More pinhole experiments for S8

I'm continuing my experimentation with making a pinhole super 8 film, simultaneously exposing the whole length of film through multiple pinholes. I'm trying a different method which I'm very excited about as first tests are looking promising. I'm using the new Ektachrome 100D. Back in the studio tomorrow to do one more test and then I'm going to expose the whole 15m of film at once.

Hopefully I'll be posting the results next week.

New Publication

Sequence 1 is a new publication by No.w.here edited by Simon Payne and is a wealth of great writing about artists' film and video. It's a real pleasure to be able to buy an affordable book with current writing on new artists' film and video. The first issue contributors include; Nicky Hamlyn, Al Rees, Peter Gidal and Helga Fanderl.

Available from No.w.here for £5 (52 page colour publication).

Ektachrome 100D

Here's a charismatic fellow talking about the new Ektachrome 100D. Personally, I'm really sad about the loss of 64T and shall be buying as much as I can.

Review of The 2010 International Experimental Media Congress

Read a review of the 2010 International Experimental Media Congress here by Kevin McGarry

http://rhizome.org/editorial/3478#more

Train Film

Nicky Hamlyn showed 14:11 (Train Film) and Scotopic at the International Experimental Media Congress in Toronto at the beginning of the month. Nicky was giving a presentation during the session titled 'The Place of the Medium'. He's written a brilliant essay titled 'Medium Practices'. Looking forward to seeing how it went.



Pinhole super 8 shot in handmade boxes.
Super 8 B&W (Kodak Plus-x), hand processed. Shown at 6 and 24 fps.

You can't beat seeing film as film, but this gives an idea of what i'm developing.

Affirmations of Reality

Why is that we need affirmations of reality? Or is it just me?

I've been trying to take an image of a passing train with a series of pinhole super 8 cameras. In my mind I image a discernible image of a train or at least some kind of recognition of an object in the field of view of the cameras. Until now nothing recognisable. Is it my processing, producing patches of something.




I re-shot last week on b&w super 8 and developed for the first time using b&w reversal chemistry, again the same kind of smudge on the film.

This morning I started to read 'On The Camera Arts and Consecutive Matters', by Hollis Frampton and read;

"The trace made by light on sensitive material is an image. A camera may have been involved, or it may not. The light may or may not have been focused by a lens. The image may very well not look at all tlike a cow, or like Simonetta Vespucci; but because it is a photographic image, it is subject to the same procedures. Most important: it is accessible to our sensibilities on precisely the same basis. (p.7)

Yes, I have been looking at this in entirely the wrong way. So tonight I scanned in a segment of my sample filmstrip and found something.











Affirmation that everything is ok.

The Valley of the Lakes No. 1

This is a film I made back in November (see earlier blog posting) in response to a painting that I saw in The Sainsbury Centre Collection at UEA in Norwich.

It was called The Valley of the Lakes No. 1 by Charles Maussion. I was captivated by the scale and atmosphere of the painting. I call it a painting but it was made using pencil and rubbing it into the paper. The resulting image is a blurred landscape the scene never quite being defined.

A particluar text by William Jeffet in the catalogue of Maussions work, sold in the bookshop at SCVA resonated with some of the concerns I've been grappling with in my film work;

... Maussion sought to expand these works beyond the intimate scale of drawing into the more public scale of painting. In doing this he pursued both a radical dematerialisaton of conventional representation and the dissolution of form in an almost abstract representation of something approaching the eighteenth-century idea of the sublime..'

To see the original painting you'll have to visit the Sainsbury Centre!



B&W Reversal Super 8 2.45

The beginning

Seb and I have decided to share a space, so this week, we took the keys to unit C3 at the Powerhub and started the renovations. We've decided on what we want; darkroom and film changing room being the first priority, desk area and lounging being second! Seb's done all the building while I mooched around, held a few bits of wood up and provided moral support, and Dave came over and offered some technical help.

So hopefully before the end of the month we'll be set up.