As I said in my previous post I am committed to too many things and feel I am overly stretched and not doing any single area justice at the moment. One of those projects is the OCA music collaboration. I was very excited to see the callout as often when I am working I think original music would be a useful addition. Simon who wrote the i will have call you music is keen to write more and I will certainly take him up on that offer one day again. But I was also glad to get involved with the OCA project and meet other practitioners. I have been paired with Emma is doing a music degree.
Poor Emma, the excellent musician who I have been paired with, has had to put up with with me and my inability to devote enough time to the project, along with my scatological, incoherent and chaotic way of working.
I have sent Emma lots of work to look at, plenty of ideas and theory, random quotes and interviews to do with systems theory, time, collaboration, maybe some quantum theory etc. But for quite some weeks, I was unable to send her any sketches, coherent ideas, plans. And the poor woman must find a way to make sense of all this. Thankfully, she is patient although, as I am, was starting to feel quite nervous about the impending deadline dates.
However, things are beginning to formulate. I have returned to a film I identified when first looking for footage to use for DI&C 4/5/6.
https://archive.org/details/VoyagetothePlanetofPrehistoricWomen
Other footage I looked at was the World at War series – https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Series%3A+The+World+at+War+%281973%29%22 although I am not sure about how we’d use that except maybe just as an influence music-wise. I have however, done some moving image sketches with the start and end frames from one episode, although not sure at this point how/if it’s even worth keeping these. Still thinking.
What I’ve done with the Preshisotric Women film is cut all frames out except ones that contain the prehistoric women only. At the moment there are still final credits which I may need to remove as well but for some reason, didn’t feel I wanted to just yet. Anyway:
Voyage to the planet of prehistoric women
1967
1:19:34 running time
In a film lasting nearly one and half hours, there are just eleven minutes of footage that feature women in a film about a journey to Venus (in fact there are just under twenty minutes but the scenes of women carrying a dead fish-type creature have been removed too). The elements that have been cut are men, machines, rockets, and a journey through space.
At the moment the film is titled simply 11 minutes (however, how accurate this might be at the moment is a question and I wonder if it is worth doing the exercise again with more accuracy).
What I do with it next, I do not know. Emma has written a couple of short peices of music after we talked – she has been working with the idea of mixing up time/era – musical tropes from history played on modern equipment for instance. I think I will need to perhaps respond with the visuals to a longer piece once she has played with it all a bit more. In the meantime, I did listen to some music Emma sent me and edited very roughly to the idea of the insistent rhythm. I’ve not uploaded this anywhere yet, it is so rough.
The film is a mashup of time/era; Made in the 60s, set in the future; about a journey to a ‘prehistoric’ landscape, downloaded from the internet, analogue and digital. We are playing with time using film and the new language material code. This reminds me of quantum ideas about time (see Rovelli’sbook on time which I will have a look at again) and I know that Delueze’s Philosophy of Time may hold some interesting mind fodder and creative triggers too – I do not know much about Delueze’s ideas only that he was integral to film and time. In an ideal world, I think integrating some Processing ‘thing’ that plays with the concept of time would be ideal but goodness knows what. We have talked about (along with Carla Reese and Caroline Wright – music and fine art course leaders) projecting and maybe doing some sort of performative action. But again, what that might be, at this point is anyone’s guess. Emma and I have agreed time is our thing to cling to for now. I will add some other links at the end of this where time or collaboration are referenced.
Things to do:
May be worth discussing my ideas with Processing people (perhaps fellow OCA student Simon who is also doing the P course and is excellent with it all as well as the tutors) and get back to Emma – I’ll see if it seems appropriate.
Explore Delueze and time more
Some other sketches made with the footage of the Venus film.
Below is the Joan Jonas and Jason Moran interview but it’s set so it can’t be embedded here. Click through to Vimeo to watch.
ARTNOIR presents Joan Jonas and Jason Moran from SVA MFA Fine Arts on Vimeo.
Another peice of work which I have seen which I was inspired by and which incoporates digital culture