Slow...s...l...o...w...

The state of suspended motion is at the core of most video work.

Under, a 3.5-minute video by Kevin Frilet (2014, however presented this year at Video Art and Experimental Film Festival, VAEFF, http://videoart.net/about-vaeff-2017-2/) is a mysterious black-and-white piece in slow motion under water. While the explanation says that the film was photographed in a public swimming pool with people the director knew, the piece was masterfully edited, with a large crew and beautifully scored to give the chills of a rape and its escape. I'm not sure, though, what opening sequence has to do with the violation--perhaps a predation of someone who strays from the crowd...?

Slo-mo seems to be the M-O of experimental video, contributing significantly to its genre. Video Art, as commented by various critics and curators need not have a narrative, and usually don't. They're meant to express a reflection on an event or emotion, very personal to the creator; hence the abstraction and eerie music.

We're in the artist's head!

I have my own take on this, of course. I find the persistent presence of sexy, naked, young people very commonplace--do millennials strip naked the minute they're inside? And, are we still so exploratory about sex that it's the main thing to make videos about? (Saying this may be unfair; we are a "puritanical" country, after all).

I have seen some nice work with and about kids, about travel and the freedoms it gives, dancing on the streets and roofs of Paris (https://vimeo.com/217624589). Most of it runs in real time--our shaggy friend crafts time for his own uses.

The slo-mo vid reads like an expanded photograph; the decisive moment just wasn't enough to capture the depth of the mental image. That could really be said for most video work, however the slower the motion, the more the viewer must train their acuity visual structure: color, form, composition, taking over where there is no narrative.  It's also why most vids have a ten-minute or less duration. You can ask just so much from your viewer--even a willing one.

Enter Bill Viola, but I'll write about him another time.

Sensing Motion

A NYT article about a North Carolina professor achieving animal behavior capture through motion sensor got my attention. Scientists have been filming and recording animals in the wild for decades with remote control apparatus, however the motion sensor is a recent development.

As I embark on the new project, I considered the end result, a large projected image, and it's taking shape as an outdoor presentation. Is a motion sensor even needed?

Probably not. Motion sensors get their significance indoors for obvious reasons. Being outdoors necessarily nears something is moving.

Here I bring up the classic structural avant-guarde film, Wavelength. The 45-minute film has little motion, save for a few characters entering and exiting the film briefly in four different instances. Otherwise, it's a slow zoom toward the windows of a Bowery loft in 1967, when that side of town was decidedly raw. Years after the film was made, I was in art school up the block from there. That was the kind of place we students coveted but couldn't afford since its price had blown up a dandelion wisp of the slumming trend so loved in NYC.

The film was made by a Canadian filmmaker Michael Snow. I saw it in graduate school and loved it since, as a still photographer, it gave me the opportunity to observe the details of the film without getting wrapped up in a plot, characters or acting (movies are a difficult medium for me).

As the one beholds the room closing in, the germinating details etch themselves building the stage for the four intrusions of the characters, one of which at a point collapses dead and is discovered by others who had visited the room earlier. The film culminates with the framing of a picture of the wall of a wave in the ocean. Totally great. It's a classic.

Moving while not moving was important in SIS, and is turning into a central issue in FTS. Do memories move or are the memories precisely because they are not moving, frozen in the time space?