metapaisagens (13.30)
Com o projecto metapaisagens (13.30) pretende-se explorar as propriedades metafísicas de um lugar – espaço, tempo, causalidade e possibilidade.
Para isso são utilizadas duas narrativas correspondentes a um dia solar, 15 horas, que colocadas lado a lado se complementam e se contrapõem simultaneamente.
As duas sequências partem da mesma hora, o meio do dia, e afastam-se; uma recua até ao nascer do sol, a outra avança até ao pôr do sol. O caminho seguinte é o inverso, elas voltam a aproximar-se até atingirem o ponto de partida, a mesma hora do meio do dia – 13.30. A animação é feita através de uma sequência de fotografias recolhidas de 1 em 1 minuto durante as 15 horas de sol (entre as 6h e as 21h) e funciona em loop como forma de representar a dimensão cíclica dos dias.
A tecnologia assume-se aqui como potenciadora de um olhar sobre as alterações atmosféricas ao longo do dia, tornando-as evidentes e expressivas. Assim, a percepção que temos das mutações que caracterizam uma paisagem num determinado espaço de tempo é veículada pela tecnologia. Por outro lado, o resultado final está sempre dependente dessas alterações metafísicas, escapando-nos ao controle, mesmo quando fazemos uso de meios tecnológicos.
seven days
Chris Welsby
1974
20 min colour sound
16mm
The location for this film was by a small stream on the northern slopes of Mount Carningly in southwest Wales.
(…)
There are two aspects to the structure of this film. i) The camera motion is mechanistic; time is accurately calibrated in frames, seconds, and minutes, and space is organized according to geometric principals which govern the operation of the Equatorial Stand. ii) The in-camera editing, however, is not at all mechanistic and is governed by the unpredictable nature of the weather: by the amount of cloud cover, which varied from day to day and by the speed of the clouds drifting across the sky, which depended on the strength of the wind. The final shape of the film is consequently a product of the interaction between the predictable mechanistic nature of technology and the chance-like qualities of the natural world.
Seven Days invites the viewer to contemplate the complex relationship between the structures we invent in order to observe the natural world and the structure we perceive as a result of those observations. The resulting sequences of images suggest a relationship between technology and nature based on principles other than exploitation and domination.
in http://www.luxonline.org.uk/artists/chris_welsby/seven_days.html
river yar
William Raban
1972
35mins colour
2 screen
A two screen study of seasonal changes at the River Yar estuary on the Isle of Wight.
The entire film was shot from a window in a water-mill in Yarmouth, Isle of Wight. From this fixed viewpoint overlooking the River Yar, the camera was operated by ‘single-framing’ so that time was compressed at the rate of one frame every minute (day and night) for three weeks.
The film was made in two parts: twenty-one days following the Autumn Equinox, which is projected on the left-hand screen, and three weeks preceding the Spring Equinox shown on the right-hand screen.
in http://www.luxonline.org.uk/artists/william_raban/index.html
princípio
Desenvolvido como princípio temático pelo cinema ‘avant-garde’ nos anos 60/70 o tempo assumiu um lugar relevante na experimentação tecnologica ao longo dos anos e tem sido a base de vários estudos relacionados com os media audiovisuais.
Um objecto audiovisual reflecte uma narrativa espacio-temporal, seja ela linear ou não linear, real ou imaginária.
A nossa experiência condiciona sempre a percepão que temos do tempo, da duração das coisas, das mutações, das passagens. A nossa memória faz analepses e prolepses, loops, e o tempo manifesta-se concreto e abstracto.
De que modo a nossa memória processa um objecto audiovisual e o entende? Através de frames, imagens que fixamos com o olhar? Ou movimentos, sequências?
Que possibilidades tem a tecnologia de representar novas formas de ver o tempo? Ou de reflectir e formalizar aquelas que já a nossa memória constrói de forma abstracta?
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Time and duration are key concerns of many of the films featured, and part of the re-claimed subject of film by the avant-garde (from Andy Warhol to Chantel Akerman). The most powerful and arresting treatment of time and duration is River Yar (William Raban & Chris Welsby, 1972). This film engages with landscape and environment, themes expanded upon in Chris Welsby’s repeated attempts to create a harmony between natural or organic cycles and the mechanics and cycles involved in film. He states his wish is to create a synthesis between these two modes, mechanical and natural (what he terms intellectual and organic) – from Wind Vane (Chris Welsby, 1972), where the camera is mounted on a wind directed tripod, to Forest Bay II (Chris Welsby, 1973), where the cycle of the tide is set against the time-lapse cycle of the revolving camera. River Yar is a lengthy study of duration and cycles, employing time-lapse photography (Willam Raban pioneered this technique at the Co-op with other films like Broad Walk [1972]) and two-screen projection (a whole programme, ‘Two Screen-Films,’ is dedicated to films that employ two 16mm projectors, projecting side by side onto the screen.)
River Yar employs time-lapse photography to accelerate 24 hrs to last only one minute. From a fixed vantage point, we watch an open landscape – distant hills, an estuary on the left of the screen, a meadow on the right – speed from one dawn to the next. (The sound is recorded at 4 points in the day for 15 secs.) The day’s cycle, depicted on one screen – the sun rising, the early mist, the tide rising and falling, the people and animals in the field, workers on the bank – is juxtaposed by a ‘real-time dawn’ on the other screen. This juxtaposition is hard to perceive, as the light of dawn gradually illuminates the screen. The imperceptible pace of the ‘real time’ dawn is mesmerising in its stillness, next to the rapid progress of the day on the other screen. River Yar is an utterly moving and poignant evocation of time, the seasons, and cycles of day and night, as well as a successful experiment in drawing one to reflect on the time spent recording the footage and the time spent watching it. This engagement in the representation of time in film and in the process of viewing film is no more powerfully evocated than here. Tremendous.
The fascination with landscape and the ethereality of time is also explored in Sheet (Ian Breakwell & Mike Leggett, 1970). Here the spectator’s eye is focused by the insertion of a white sheet in the image. Sheet, which is one of the few films featured in the season that explores London’s streets and buildings at that time, succeeds in leading the viewer to engage with place, atmosphere and duration. In John Smith’s slightly uncharacteristic but not unaccomplished film Leading Light (1975) he employs ‘time lapse’ and ‘real time’ photography to follow sunlight around his room, and so explores the confines of just four walls “by showing how many rooms the camera can make from just one.” (A.L.)
in http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/02/21/shoot_shoot_shoot.html
