Today has gone by in a flash. Only two cups of tea for example. I’ve been synchronizing the videos: an alarmingly slow process of overlaying them semiopaque in Final Cut then editing them piece by piece while I wait for the cursor to catch up. Sometimes it never catches up and the software crashes. It is spine-tingling. I’m not sure I’ve made any progress at all today.
I might have even gone backwards. I found and deleted a couple of videos that looked good on the computer but on the big screen turned out to be blurred. They don’t quite look blurred, just not interesting. You don’t get the jolt of delight unless the images are absolutely sharp. When the focus is just right – with a fraction of depth around the edges – the images start to look a bit like paintings.
And the way the edit is developing, with short breaks between bursts of activity, the videos have a structure like a poem sequence. Paintings that move, or poems that move. A dance. As I’ve been making the marks with the pen, it’s been helpful to think of it all as a kind of dance rather than anything figurative or legible or representational. It helps keep in mind the primacy of the process over the resulting product. I’ve been absently sticking the used sheets of tracing paper to the side of my desk after each video’s done, and occasionally people have asked me if I’ll be exhibiting them too. Resolutely no. The papers are used up with the drawing.
Thinking of the videos as dances rather than conversation, I wonder whether the screens would be better adjacent instead of parallel. The decision affects whether the space of the page is pushed forward through its depth or stays on the level, to read left-to-right. Parallel would use the room in a more interesting way, but I suspect adjacent might be more appropriate to the work. It all depends on how the finished videos look together. That’s the one thing I can’t look at because they aren’t finished, and they can’t be finished until I find a way to get Final Cut to work at a functioning speed.. That’s tonight’s project.
On a happier note though, a lovely review by Lita Doolan of Keeping Time appeared in the Daily Information today. I met Lita during an Open Studio session but I didn’t know she planned to write about it. A good surprise!
http://www.dailyinfo.co.uk/reviews/feature/6692/Ta…
“The image she projects onto the white wall is dynamic but also has the composition of a traditional painting. After all it is an image of a simple shape made of colour placed on a gallery wall. Then the sound effects bring in a whole new dimension and interpretation to the piece I am privileged to be previewing. Her genre feels unique.”
I was happy to read the comparison Lita makes with painting, which is becoming increasingly important. I’m beginning to wonder how Keeping Time is going to affect the direction of my practice. Both Keeping Time and these etching lessons I’ve begun.
