we do not actually have a method. We have some of his comment eg Live in Your Head but we do not have an actual set of instructions in the way that we did for Breath. We have informed imagined scenarios about how Raban did it. We have comment I think from Raban to LI that if he did it now, he would do it on video.

LI comments that negativising the image is okay because this is a standard video camera feature. LC unsure but the reality of making this piece using this form demands it. It is interesting here how the newer tech has to mimic the older tech – so the newer tech cannot in itself offer a solution to this problem, it can only solve the problem through direct mimesis of the older tech. Mystique surrounds the older tech – shrouded in the mists of time etc etc. However mystique is the actual recording on video for Curham. Exactly how is video working? So the signal is

time base
.
lumens
.
sensor
.
fluctuation on sensor, electrical particles – sensor registers binary/analogue of fluctuations/pulses/modulations of wave on tape
.
electrical pulse

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