#lo17

www.plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum15/entries/time-experience/

https://www.cam.ac.uk/cammagazine/benefitsofboredom 

Cam84 Magazine, Easter issue 2018 pp 5-29

July 4th

This article investigates the switch in social attitude to boredom with the ever increasing use of and demands made by the non-stop availability of social media. The article by Victoria James interviews Art History tutor Jennifer Roberts from Harvard University about appreciating art. Roberts sets her students the task of spending 3 hours with a single museum artwork to demonstrate that the investment of time allows insights into art that would otherwise not be noticed without spending that time.

Roberts says:

‘Spending time opposes the the general direction of western culture’

‘The faster the technology the more impatient we become’

The book that changed me: Tacita Dean www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b080xZp9

Night Waves: Tacita Dean in Conversation with Phillip Doddwww.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039q109

June 23rd

I listened to two programmes with Tacita Dean and where the following quotes from her resonated deeply with my practice:

‘I ran away from narrative, to pursue understatement and restraint rather than excess’

‘Straddling that aching gap of time, that stretches’

She spoke in relation to her work about:

‘.. the importance of accident and chance’ and how her work is often a ‘meditation on the passage of time’

When she spoke about dislocation, beginnings and endings I think about how I loop my moving image work to prevent beginnings and endings and which for me suspends my work in a timelessness.

She referred to the Edward Wallace poem ‘First known when lost’ which is about a part of landscape that is lost and about the memory of it, the trace and suggestion which still remains.  

First known when lost 

I never had noticed it until

'Twas gone, - the narrow copse

Where now the woodman lops

The last of the willows with his bill

It was not more than a hedge overgrown.

One meadow's breadth away

I passed it day by day.

Now the soil is bare as bone,

And black betwixt two meadows green,

Though fresh-cut fag got ends

Of hazel made some amends

With a gleam as if flowers they had been.

Strange it could have hidden so near!

And now I see as I look

That the small winding brook,

A tributary's tributary, rises there. 

June 21st 2018

I want to make a new animation to experiment with making the speed and duration of each image such that the shift between each image shows that transition to the viewer. This means that the previous image shows initially at the same time as it’s successor but soon fades away; this is called ‘ghosting’. When I considered this technique before (April 10th) it was an outcome which I happened upon and at the time worked against a smooth realistic effect which I wanted at the time. 

I have been looking more closely at time and duration as discussed by Bergson and I want to try to suggest with animation, the idea that each moment of experience is deposited and held as an endless bank of experiences which are available to draw on as a recollection or memory. I wanted to see if, using ghosting I could suggest this process of ‘archiving’ a previous moment before being replaced by the following moment. 

The following animation resulted:

June 16th 2018

I am reminded of times that I feel, exist everyday, but which don’t correspond to a particular time on the clock. They generally happen (though not exclusively) on waking, and when I call an end to the list of tasks and things I hoped to achieve in the day. 

At these times (there are sometimes several such points each day) I experience time slowing and feel an airy spaciousness wash over me. This time doesn’t have a clearly distinguishable start or finish but seems linked to not living a timetabled agenda and feels reminiscent of another time which is full of possibility. 

Similarly I am reminded of what I experienced when I looked at the images which fall on the inside of my walk-in pinhole camera structures, familiar images of the here and now and yet reminiscent of another time, a time which is not built on memory. 

These spacious feelings are prompted by what I see and hear but are not specific to it, they use the particular as a way to experience the universal, a moment in the present which brushes with a past and holds the possibility of the future.

I think of John Berger who spoke of ‘...time slowing with engagement’ in his book Your face my heart brief as photos.

It is this experience which is embedded in the still and moving images taken of the fabric across the window of the barn, and it is now I am able to answer SH questions from my last crit: 

May 12th 2018

Following an initial enquiry I was offered an 2 hour slot at the gallery to research their digitised archive of Tacita Deans work. I had read about three specific films which seemed relevant to my research and but felt strongly that I wanted to see them as moving image. As they are not currently on show I felt the digitised version was the next best thing.

‘Pie’ a piece shot from Dean’s studio window which lasts 6 mins 46 secs with a true to subject sound track of the birds and background urban noise.

I got such a strong sense of observing the birds as if I were there, as if I was taking the shots. The power of just observing the activity of the bird was so rich in the act waiting and watching, with the passing of the day marked by the sun setting, the rise and fall of traffic noise, the wait to see what’s next feeling washed over me. Nothing particularly exceptional of specific happens, time passes. I am left with a feeling of having witnessed moments of apparent ordinariness which appear to me to fall between something or wrap around something else which is intangible.

‘Green Ray’

A work of 3 mins 48 secs. I am very familiar with this work, the result of a quest by the artist to capture the optical effect of a green ray of light which reults under the correct conditions as the sun sets. This film hold the same framed composition throughout, not zooming, panning or cutting, and with that comes the invitation to slow down, and engage fully with the act of looking. The work tracks the setting sun and with it the shifting surface of the water, and for me the intensity of the experience is enhanced by the absence of a sound track, the silence feels loud. As darkness falls, the expectation of seeing the green ray isn’t met, which allows for me the remarkable skill of filming to be seen, no distraction of a finale, the suspension of linear time unfolding, and the 54 secs of a black screen allows the experience of colour to remain. In this work the experience of observing, it’s the lack of any narrative beyond what was filmed  and no accompanying soundtrack was particularly potent for me.

‘Banewl’ 61 min and 59 secs.

I was struck by how skilfully this work sustained my interest throughout, and how a gentle invitation was given to me as viewer, to slow and look at this place over time. As usual Dean holds a framed composition, the action enters and leaves the frame. Much of the film was shot into the sky, clouds pass through and across, Martens fly past, clouds gather and the sun is obscured and then revealed. The camera frame is held and time unfolds within it. It is the ‘passing through” I feel strongly. I enjoyed the view where the track enters the field, showing at first only possibility and suggestion, to eventually be filled with the movement of the cows as they reach the grassland. A stillness in me met with the movement in them.

The extended scene devoted to birds flocking onto telegraph posts and wires, I wait while they wait, time merges. 

Outcomes.

With these works in mind I will return to my filming and continue to make extended shots over time, but repeatedly from the same position; time lapse and place lapse.