The beginnings of 4.2
After several weeks of experimentation and observations, it is time to review progress.
There have been several changes to the original proposed method and process of research in week 8.
Since then, I have conducted several exercises exploring the ways of seeing and filming and moving as well as the implications of their relationships.
I have also observed several classmates on their research projects as well as other productions outside of class. During these events, I observe and compare their methodologies to my own developing ways of working. This led to a further curiosity of whether or not they also contemplate about the meaning of the act of filming and the relationship between observing as a personal experience and the decision to frame or film something with the eye of the camera. With this in mind I will be conducting some recorded conversations with the people have been working with to generate discourse surround this topic.
An epiphany I had early last week was that rather than creating a scene or just written reflection, a compilation of my journey exploring the different perspectives on the act of filming would be a more suitable documentation. The experimental short clips and conversations with other filmmakers will be the main source materials for this final statement. It may also feature some reflections or quotes I have previously posts as well as some footage from other people’s projects which I have participated in.
Whilst looking at experimental films in another class, a quote from a reading intrigued me deeply and also began to answer the many questions I have been thinking about this semester:
“Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception.” – Stan Brakhage.
Throughout the first half of this semester I have been constantly trying to project my own living experiences on screen (or more accurately in this case, recreate it through the act of filming). I saw the camera as only a lifeless tool that assisted my intentions (to communicate a sense of oneness with nature and a less human centered worldview through relationships with non human characters). But it wasn’t until coming across Stan Brakhage’s idea of defining the camera as a non-human perspective that we often take for granted. It has its own perspective, sees things that we are too limited to see. His film Window Water Baby Moving (1959) presented the events of a birth from a neutral perspective yet portraying a realistically fragmented reality that is truer to our experiences in life than the conventional device of filmic continuity.
As well as a video compilation and a final written statement, I will also like to do a performance piece that summarises the relationship I have had with the camera.