Masticating Whorl

“Your scars are healing beautifully”

A wall of wet pink flesh with a hole opening like the end of a balloon spans across the 20-inch screen to my right. “See there?” She points to some markings on the wall of my cervix, “Your scars are healing beautifully.” They don’t have any Xanax to calm me. I glance up at the video coming out of the mechanical arm from between my pried legs. I search for the beauty in discomfort. I think the noxoproxe is working. I won’t know if it’s going to be enough for the pain until the biopsy. 

I hope Masticating Whorl also feels like taking a trip down a microscope to discover what has always been there. This 14 minute looped film wants to feel inside out, but hopefully, you find it easier to see the beauty. It is a film about the body without a body or, perhaps we are zooming out in space in the black nothing with synthesized sci-fi sounds. The film wants to feel as intimate, warm, familiar and inviting as it is invasive, foreign, malignant and strange. The image unravels as you bathe in the sound. They play with each other, passing connections. It is as organic and anthropomorphic as it is digital and constructed. It enters through the pores of your skin to tickle your bones.

Delta of Projects

Masticating Whorl is the direct descendant of three projects. I wanted to complete my looped film Crreeeeps with an oscillating visual narrative and I wanted to use the goo I was exploring in Video Sketch Series Spring 2021 to represent the inside of a chrysalis from my screenplay of the same name. Though this metamorphosis is an overused metaphor, we tend to focus on the outcome of the butterfly more than when a caterpillar’s digestive liquids are expelled, turning it to liquid so it might metamorphose.  [1]Ferris Jabr, “How Does a Caterpillar Turn into a Butterfly?”, Scientific American, Munn & Co., New York, NY, August 10, 2012, … Continue reading The melting putty I was exploring in the Video Sketch Series Spring 2021 was perfect to represent the liquefaction of a body. The goal was to validate the discomfort of being stuck inside without knowing when things will change or how they will turn out.

All of my work to date worked around the theme of transformation, but it took on a social perspective in the context of relentless covid waves. Though each individual had unique experiences, few escaped the uncertainty and cyclical nature of the pandemic. Rather than looking to a better future, this film seeks to honour a feeling of contradictory beauty/pleasure and ugliness/pain from inside the eye of this tornado. 

Controlled Randomness

The subject of the moving image is a single plum-sized white melting blob of plasticine that I began playing with it in Video Sketch Series | Spring 2020. This goo takes a few minutes to melt, so it is lit by a projector in order to create a slow fade to black from white. While I was at it, I experimented with colorizing the image by projecting various colourful clips of flowers, a plastic globe and other textures onto it. When I play the resulting melting goo images at much faster speeds backwards than forwards, it creates a visual rhythm, like a piston movement or flapping. The black fades on either end of the moving image create digital manipulation possibilities.

Filming in a the graduate program classroom

The putty melts on a mirror. It’s not a good one, it leaves triple blurred edges and it is layered with dust. The camera is necessarily off to the top side which, unlike a digital mirroring, makes the reflection imperfect. This gives us the impression that the goo is an object that has symmetry which lends itself to anthropomorphization. This blob has also accumulated dust, hairs, crumbs and God knows what else never to be removed.

I wasn’t sure how the shapes would melt, how they would interact with the mirror, or what would happen with time warping. I had plastic flowers, beads and buttons that I stuck into the goo, just to see what would happen. There was no eye when I stuck the button there, yet we now see a face. The film teases the brain as well as the body as the viewer figures out what’s what. The face you might see exists in your mind not in the objects filmed. The mirror creates the same effect as a Rorschach inkblot test where the viewer projects their own interpretation onto the shapes the putty takes. [2]Justine Sergent & Yitzchak M. Binik, “On the Use of Symmetry in the Rorschach Test”, 43:4 (1979), 355-359, DOI: 10.1207/s15327752jpa4304_3, https://sci-hub.se/10.1207/s15327752jpa4304_3, … Continue reading

These interpretations are nudged by the soundscape. At times the sounds are figurative, but never clearly diegetic. The viewer is left to interpret whether the sounds are sound effects emanating from the object, the ambience of the space we are visiting or a musical soundtrack. At times we identify instruments, but not quite music. The sound of breaths increases the anthropomorphic readings, while more abstract synthesized sounds lead to alien interpretations.   

Circularity and oscillations

A very simple cyclic pattern appears in the seasons, the lunar rhythm, the menstrual cycle, and a woman’s form of orgasm. [3] David Sonnenschein, Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice, and Sound Effects in Cinema, Michael Wiese Productions, Studio City, CA, 2001.

David Sonnenschein

David Sonnenschein was thinking about the musical structure of the rondo, with its circular phases of buildup and relaxation as a possible narrative structure, one that works in waves rather than the arc of conventional filmic narrative, that builds up to a single climax and quick resolution, closer to the male orgasm. Why have a single climax when you could have many?

I place the images on the soundscape loop of Crreeeeps with the intention of working like a music video, but the interaction of images and sound drives the piece into a different direction. I worked back and forth between image and sound. My process became cyclical or rhythmic. I recorded more materials and bounced from Premiere to Protools and back again. The pulsations of the images lent themselves to rhythmic manipulations. The images repeated and were overlaid to create patterns as though they are melodic phrases. Meanwhile, the soundscape links the images together and drives a narrative.

The sound and image enter in and out of synchronization. They blend and contrast. Each section contains its own pattern to decode that grows upon the last. This conversation creates a series of waves and multiple abstract narrative arcs. All of my previous sketches contained movement, without an overarching structure, like a visualizer or screen saver. However, Masticating Whorl incorporates a narrative where there is a sense of growth, climax and resolution, though the piece remains formal and circular. There is no single moment which stands clear above the rest. In the limited viewings so far, people have different favourite sections. Let me know yours if you find one. 

Reprojecting on snow

Reprojection, both in sound and image, was an important layer of this circularity. The soundscape was re-recorded off an analogue tape, through bad speakers of the tape recorder and inside the greenhouses of the botanical gardens. My friend Shelagh and I walked around the greenhouse with a small speaker and digital recorder to capture the noises of this space that is both organic and man-made. I filmed the image of the goo off a screen and as it was projected onto flipping pages, moss, snow and a miniature landscape which includes hair and nail clippings. These reprojection techniques juxtapose the organic materials to the digital distortions created. 

The kinks of the digital, analogue and organic are stressed. We notice the dust, the pixels, the overexposure and audio artifacts. Instead of using shallow focus and composition to direct perception as in traditional cinema, these attributes, the textures and framing are used to guide the viewer in and out of layers. You can look at the silhouette of the melting goo, but then you might be looking at the fingerprints or perhaps it’s the digital snow from an overstretched image that’s emphasized, then another face.

On Digital Resolution 

I remember the sensation of the camera: its weight, the mirrored image in the viewfinder and the feeling of the long trigger under my finger, but not the image. It was 2015 at the first “Grande Rencontres des Arts Mediatiques” [4] Great Meeting of Media Arts in Gaspésie as a part of the Percéides Film Festival where the experimental film screenings were divided between digital and celluloid [5] Grande Rencontre des Arts Médiatiques, 2015, https://archives.perceides.ca/festival-2015/grande-rencontre-des-arts-mediatiques-en-gaspesie/index.html, accessed on May 5, 2022. . John Kneller let me take a photo with his Hasselbad, so he could be in the photo. In the celluloid category, his film Axis stood out by its impeccable image with little dust and a lot of technical complexity: a rotating camera that takes 5 minutes to do in after effects should the film have been digital. Meanwhile, younger artists like Karl Lemiuex and Charles-André Coderre, were hell-bent on showing the celluloid, chemical degradation and sprocket holes abound. There was something fetishistic to their approach that only seemed apparent next to the work of a celluloid native like John.

The insistence upon analogue film as the sole medium of visual importance resounded throughout discourses on cinema, almost regardless of their ideological inflection. It never mattered that these high-end economies of film production were (and still are) firmly anchored in systems of national culture, capitalist studio production, the cult of mostly male genius, and the original version, and thus are often conservative in their very structure. Resolution was fetishized as if its lack amounted to castration of the author.  The cult of film gauge dominated even independent film production. The rich image established its own set of hierarchies, with new technologies offering more and more possibilities to creatively degrade it. [6] Hito Steryl, “In Defence of the Poor Image”, e-flux Journal, Issue #10, Brooklyn, NY, November 2009, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/, accessed on May 3, 2022.

Hito Steryl

Luckily, I cannot be castrated, I have a cervix. I began my work in video because it was the one I can afford. Though my new year’s resolution is often 720×480, I am not so much a defender of low resolution in and of itself. With increased demand for diversity and as more digital natives produce work, this analogue and digital opposition seems to be slowing down. At the same event, Charles-André Coderre collaborated with Raphaël Demers on a performance where celluloid interacted with video.

I am curious to know what the digital has to say for itself and how analogue principles transfer to digital materials. Jonathan Walley talks about how an identity crisis of the experimental film led to the structuralist movement where they tried to break film down to its material elements. [7] Jonathan Walley, “Identity Crisis: Experimental Film and Artistic Expansion”, October, Summer 2011, Vol. 137, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011, pp. 23–50, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23014886 I would argue that the digital is also a material to be explored. In treating the digital medium with the same attitude it subverts the hierarchy that exists between film and the digital realms. 

As in Walley’s text, many filmmakers I know, myself included, sway between the idea of artist and filmmaker. Though it can be seen as a feature of our work, it presents us with many practical issues with regards to distribution and to what presentation context is best for the work. I started this piece because I was frustrated with people arriving midway through my linear films. This led to the creation of a circular soundtrack. However, when it came time to choose a space in which to present Masticating Whorl, I wanted a room that would display the maximum quality of sound and image. I wanted sound treated walls and an impeccable projection surface, because the pristine sound and image create the contrast needed to showcase the shift from high to low and showcase the kinks. I wanted all at once a cinema space and a gallery that people could walk through. 

 We would all rather avoid the pain bit, and sometimes morphine is better than noxoproxene, but a life without any pain is unnatural. It is a life without profound transformation or growth. Rather than trying to perfect and clean the image, I propose that the imperfections can be seductive in themselves. The dust and digital snow could be seen as a defect, but in Masticating Whorl they are underlined. In a media-saturated environment, the manicured image is regarded with apprehension as perfection is often perceived as fraudulent. The traces, artifacts, dust, distortions left in the film breathe life into the artwork. Like the scars on my cervix, all scars tell a story. These markings are integral to the body. They express the meeting of material to time and the environment. I value the honesty they betray.

References

References
1 Ferris Jabr, “How Does a Caterpillar Turn into a Butterfly?”, Scientific American, Munn & Co., New York, NY, August 10, 2012, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/caterpillar-butterfly-metamorphosis-explainer/, accessed on May 5, 2022.
2 Justine Sergent & Yitzchak M. Binik, “On the Use of Symmetry in the Rorschach Test”, 43:4 (1979), 355-359, DOI: 10.1207/s15327752jpa4304_3, https://sci-hub.se/10.1207/s15327752jpa4304_3, accessed on May 30, 2022.
3 David Sonnenschein, Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice, and Sound Effects in Cinema, Michael Wiese Productions, Studio City, CA, 2001.
4 Great Meeting of Media Arts
5 Grande Rencontre des Arts Médiatiques, 2015, https://archives.perceides.ca/festival-2015/grande-rencontre-des-arts-mediatiques-en-gaspesie/index.html, accessed on May 5, 2022.
6 Hito Steryl, “In Defence of the Poor Image”, e-flux Journal, Issue #10, Brooklyn, NY, November 2009, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/, accessed on May 3, 2022.
7 Jonathan Walley, “Identity Crisis: Experimental Film and Artistic Expansion”, October, Summer 2011, Vol. 137, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011, pp. 23–50, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23014886

Chrysalis

The caterpillar releases its gastric juices into its own flesh, turning itself into a liquid in order to reconfigure into the butterfly. [1]Ferris Jabr, “How Does a Caterpillar Turn into a Butterfly?”, Scientific American, Munn & Co., New York: August 10, 2012, … Continue reading It’s an overused symbol, which is perfect since everything felt old and overused as we were stuck in the middle. Transformation is often like that. A divorce, getting fired, a diagnosis crashes into our lives. We hope it will leave with the same speed as it arrived, like a wind blowing past us, but more often than not, we get caught in a whirlwind, in the middle of the washing machine. People tend to focus on the beautiful outcome of the butterfly, in the hope that everything will be okay, but the goalpost keeps moving. On Friday March 13 2020, I stayed home, everyone stayed home. It was the first day of shelter-in-place of the covid 19 pandemic. We were asked to wait two weeks. The duct tape repair isn’t as temporary as we thought it would be. The idea of hope wears down and we find ourselves face to face with the uncomfortable present. 

Chrysalis is a short screenplay about transformation. I was comforted by the connection between personal shocks and this global shock. It consists of two parts, a dialogue between two friends and a section stolen from the old and overused Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll when Alice speaks to the caterpillar smoking a hookah. [2] Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures Underground, London, UK, British Library, 1893, p.51-52, https://www.bl.uk/works/alices-adventures-in-wonderland, accessed May 31, 2022. Where many of the images represent transformation, in this script the two friends discuss transformation in every tangent their casual conversation takes. They gossip about Alice, who is inside a chrysalis, self-digesting. The dialogue referencing transformation would be juxtaposed to images representing it such as those in Audiovisual Sketch Series | Winter 2019 or Audiovisual Sketch Series | Summer 2021

Ellen Cushing, “Late-Stage Pandemic Is Messing With Your Brain”, The Atlantic, Washington, D.C., March 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/03/what-pandemic-doing-our-brains/618221/, accessed on May 5, 2021.

We had to hold on for two weeks, and two months later it felt like there was no end in sight, because it wasn’t in sight. Years later, the faded paint chips off an old rainbow sign still hanging off the side of a balcony has lost its lustre. 

References

References
1 Ferris Jabr, “How Does a Caterpillar Turn into a Butterfly?”, Scientific American, Munn & Co., New York: August 10, 2012, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/caterpillar-butterfly-metamorphosis-explainer/, accessed on May 5, 2022.
2 Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures Underground, London, UK, British Library, 1893, p.51-52, https://www.bl.uk/works/alices-adventures-in-wonderland, accessed May 31, 2022.

Audio Visual Sketch Series | Summer 2021

Dear Mr. Altmedj, 

Can I call you David? I didn’t forget you. I didn’t forget that day. Whenever I feel lost, I go back to The Pit. Your hands come in and around and through the chest. One hand and many hands at once. Digging into soft malleable flesh. Digging through a head both empty and full. Arms up and around, embracing the warmth of being. The head emptied out and full. I remember the giant moving in stillness. I will not forget. I will come back to The Pit.

Yours,

The nipleless bust in the hallway has no sign or indication of ownership. I slip it into the room where I’m working. I fetch supplies at Dollarama and change my shooting plans for the day. I continue my experiments to copy The Pit by David Altmedj, an intention that began in Audiovisual Sketch Series | Winter 2019, but something else happens as I try to recreate the feeling of malleability.

I wanted my version to have ambiguous sex, a blend between female and male. This would be a way of appropriating the piece as my own, as well as experimenting with how sex effects the viewer. I imagined three rows of breasts, maybe in purple, but perhaps keeping the long penises. However, the pale-skinned 23-year-old women of my graduate class were more willing and available to serve as models to make my Audiovisual Sketch Series | Winter 2019 then the men, especially since I wanted my men topless or in skin tones. It’s easy to find a Barbie doll, with blond hair. Now, the serendipitous bust was also female and slim. It’s a blessing and a curse to work with bodies as a white woman since they are more available, but any representation of the young Caucasian female form either perpetuates its dominance or turns into a conversation about its social effect.

Click image to go to video

I look for ways to disrupt the bodies. I cover the barbie’s face in plasticine. I have her blond hair perpetually blow in the wind to add some camp. I want to see if different possible contrasts and layering processes have varied affective qualities. I want to see how perceptions shift in the translation from sculpture to screen. In the quick model where everything is thrown together the image loses impact rather than getting closer to The Pit.

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These tests were filmed pre-pandemic and assembled almost a year later. I plan on continuing my 

research as soon as health regulations stabilize to shoot in person. Better yet, I’ll wait for summer and adapt to shoot outside. Actually, I think it’d be better to film when the vaccine finally arrives in Canada, so I can be inside. Well, in a few more months when everyone gets their two doses. Just a couple more months, it won’t be long.

Plasticine layering tests on bust

Multi-coloured layering and compositing

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Dirty Talk

Short Film | 4mins | May 2020

The afternoon motion sickness.
Look outside, it helps. 

LEGAULT. ARUDA. 2 UNREAD MESSAGES.

The sun is warm
but no one waits for a haircut at the barbershop.

TRUDEAU. TAM. RESCUED DOGS ON DODO.

The breeze is light
but no one is running towards the metro.

TRUMP. FAUCI. PIZZA FILTER ON MESSENGER CHAT.

The quivering ribbon in the tree
is still out of reach.

*ding*

 3 UNREAD MESSAGES. MARU THE CAT SITS IN A BOX.

Pay attention Gabriela.

A short film project challenges artists to find ‘inspiration and enlightenment’ in the experience of sheltering in place. And it’s working. [1]Norman Wilner, “Canadian directors are making films in self-isolation”, Now Toronto, May 12, 2020, https://nowtoronto.com/movies/canadian-directors-making-films-in-self-isolation, accessed on … Continue reading

But the film I was making was not going to be inspiring. I wasn’t sure if I had the energy when I was asked to make a film for the Greetings from Isolation Project, but I had nothing to lose and less to do. Dirty Talk is a time capsule of my state of mind during the first wave of the pandemic. It captures the yearning and the revulsion I felt as a single person living alone. It feels like the floor is liquid. Spit bubbles, licking doorknobs and washing hands in saliva in close up against a black background while I channelled my inner ASMR host to create something erotic and uncanny, intimate and anonymous. I’m delighted to have a PG film programmed at two porn film festivals. 

This project follows my research on the grotesque which creates gaps, spaces of play in between culturally relative boundaries; it generates an uncomfortable oscillation between attraction and repulsion.  [2] Frances S. Connelly, “Introduction: Entering the Spielraum”, The Grotesque in Western Art and Culture, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2012. [3] Noël Carrol “The Grotesque Today: Premilinary Notes on a Taxonomy”, Modern Art and the Grotesque, Eds Frances S. Connelly, Cambridge University Press, New York,  2003, pp. 291-311.   [4] Justin D. Edwards and Rune Graulund, Grotesque, London and New York, Routledge, 2013. [5]Philip Thomson, The Grotesque, Methen & Co Ltd, London, 1972. What was grotesque yesterday is mundane today as we create new boundaries in new places. I also expected the experience of this film would evolve with the pandemic. As I write this in the spring of 2022, a gulf has grown between this past version of myself. These obsessions seem quaint and exhausting.

References

References
1 Norman Wilner, “Canadian directors are making films in self-isolation”, Now Toronto, May 12, 2020, https://nowtoronto.com/movies/canadian-directors-making-films-in-self-isolation, accessed on March 29, 2021.
2 Frances S. Connelly, “Introduction: Entering the Spielraum”, The Grotesque in Western Art and Culture, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2012.
3 Noël Carrol “The Grotesque Today: Premilinary Notes on a Taxonomy”, Modern Art and the Grotesque, Eds Frances S. Connelly, Cambridge University Press, New York,  2003, pp. 291-311.
4 Justin D. Edwards and Rune Graulund, Grotesque, London and New York, Routledge, 2013.
5 Philip Thomson, The Grotesque, Methen & Co Ltd, London, 1972.

Video Sketch Series | Spring 2020

I am too old for this, but Santa refuses to stop filling the stockings with chocolate and small trinkets for the four adult children. I pull out the novelty melting snowman which consists of a golf ball of white plasticine to sculpt and decorate with  plastic accessories and googly eyes (see image below). I build a snowman and over the next ten minutes it is pulled down into a puddle. I follow up with Calivin & Hobbes style monster snowmen [1] Bill Waterson, Calvin and Hobbes, originally published January 10, 1994, U go comics,  https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1994/01/10, accessed on May 26, 2022. until I fixate on the putty alone. I sculpt, it melts and I resculpt.

Novelty melting snowman a.k.a. the blob

#0 Ode to Mike

Mike remarks that I should make an animation of him as he hands me gold: a guest pass. I accept the challenge, though I doubt he’s seen any of my recent work. Mike’s photo does not blend into the melting blobs filmed from the side on top of a mirror, but the mirrored image enchants me.

Sorry Mike

What a convenient lack of colour for someone who mainly uses the luma key tool to composite. I consider if this blob could meld with the body in continuation with Audiovisual Sketch Series | Winter 2019, it feels bodily. Maybe it could serve as the visual counterpart of Crreeeeps, but I’d like pretty flowers to counterbalance irritating sounds. I reserve my favourite black room in the Visual Art’s building to play with the blob and the film programs’ freshly acquired cameras.

#1 Flower Blob

It’s not 3D?

They assume the image is computer generated at the backyard critique of summer 2020.

I spin some plastic flowers in a water filled cylindrical vase. The fluid on fluid meshes better than Mike’s photo. It is exciting that the blob could be confused with 3D, but it’s also possible that the images reached a point of sterility.

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#2 Viral Blob

The blob sits on a mirror that I spin around by hand. The jerk of my hand-held movement over shadows the melting of the blob when it’s sped up. I superimpose layers of this image atop itself. Though it was filmed pre-pandemic, I can only see a virus.

Click image to go to video

#3 River and Red Skin Blob

The St-Lawrence river in spring from Cartier Bridge, the blob and a close-up of red paint cracking on my skin are superimposed at different space scales, time scales and texture. I’d like to push these extremes of scale further away from each other and find new ways to combine the blob and the body.

Click image to go to video

References

References
1 Bill Waterson, Calvin and Hobbes, originally published January 10, 1994, U go comics,  https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1994/01/10, accessed on May 26, 2022.

Crreeeeps

Sound Loop | 10mins | Dec 2019

– So, apparently I’m a video artist now

– Are you sure they weren’t just throwing you shade?

Says my ex-coworker from my days as a video rental store clerk.

I know where they are coming from as we wait in line for our next Fantasia Film Festival film. We breathe sci-fi, horror and fantasy films with kids wearing shirts from metal bands, who cheer on Korean noodle commercials and make cat sounds mixed in with the occasional hiss of beer cans opening as the theatre goes dark. [1]Matthew David Surridge, “FANTASIA 2018, DAY 5, PART 1: NEOMANILA”, Black Gate: Adventures in fantasy literature, Aug 8, 2018, … Continue reading [2]Nick Allen, “Fantasia 2018: Just a Breath Away, Nightmare Cinema”, Rogert Ebert, July 13, 2018,  https://www.rogerebert.com/festivals/fantasia-2018-just-a-breath-away-nightmare-cinema, … Continue reading My professor was not throwing shade. I remind them of their friend Anna Hawkins, [3]Anna Hawkins, How to Chop an Onion, dual channel video installation, 2016, https://annahawkins.net/How-to-Chop-an-Onion, accessed on June 2, 2022. , the self-identifying video artist who, like me, does not fill the screen with one image, they cut it up into parts. We share our form, but as I read her website, I do not resonate with her approach.

The sculpture student told me they didn’t mind seeing the beginning of a film after it had already ended. But I did. The kids in metal shirts arrive on time for their screening and refrain from divulging spoilers. These are unwritten norms, but in the art gallery the viewer meanders at any time, they might chatter with their friend and leave when bored. [4]Dominique Chateau, “Art, Otherwise Than Art Cinema and Contemporary Art: A Mutual Challenge”, Post-cinema: Cinema in the Post-art Era, eds Dominique Chateau, José Moure, Amsterdam, Netherlands, … Continue reading

Crreeeeps (that’s two r’s and four e’s) is the looped soundtrack designed for a looped film designed to compensate for the art gallery environment. I seek to create a soundtrack that parallels my visuals such as in Pond and Antidote, where we vacillate between organic and digital, between figurative and abstraction. Walter Murch talks about a similar ambiguity created in the Lung Do Bridge scene of Apocalypse Now  where the sounds melt between the bridge repair, the chaos of the gun fight, the jungle and rock music of unknown origins. [5] Walter Murch, “Touch of Silence”, Lecture, Institut Francais, London, Friday 17 April 1998, in Soundscape, eds Larry Sider, Diane Freeman, Jerry Sider, London, Wallflower Press, 2003.   One moment Crreeeeps is a calming waves and the next time it is nails on a chalkboard. There is no dominant emotional state, akin to a moody teenager. Electronic sounds, a cello, an electric guitar and recordings from a Japanese temple are mixed to blur the line between soundscape and music.

As the hiss of beer can is replaced by the cracking of twisting off wine bottles tops, I am not sure what will happen next. I doubt I can get anyone to miaow, let alone yell at my screen, if I’m lucky, I might get some disgusted grunts. I’d also like to mention that drugs are not discouraged and I’m pleased that  someone has asked.

References

References
1 Matthew David Surridge, “FANTASIA 2018, DAY 5, PART 1: NEOMANILA”, Black Gate: Adventures in fantasy literature, Aug 8, 2018, https://www.blackgate.com/2018/08/08/fantasia-2018-day-5-part-1-neomanila/, accessed on June 2, 2022.
2 Nick Allen, “Fantasia 2018: Just a Breath Away, Nightmare Cinema”, Rogert Ebert, July 13, 2018,  https://www.rogerebert.com/festivals/fantasia-2018-just-a-breath-away-nightmare-cinema, accessed on June 2, 2022.
3 Anna Hawkins, How to Chop an Onion, dual channel video installation, 2016, https://annahawkins.net/How-to-Chop-an-Onion, accessed on June 2, 2022.
4 Dominique Chateau, “Art, Otherwise Than Art Cinema and Contemporary Art: A Mutual Challenge”, Post-cinema: Cinema in the Post-art Era, eds Dominique Chateau, José Moure, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Amsterdam University Press, 2020.
5 Walter Murch, “Touch of Silence”, Lecture, Institut Francais, London, Friday 17 April 1998, in Soundscape, eds Larry Sider, Diane Freeman, Jerry Sider, London, Wallflower Press, 2003.

Antidote

Music Video | 10 mins | Aug 2019

The tire was dangerously compressed. I guess I hadn’t thought this through. I was cycling home on the narrow and steep bike path of Pont Jacques-Cartier with a large stolen rock from Parc Jean-Drapeau in my bag. Was this too much weight for my bike? A week or two earlier, a couple of days before I was meant to VJ a musical performance for the first time, my computer screen went blue: Windows crashed. After testing the possibility of installation in a VA basement gallery with three projectors in my installation test of Audiovideo Sketch Series | Winter 2019, I was averse to projecting onto white walls. I wanted to incorporate images to natural environments as I did in Pond. I wanted to project onto the rock walls at Jean-Drapeau Parc during a separate musical performance for the rocks. However, the electrical plugs I had discovered, didn’t work, the projector’s battery was short-lived and the weather would need to comply with resource availability. That’s when I stole the rock.

You don’t have to make music videos before making real films anymore.

Explained the short film director (short both in duration of film and height of director) to me at a Benelux crowded with film geeks and filmmakers.

As a child it never occurred to you that there is such a thing as real films or fake films, or that Jonathan Glazer, Spike Lee and Michel Gondry were making music videos as a chore to get to other places. Though comments like this made it clear that music videos were second rate to many in cinema, all my plans had fallen apart and I love making music videos.

In preparing for this VJ experiment, my Cecelia McKinnon aka Star Canyon, told me the song was about rocks and fracking. Rock, be it volcanic or sedimentary, is formed through a process of layering. To us, they hold on to the past in fossils and do not move, when in fact rock is in movement and transformation at a speed we humans cannot see. I borrowed her rock collection: some plain grey, some sparkled, some were wrapped in felt or seaweed. She does not remember why she picked up these rocks, or why they remain a treasure. I recorded them as I swung around a table lamp to let the light reveal them and digitally rotated and layered these images onto each other. I projected these images onto her face. I projected the images of the rocks and the rocks on the face, onto my stolen rock. With each layer captures the interaction of the body and the rock with the digital shifting of colour and pixelation caused by the projector and camera. 

I had wanted to work with this layering effect ever since I had seen Michael Reich’s absurd and crass feature film: She’s Allergic to Cats [1]Michael Reich, She’s Allergic to Cats, Normal, Subtractive, 2016, YouTube movie trailer, 2 min, uploaded by Normal TV, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvok3bGOXN8&ab_channel=NormalTV, accessed … Continue reading which blends 4K RED footage to low-fi camera. A classmate noted that the work seemed to belong in an art gallery. I realized that Antidote resembles more the work of Erin Schirreff’s Still [2] Erin Shchirreff, Still, silent installation video, 2019. who had the pleasure to hear her artist talk at CICA (Conversations in Contemporary Art) and see the film at Parisian Laundry. She is a sculptor who mainly works in film and photography. The viewer never gets to see the three-dimensional modern sculpted objects as he is interested in the transformation and the trace of the sculpted object into these new forms.

[…] her unique play of media between the moving image and single exposures have been dubbed ‘duration pieces,’ which add temporal motion to the otherwise still, and illusions of depth to two-dimensional surfaces. […] She’s been shooting it under different light conditions in her studio, and swinging us through their atmospheric and illusory effects. [3]Sky Gooden, “How Artist Erin Shirreff Reveals the Secrets of Modernist Sculpture”, Frieze, February 22, 2019, … Continue reading

I guess it was just my luck that so many of my plans failed and I ended up doing something I enjoyed and made it home without a flat.

References

References
1 Michael Reich, She’s Allergic to Cats, Normal, Subtractive, 2016, YouTube movie trailer, 2 min, uploaded by Normal TV, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvok3bGOXN8&ab_channel=NormalTV, accessed on April 15, 2021. 
2 Erin Shchirreff, Still, silent installation video, 2019.
3 Sky Gooden, “How Artist Erin Shirreff Reveals the Secrets of Modernist Sculpture”, Frieze, February 22, 2019, https://www.frieze.com/article/how-artist-erin-shirreff-reveals-secrets-modernist-sculpture, accessed on March 3, 2021.

Pond

Video Installation | 10 mins | June 2019

You get on the fast train, to a local train, to another local train, to a ferry, to arrive at the remote fishing island where you drop off your bags at your guest house, to a bus, to the lineup, to the little entrance where you take off your shoes. The guards loom over you as you approach the puddles that form on the hydrophobic cement at the Teshima Art Museum. The piece is called Matrix by Rei Naito, but it’s hard to split from the architecture. [1] Rei Naito, “Matrix”, Installation, Teshima Art Museum, Teshima, Japan, 2010. It’s forbidden to touch the water, which makes touching the water twice as tempting.

Through the large holes in the ceiling, dead leaves, insects and other debris floated in. Three red strings hang from the ceiling that sway with the breeze. Water seeps out from quarter-inch holes. The underlying concept is the observation of the elements and nature. Throughout Japan, the integration of nature, art and ritual is a recurrent theme that comes from Zen tradition. [2]Okakura Kakuzō, The Book of Tea, Dover Publications, Mineola, NY, 1964, originally published 1906. [3]Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, In Praise of Shadows,  Leete’s Island Books, New Haven, CT, 1977 originally published 1933.  The walls surrounding Zen gardens are treated so that the rain creates texture over the years and the groomed stones or sand imitate water for the monks to meditate upon without the hassle of maintaining an actual pond. These themes live on in places like the world’s first digital art museum [4] Team Lab Borderless, Mori Digital Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, 2018. and you get used to taking off your shoes everywhere unless your footwear involves a lot of lacing.

In Pond, my resulting project for my field class to Japan, I looped a short clip of swimming koi fish kept at a temple that goes from naturalism to various digital manipulations of glitch, layers and time warps. This loop is then distorted by a layer of thin water the viewer is encouraged to touch that covers a mirror which projects the image to the ceiling. Thus both the image and the viewer get to be in direct contact with the element of water. Lying down on bean bags encourages a state of relaxation for the viewer, though it’s not as effective as taking a trip to a remote fishing island which seems to host as many stray cats as human full-time residents. It’s tempting to expand the installation into a mirror based river surrounded by a miniature landscape of rock, moss and dirt increasing the collapse between the organic and digital. I also think this would have been better in socks, but I think most art experiences would be better in socks.

References

References
1 Rei Naito, “Matrix”, Installation, Teshima Art Museum, Teshima, Japan, 2010.
2 Okakura Kakuzō, The Book of Tea, Dover Publications, Mineola, NY, 1964, originally published 1906.
3 Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, In Praise of Shadows,  Leete’s Island Books, New Haven, CT, 1977 originally published 1933.
4 Team Lab Borderless, Mori Digital Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, 2018.

Audiovisual Sketch Series | Winter 2019

I wait for it to move, but David Altmejd’s statue The Pit is still. [1]David Altmedj, The Pit, 2011, polystyrene, expandable foam, wood, epoxy clay, epoxy gel, sand, synthetic hair, resin, acrylic paint, latex paint, glass eye, Musée d’Art Comtemporain de Montréal, … Continue reading Something about the repetition of limbs, implied liquid or malleable textures, the fragmented bodies implies movement. Rather than wait for the sculptor, I will animate it myself.

One week is not enough time. My brain switches to producer mode and I stop paying attention in class. At the break, my classmate Simon shows me a sketch of a wooden frame with the camera attached to one end. My saviour understands what I have in mind and how to pull it off. Camille and Anna are also willing to help out. I’m offered an extra week to show my images. Maybe we can pull it off. 

In my application to the MFA, I propose to repeat an exercise I had where I create a moving collage equivalent to an art piece of a different medium. I had done this to an illustration by Michael Deforge [2] Michael DeForge, Very Casual, Koyama Press, Toronto, 2018. in my 2 min film Deer DeForge. I did not take the illustration and animate it directly, but found ways to animate equivalents. In the following sketches, I repeat the exercise with other pieces of cultural production that imply a movement. The exercise led to new discoveries and more unrelated experimentation.

I go to Home Depot with Simon Sunday morning to build his sketch and Ali helps with the spaghetti. I was able to reserve the basement black gallery room for Monday to shoot with my now assistants and models, Camille and Anna. Everyone else joins with beers following our afternoon class. Things get out of hand as we film mouths from up close. The following week, I layer the images, taste the results. Rinse and repeat. 

#1 Spaghetti Face

Can I recreate this sense of attraction? Big Kids by Michael Deforge (again) [3] Michael Deforge, Big Kids, Drawn & Quarterly, Montreal, 2014

We dropped spaghetti onto a mask at the end of a long cubic frame with a camera at the other end. I switched the mask for a face and layers different shots of the spaghetti. As they hover over the face there is a tension and yearning. I would love to do this with a slow motion camera to lengthen the landing, though it’s unclear to me whether it’s the tension or the landing that is most important.

Click image to go to video

#2 Ghost Shirt

A dissonance of movement between the strings of this old costume shirt and the dancing legs is emphasized by the digital glitches created in the composition of the two. The effect is joyful and disjointed.

Click image to go to video

#3 Inside Out Face

I copy the effect of light in the mouth from Laurie Anderson’s O Superman video [4]Josh White, Laurie Anderson – O Superman, Warner Bros. Records, Los Angeles, CA, 1982, YouTube music video, 9 min uploaded by  Nonesuch Records, https://youtu.be/Vkfpi2H8tOE?t=107, … Continue reading and play it against the eyes on black from an old project and the extreme close-up of taste buds on a tongue to create a face without a head. I’m disappointed to discover that it reminds many of the Têtes a Claques .  [5] Têtes à claques, “The Will Waller 2006”, Têtes à claques, 2008, YouTube clip, 4 min, https://youtu.be/hJgQCbRsq-I, accessed on December 1, 2020.

#4 Bubble Face

Full boday intermediate – Click image to go to video
Head Intermediate – Click image to go to video

I was fascinated by the Espace Go’s 2013–2014 season posters (above right) [6] Marc-André Rioux, Isabelle Allard et al, Théâtre Espace Go — Saison 2013–2014, Ad campaign, Cosette, Montreal, 2013. when they were pasted all over the metro, which is before the first time I used oil and vinegar as a mask for Deer DeForge in 2015 and then Dinos are Not Dead in 2018. I film my colleague’s faces moving at a designated angle every minute from three cameras to create an intermediate. These intermediates are a discovery in themselves. Out of all the sketches, this result is closest to the inspiration image. 

#5 Arms

Imitating the double arm in the top right corner from David Altmedj – The Pit
Norman McClaren – Pas de deux
Click image to go to video

I start with the arm. David Altmejd’s The Pit hovering double arm embraces the air. The result is closer to Norman McClaren’s Pas de Deux. [7] Norman McLaren, Pas de Deux, National Film Board of Canada, 13 min https://www.nfb.ca/film/pas_de_deux_en/, accessed on April 13, 2022. The digital tools permit irregular time and size manipulations. I try to integrate legs. Can I integrate this with other body elements? What’s missing?

Click image to go to video

#6 Fire Hands

I want a head for the floating eyes and teeth lights from #3 Inside Out Face. My hand jerks in and out of a black frame, then I layer the clip. Layered. It’s not a head, it’s better than that. When I layer this fire hand against itself and it turns into electricity.

Click image to go to video
Click image to go to video

Sound and Installation

Can I translate the images into sound the same way I translate still images into moving images?

When I present my work two weeks later, I hand over feedback sheets asking about the sounds they imagined to avoid obvious directions. The pieces are well received. I’m told they are beautiful, which rubs me wrong. I want the sound to emphasize the uncanny and discomfort. 

AM DeVito responds to my call for collaborators in the electroacoustics department with whom I learn, exchange and play. We record the sound of pasta, crunching celery onto which they sprinkle Ableton magic and bake it into #4 Bubble Face and #5 Arms.

I repeated my layering process from the #6 Fire hands, with varied sounds like frying bacon, hands rubbing, glass edge rubbing against guitar strings, biting into a pear. 

We did it. They are great sketches made fast and dirty in two weeks.

Stratum | Three Audiovisual Sketches | 7 mins | Dec 2019

“So where do you plan on exhibiting these?” I didn’t. These were meant to be tests with many loose ends that bugged me. However they were well received. Not sure what to do with them, so l collected these three audiovisual sketches together and threw it on the internet.

Many saw these as life sized or bigger than life installations. Sometimes a suggestion turns into a discovery. I borrow three small projectors and play around with them in a windowless room, but I don’t know what I’m looking for. I do not understand the advantages of this projection format. The materials are silent to me.

References

References
1 David Altmedj, The Pit, 2011, polystyrene, expandable foam, wood, epoxy clay, epoxy gel, sand, synthetic hair, resin, acrylic paint, latex paint, glass eye, Musée d’Art Comtemporain de Montréal, Montreal, https://flux.macm.org/en/the-gallery/the-pit/, accessed on December 1, 2020.
2 Michael DeForge, Very Casual, Koyama Press, Toronto, 2018.
3 Michael Deforge, Big Kids, Drawn & Quarterly, Montreal, 2014
4 Josh White, Laurie Anderson – O Superman, Warner Bros. Records, Los Angeles, CA, 1982, YouTube music video, 9 min uploaded by 

Nonesuch Records, https://youtu.be/Vkfpi2H8tOE?t=107, accessed on December 1, 2020.

5 Têtes à claques, “The Will Waller 2006”, Têtes à claques, 2008, YouTube clip, 4 min, https://youtu.be/hJgQCbRsq-I, accessed on December 1, 2020.
6 Marc-André Rioux, Isabelle Allard et al, Théâtre Espace Go — Saison 2013–2014, Ad campaign, Cosette, Montreal, 2013.
7 Norman McLaren, Pas de Deux, National Film Board of Canada, 13 min https://www.nfb.ca/film/pas_de_deux_en/, accessed on April 13, 2022.

Dinos Are Not Dead

Narrative | 2 mins | Dec 2018

It sounded like a dinosaur,

As I was trying to remember the sound, I remembered that these sounds are made up. A small group of sound designers working for Steven Spielberg decided what dinosaurs sound like and their job was to make dinosaurs scary. [1]Rachel Funnell, “Exclusive: How Were The Dinosaur Noises in Jurassic Park Made, And Were They Accurate?” I Fucking Love Science, October 6, 2020, … Continue reading

In the Surplus Value of Images, W. J. T. Mitchell uses the example of the dinosaur to talk about how our collective images evolve using the example of the dinosaur. [2]W. J. T. Mitchell, “The Surplus Value of Images”, Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3, September 2002, pp. 1–23, http://www.jstor.com/stable/44029949, … Continue reading Dinos are not dead is my video response to this text made as a class assignment. In the same way that our collective image of the dinosaur is speculation, so is the sound. In this film, I juxtapose images to sound, the known to speculation and the mythic to the ordinary. 

David Attenborough narrated in my mind as I creep towards the pigeons with my DSLR. The pigeons dislike my harassment as much as I dislike theirs. Every spring I am forced to engage in a sisyphean battle to keep nests off my balcony. My battle is not unique as pigeons have taken over most urban spaces across the globe with a population of 400 million. [3] Emma Bryce, “Why Are There So Many Pigeons?” Live Science, October 27, 2018, https://www.livescience.com/63923-why-cities-have-so-many-pigeons.html, accessed on April 19, 2021. They are an unexotic pest and citadin even though they do descend from the mythic dinosaurs. [4]University of California Museum of Paleontology, “Are Birds Really Dinosaurs?” Dinobuzz: current topics considering Dinosaurs, University of California, Berkeley, CA, January 22, 1998,  … Continue reading [5]Lowell Dingus and Timothy Rowe, “Chapter 12: The Evolutionary Map for Dinosaurs”, The Mistaken Extinction, New York, W. H. Freeman, 2018, … Continue reading 
I film balsamic vinegar in oil to create a digital mask which refers back to the psychedelic era of the 70s through the iconic work of the expanded cinema collective Joshua Light Show, best known for the live moving images during the shows of the likes of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. [6]Gregory Zinman “The Joshua Light Show: Concrete Practices and Ephemeral Effects”, American Art, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2008, pp. 17–21, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/591166, … Continue reading. This technique hides my manipulations in plain sight letting the viewer make connections and underpinning how we all participate in fooling ourselves.

References

References
1 Rachel Funnell, “Exclusive: How Were The Dinosaur Noises in Jurassic Park Made, And Were They Accurate?” I Fucking Love Science, October 6, 2020, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/exclusive-how-were-the-dinosaur-noises-in-jurassic-park-made-and-were-they-accurate/, accessed on November 26, 2021.
2 W. J. T. Mitchell, “The Surplus Value of Images”, Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3, September 2002, pp. 1–23, http://www.jstor.com/stable/44029949, accessed on December 3, 2020.
3 Emma Bryce, “Why Are There So Many Pigeons?” Live Science, October 27, 2018, https://www.livescience.com/63923-why-cities-have-so-many-pigeons.html, accessed on April 19, 2021.
4 University of California Museum of Paleontology, “Are Birds Really Dinosaurs?” Dinobuzz: current topics considering Dinosaurs, University of California, Berkeley, CA, January 22, 1998,  https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/avians.html, accessed on March 9, 2021.
5 Lowell Dingus and Timothy Rowe, “Chapter 12: The Evolutionary Map for Dinosaurs”, The Mistaken Extinction, New York, W. H. Freeman, 2018, http://www.geo.utexas.edu/courses/302d/Mistaken%20Extinction/Chapter%2012.pdf, accessed on March 9, 2021.
6 Gregory Zinman “The Joshua Light Show: Concrete Practices and Ephemeral Effects”, American Art, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2008, pp. 17–21, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/591166, accessed on November 26, 2021.