still live process blog

this post is simply to bring all the micro50s into one place.
i’ve placed them in chronological order (top to bottom) if you’re interested in the way in which they were developed.

flips 1 - 8, flip duo, flip duo 2, audio test, flicker test, three makes a couple : david
paea’s flip & threnody : paea
folding & 4 acts : simon

i also built a little flash player for combining and reconfiguring 4 micro50s - click for popup.

most of the micro50s are MPEG4 encoded - you’ll need a recent version of Quicktime installed. or you could use VLC if you download the files. if you download them you can set them to loop in Quicktime and open a bunch of them together.

 flip 1 [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 flip 2 [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 flip 3 [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 flip 4 [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 flip 5 [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 flip 6 [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 flip 7 [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 flip 8 [0:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 paea's first flip [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 folding [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 flip duo [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 4 acts flip [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 flip duo 2 [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 audio test [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 flicker test [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 three makes a couple [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 threnody [0:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Lee Christofis (Melbourne based writer/reviewer/critic), in a recent review used the word threnodies. I looked it up, I liked the definition, I thought about a two second flick film that might be able to ‘be’ this word…threnody - a poem or song of mourning or lamentation. A two second slip into the memory of (a) grief? Duration undisclosed. Textures variable. Vaguely I remember a phrase from a Deborah Hay book (?)…’in the quick of suffering’. Seems to apply here.

 threnody [0:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’ve had a quick peek at the films. I wasn’t sure what to expect really. I imagine 2 seconds is a bit of a challenge! My initial reaction was they looked like time lapse work or some kind of crazy ramping or time remapping had taken place (I love all that tomfoolery) but I did get a sense of narrative. Which is quite a feat in 2 seconds. Haven’t watched all of them - liked the use of text in ‘four acts’. It seems to last longer than 2 seconds which is strange as it is 2 seconds.

Tim Halliday, Northampton.

David and I spent the morning filming in the large gallery in PICA. Interesting. We wanted to, quite simply, make a dance film. For the task of it. To consider the camera.  No narrative, no cataclysmic events…just dancing. Stark or empty environments. Nice wooden floors though. Dance pants (with holes) and an old t - shirt.

The score was focused on history, since this has been a point of interest for me in these weeks. Memory, history, body. My sense of what that means as a dancer who is a bit eager to always be moving through so many different ‘kinds’ of movements. I undertook a sort of turbid dancing out of as many histories as I could process. Am I looking for the most applicable to me, or just trying really hard to be good at everything (impossible)?!

Discussions about newness returned to me. I found qualities and almost exact movements (of a me of before, of someone else entirely) resurface. Though I knew the terrain of many shifts in quality, and though familiar, I felt newness. Perhaps it had something to do with context and the immediate ackowledgement of the multiple existence of histories INSIDE of my own umbrella quality. It was movement without looking for it. I enjoyed the rigour and the pace I set for myself.

We have begun to splice these images together. What is emerging is a series of sections of dancing, a lot of it viewed from above - as the camera hovers over a large space that I move through. My body seems to be engaged in an important task. I appear like an ant scurrying across a wide floor. Busy.

I am both interested in the rigour of dancing for the camera and the task of choreographing slippages.

A full day. Another day.

Just finished up a very fleeting visit to a cold and wet Sydney - presenting some materials from my PhD work at the “International Conference on Memory”. Fascinating to be in amongst the language and metaphor of science. To listen to people investigating how movement contributes to experiencing music (in babies), and particularly in the reduction of aspects of human experience to absurdly controlled domains (although I understand the need for this). The capacity of these experiments to have almost no ecological validity (their term) is wonderfully bizarre. It reminded me that although what we are doing in Perth is  not exactly “everyday” it is actually more deeply considerate of the everyday and of lived experience than these particles of “knowledge”. Not that I want to be too hard on them - I thoroughly enjoyed it and was deeply stimulated by what I saw/heard. But I kept hearing the words of my Professor from the University of Otago saying, “So what Simon, so what? And perhaps it is that — the drive to nestle investigations within broad (or other?) contexts … or perhaps it is to understand what these contexts might be?

Sitting in Sydney airport.

Waiting.

My taxi driver on the way here started talking (out of the blue) about time. In his thick Indian accent he wondered outloud about why he didn’t have enough of it … “finishing work at 5pm ready to start again at 3am” … “it’s not good for my health”. I commented how much I enjoyed airports - they always make me feel like I have a lot of time - something to do with the state of relaxation they provoke in me.

It also made me think about our 2 second flips (micro50s) and how they - with my tongue firmly in cheek - might be considered to be cultural antidotes for a fast world.

“Time to catch some art”

“Films for a busy world”

“Never too long”

“Make time for art”

Or maybe it is not that they are antidotes but rather are a direct expression of a perceived (cultural) compression in time.
Not quite sure where this post is heading. But there is something for me about how I experience time when I am watching them - it is compressed and expanded at the same time. As if there is much more in those 2 seconds than there ought to be - or more than that time deserves.

this is just for Simon.  who by now is on a plane going to Sydney.

another 2 secs.

trying to strengthen the sense of narrative over such a small timeframe.

 three makes a couple [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

another motion50 / flip

finally got some footage of simon to be able to add him to the growing archive of 2 second films.  in cutting the film i was keen to see what effect adding audio could have - based on the effectiveness of the audio in the last one i made.  so i went for something a little funny - funny ha ha not funny odd.

on watching this i then thought about inserting blank frames again.  this time i added them into every second frame.  it creates a flicker that gives the impression of a celluloid flicker - ar at least hints at it.  so the effect seems to make the still frames even more like a dance, more continuous even in their abruption. for me it also shifts the way the audio works - it’s much less funny.  or maybe that’s because it was a one time gag - the subsequent viewings perhaps don’t sustain the joke.
have a look and see what you think. the first is the original and the second is the flicker version.

also, to view all the mirco50s to date you can use the category listing on the right -> or click here

 the first edit [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 the second edit [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

another. sound. narrative. white and black frames.

 second duo flip [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

yet more influence. inserted “long” visual silences within the material.

 four acts flip [0:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download