I attended the artist Alex Pearl’s workshop. We were each given the brief that we were robots and given set parameters in which we could make a film.
The length of the film clips were to be no longer than two minutes in total and all the film clips would be put together with a minimum of editing. This was a really interesting exercise and the resulting film defamiliarised everyday objects and played on the viewer’s expectation.
This workshop helped me to focus on what I was looking to explore in my current work. I reflected on a piece of work I had completed in the first year which involved the defamiliarisation of the everyday.
I took an everyday domestic appliance, the washing machine, and reproduced it through a combination of sound, film and image into a life size immersive experience for the viewer.
Link to film Washing Machine:https://vimeo.com/211391738
Another piece of work which played on the viewer’s expectation was Exploding Golf Ball. I slowly cut a golf ball in half to a certain point. In the centre, a rubber ball is tightly wound with rubber bands.
As the ball is cut, some of the rubber bands are also cut and start to slowly come apart and unwind. The inside of the ball slowly expands until the pressure inside the ball is too great for the outer casing to hold it anymore and the insides explode out of the outer shell.
The golf ball is an example of constraint and containment versus growth and potential.
It is a piece that plays on the viewer’s expectation, the anticipation of not quite knowing what is going to happen next or when.
It reminded me of the film by Francis Alys where a battered Volkswagen is trying to make its way up a hill. Each time the viewer is led into thinking that this time it is going to make it, but each time it gets to the top, it loses momentum and rolls back down to the bottom of the hill.
Link to film of Exploding Golf Ball: https://vimeo.com/209739838
My preference of using a lens based medium came out of these projects, making me want to explore the defamiliarisation of image and sound and the relationship between the two. I am interested in the importance of timing and tension and knowing what is enough to engage the viewer but not give everything away.
In my current work I am looking at found footage and the use of analogue filming versus digital images. This has led me to explore the deeper meanings of time and memory and nostalgia and what relationship image and sound play in this in relation to the viewer’s experience of the work.
