One year on

Dear Blog,

It's been a year since my last post and I feel it's time to mention something....

I've started a research degree and this has pre-occupied a lot of my thinking time plus getting used to being in a new mode of 'being' on a day to day basis.

My hosepipe film was published in Sequence Issue 2 and I'm continuing with experiments, finding new and improved pipes to use!

Theoretical preoccupations have been around notions of time and duration and how the filmstrip can communicate this, outside of the cinematic apparatus.

I'm not sure what else to share at the moment, apart from this image, some new ideas i'm playing with. A print of 7 secs of film, a series I'm working on of prints from my super 8 colour reversal film loops of the Martello Towers at Dymchurch. Developed as a black and white negative image. Seven secs of film time frozen in one frame.

Scans of Pinhole Super 8

I've scanned and rather crudely stitched together in photoshop a length of super 8 which was exposed in my garden hose pinhole camera. It's difficult to recognise an image here apart from the blow up I've posted which is an imprint of the inside of the hose.

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.

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.

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.

1st Experiments

Making a pinhole camera the length of a roll of super 8mm (15m) is crazy!

Experimenting with 45cm lengths and multiple holes, really fiddly getting film in and out of the camera (I don't have a dark room so I've made a make shift changing bag out of think black rubble bags).  1st experiment, exposure not long enough!

Tried the same approach with a 120 roll of Provia 100ASA reversal film - some success!  This is one image from a strip of 3.

Out of Date E6 Chemicals

I've just processed some film with some out of date chemicals with intriguing results. It was a test film for next week's film night, shot in the Music Room at O'Neills. I knew the chemicals were out of date and it was an experiment, but wasn't quite prepared for yellow and blue images.

I'll post some stills on Sunday.

Elizabeth McAlpine at Laura Bartlett

I visited the Laura Bartlett Gallery last week to see Liz McAlpine's show 'Flatland'. I was welcomed in even though I turned up on a day that the gallery was closed and greeted with silent projectors . These were swiftly turned on.

http://www.laurabartlettgallery.co.uk/Exhibition-current/96#

For me, the most engaging aspect of the show were the machines and their setup. A tower of projectors placed in prime sight at the convergence of a narrowing entrance hall, drew one in for closer inspection. The projected image held little allure against the rig of the machines. Downstairs in a basement two projectors side by side projected 2 frames of a piece of string drawn horizontally across the middle of each, not quite lining up. I understand through the text that this tension was deliberate, but I couldn't help being irked by the fact that the first frame was a different size to the second and so my belief that this tension existed was somehow dispelled as I could see the unravelling of this construct.

What did make me smile though was that even through the obvious containment of film within a sculptural context (the fact that the projectors were left to whir away in these white rooms and you the viewer where meant to enter and leave but always be presented with this object, silently always producing its reason for being) did start to revolt. One projector was jumping and clattering, getting louder, and a frame of film was burnt onto the bulb of one of the 'Tilt (in 6 parts)' frames, so burnt acetate was a constant image.

This is an interesting show and a reminder that the beauty of super 8 lies in it's fragility and spontaneity.

My Installations

FLOW - Jan 2009
The Powerhub, Maidstone, Kent

I Surround You

Film Loop


‘I surround you’ is a three projection installation informed by the Martello Towers that line the south coast between Folkestone and Eastbourne. Only 25 out of the 74 built remain. Their form, relationship to each other and spacing along the South Coast suggest symmetry to the relationship between frames and the filmstrip. Each tower is filmed alternately, frame by frame, in a pseudo exchange. Standing like abandoned sentinels, silently communicating with each other. In projection the resultant flickering loops portray a compression of the space between the towers and the impenetrable forts appear to be transparent.

'Film Loop' is a companion work consisting of an overhead projector enlarging a single strip of Super 8mm large enough to engulf the space and assume a loop position. The image is of a frame by frame pan from the roof of Seaford Museum, the 74th Martello Tower. The single frame presenting itself in its contained strip format, lays bear the continuity of the strip and its suggested notion of movement whilst amplifying the contents of its’ contained images.


MINE - September 2008
The Crypt, St. Pancras Church, London

Lightstep


Fremlin Walk, Maidstone, Kent

The Distance Between Us
One cycle of a super 8 loop of single frames taken down the length
of a cannon 60 - 7mm lens of Springfield Mill Chimney
Also presented at 35mm slides in a custom made lightbox.


Pan
A broken down pan (single frame) from within
the middle of Boughton Monchelsea Wood.