Louise Curham and Lucas Ihlein – Australia
A few folks who we invited to experience our private “screening” of Long Film for Ambient Light have begun to filter back with their thoughts after the event.
Mike and Deborah visited in its last half hour, late Saturday morning the 17th of March.
Mike sent us these thoughts: Continue reading “Mike L: notes from Long Film”
[Lucas and Flemo about 9pm on Friday 16 March, photo by Peter Shaw taken from outside Track 12]
A few folks who we invited to experience our private “screening†of Long Film for Ambient Light have begun to filter back with their thoughts after the event. First cab off the rank is Flemo.
Thanks for the invite to say something, although – at this stage – I’m unsure I have anything to say except thanks for the invite to say something. I was serious, by the way, about the idea of a “natural screensaver.” As much as applications have progressed, screensavers are still about the most interesting things computers do. Arriving late at night (-or late for me, a confirmed father and nerd), didn’t seem to bear out the screen-saver intuition. Perhaps this would have been different were I to have come during the day. So what of the film(ing), as I saw it? The experience of being in the space seemed to have an almost-sedating effect on me: there was something chruch-like – simply in the size of the space, the darkness I found quietening (and provided a kind of ‘cover’: a way of being non-selfconsciously alone with other people present); there was, I think, a kind of alteration of time and space that I can’t quite describe… or perhaps I don’t have the patience, now
mindful of having to leave my computer and get somewhere else soon.
Continue reading “Flemo: notes from Long Film”
Long Film for Ambient Light related dream, 23 march 2007, 5.30am:
This bizarre dream popped up about 5 days after we did our experiment with Long Film. Talk about mental residue. Remember, all characters are fictional and their resemblance to any person living or dead etc…xx Lucas
We’re in New York and Anthony McCall is putting on a new show, including Long Film for Ambient Light. I’m in the gallery as LFFAL is being set up, it’s completely different from our understanding of the work. This version involves a long piece of perspex set into the wall high up towards the ceiling. On the perspex are printed representations of empty film frames. Behind the perspex film panel an area of wall has been removed, and light filters in from here. I ask Anthony where the light comes from – “the outside of the museum via the air conditioning duct,” she says. Yes, Anthony is a woman. A youngish one, too (although at the start of the dream she was a man, still quite young, and with a full head of hair, far more resembling McCall’s photos from the early 70s, than what I imagine he looks like now, balder and more statesmanlike in appearance.)
Continue reading “Long Film Dream”
16 march 2007
noon (written at 1.30pm)
I pressed go on the timer. Set it to 23 hours 59 minutes. But we still were setting up, so didn’t really take the moment to just be here. Kat was still vacuuming. The space felt clean and neat, there was a “coming into clarity” about the whole thing. But we weren’t quite there yet. I was aware of being slightly stressed with regards to this. Would have been better if we were ready in advance, but I was also quite amused that the film starts whether you are ready or not. In some sense, the film is kind of indifferent to my responses. It doesn’t care if I “attend” to it or not. On the other hand, the film needs me – without me, it is nothing. Maybe.
Continue reading “Lucas: notes from Long Film for Ambient Light”
14:40 Ground of my body, quite high tension, I am noticing the ‘base’ settings hence the description ‘ground of my body’. Column thoughts [feedback sheet had columns, used by no one except me and Walty unwillingly]. Strange how use of someone else’s specificity is having the effect of making us be present in this here and how (McCall’s specificity of this work in 1975). Continue reading “Curham: Long Film for Ambient Light 2nd commentary”
12 pm Fri Mar 16 to 12 pm Sat Mar 17E-mail to Cynthia today with some thoughts on the Long Film:
The Long Film was a very intense experience – my head did very strange things. It was unrelentingly social which I found very, very difficult. The intensity of such focus on a single space over such a time span was intense in the
extreme. Interesting that the 24 hours McCall framed was darkness book ended by light.
My best discovery was a very clear mental image of the sun in the sky acting like a bellows creating these fluctuations in the room [so in the end for me, this is a landscape film, how curious!]
I found the light bulb almost intolerable, it came to invade the room, a ‘tense object’ as one visitor described it even in daylight. At night, it felt like an attack. There was a sense at about 1am of being in solitary confinement without the benefit of being alone. I sat outside the room for many hours there – still in the building but just outside, trying to keep myself calm and as present as possible.
Continue reading “Louise’s Commentary on Long Film for Ambient Light”
Digging around old notes collected during research in london, found an interview with William Raban from the “illuminations†series. I had watched these interviews, with raban and also guy sherwin, while sitting in the office of the british artists film research unit at central st martins college. Stephen ball emailed me the raw transcriptions. There are a few statements in there by William which shed light on our work in trying to nut out two minutes forty five.
Continue reading “Lucas: Expanded Cinema Residency March 12th”
today we decided to have a shorter session – to concentrate on getting one complete iteration done of 55 seconds, and 6 minutes, from go to whoa. we got it done in under three hours, which is a big improvement. peter was with us, which made it a bit more fun. the very light 16mm strip from yesterday had a surprising amount of visible footage, so we decided to just continue on rather than abandon it and start from a step back. and the video version is getting more and more interesting each time – now the resonant sonic frequencies of the room are beginning to reinforce each other, in the words of alvin lucier, and we’re just getting the start of a beautiful musical sound piece. theres a comic element creeping in too. I’m getting the sense that the video version could really work, with an audience over a period of days, just as raban did in the seventies. it seems to make sense that he would have started the piece anew with each new venue, rather than transporting the previous venue’s product to a new venue to add to. that way, “our†venue would be seen to be making something from the ground up. i dunno, either would probably work, i guess.
Continue reading “Lucas: Expanded Cinema Residency March 10th”
In doing the Expanded works in late 2003-4, my motivation was to see actually experience these pieces as reading on page, hard to really understand. Also motivated to do them to continue with performance aspect to SMIC events. I was thinking a lot about interactivity at the time – mostly because the buzz at COFA was around the interactive cinema research centre.
Continue reading “Louise: Expanded Cinema Residency March 10th”
big day today, meeting with kat and telling her all about the project, what we’re trying to do, the four works that we’re concentrating on. she’s our tech assistant, and will be helping us set the room up for long film for ambient light.
all these works have a concentration on time, pushing and pulling time. sometimes they seem to me to be a little dry, early 70s conceptualism, not much overt content referring to social situations. but i know that this is only a surface issue, and that under the surface these artists were concerned with about attention, concentration, the passage of time, and, well, mindfulness, and that they push against the spectacularisation of the image. whether they succeeded or not, maybe that’s what we’re trying to find out. and of course, how the hell can we tell whether or not they succeeded, since we’re working with approximate re-enactments with partial information, and a completely different culture. jeepers.
Continue reading “Lucas: Expanded Cinema Residency March 9th”