video
A man falls from the sky to land in a suburban landscape composed of signs and symbols. As he explores this environment, he is followed by a ghostly woman who hovers, seemingly close by yet just out of reach.
Five stories of suburban life pass slowly before us. Images of the street and the coast as well as other artefacts pass over and under the text. Layers of sound establish a gently shifting atmosphere that supports the text and images. A first-person narrative intertwines with the stories and finally unites with them bringing an autobiographical and specific geographical element to the piece.
A mapping of a familiar landscape through narratives that move between reality and fantasy. The familiar is transformed into something unfamiliar, shown to be at the mercy of subjective experience and imagination.
Video with sound
6 min 12 sec
Although an everyday sight, the telegraph pole suddenly became a strange object, connecting the houses in it’s vicinity to a common point. Were they being secured, as boats in a harbour, or held captive, as prisoners in a chain gang. The need seemed to be mutual, a reminder of the human desire to communicate and to create structures for communication.
Each pole’s presence suggests the existence of all the others and the entire infrastructure of electronic communication that now envelops the planet. It was as if our collective urge to make contact with the rest of the race had manifested itself in this web of wires that increasingly binds us to each other.
The music of Bach, as performed by Glen Gould, proved a catalyst for the for the creation the video. The strict mathematical structure (as with much of Bach) of the Goldberg Variations provided the ideal base for these images of the electronic communication system, elucidating the beauty that can be found in their apparently inhuman and ordinary structure.
The phrases and quotes which occur on screen and as part of the soundtrack reference the history of electronic communication, from the first public telegraph message sent by Morse to the greetings recorded on the gold record attached to the Voyager probes now drifting beyond the boundaries of our solar system.
A piece by Bach (Prelude and Fugue in Cm) played by Glen Gould was one of the selections on the record Sounds of Earth.
A new piece using animation and photography to tell a fragmented story of moths, aeroplanes and people who disappear.
First shown at the exhibition ‘When I Walked Through Walls’ at Ada Street Gallery, London.
Never Older Grown