The Focus (Documentation)

After my critique, I continued with my theme of exploring our relationship with light and dark. I decided to work back into the dark areas, though. It wasn’t enough for them to be silent. Looking at my footage I realized (with help) that it was a little like tuning a radio. The areas of dark were the ambiguous static stations and the areas of light are like the music you are searching for. In this case instead of music there are voices and comforting daylight sounds. To increase the contrast between these moments of relief in the light with the almost anxiety of the dark, I added subtle recordings of radio static and some creepy night sounds.

To finalize the project, I worked in the details. I made sure that images and sounds lined up to strengthen the relationship between the two. I don’t want it to seem like someone is just laughing near a street light or a bell is chiming by a tree, but that the streetlight is laughing and the tree is chiming in the dark.

Then there came the issue of presenting my project. It would ruin the effect of a film about the word “dark” (or at least this one) for it to be viewed in the light. My film is also meant to convey an individual experience of the dark so it wouldn’t make sense to have a large audience. The answer to this dilemma popped into my head as an image of an early camera (one where the photographer had to look through the lense with cloth draped over their head.) I constructed a black cloth cover for my own lap top so that the viewer would have to “enter” a small, dark space to see the film.

This (with better resolution):

Vs. this:

The Focus (Work)

Thinking about this project I was interested in shadows: the idea of dark existing in daylight, how they hint at the identity of what casts them, and how they change with time. I also liked the idea of “the dark” being a sort of temporary place that we can walk into. Walking around campus at night thinking about my project I started thinking about the experience of walking through the dark and our relationship with light and dark.

I recorded my walk and experimented with different angles, attempting to find one that really conveyed the surreality of some things in the dark.

Looking back at my footage I was very taken by the contrast between the lights and what they illuminated and the static dark. I decided to try and use sound to portray the comfort of the light as opposed to the unknown of the dark.

I began recording daytime sounds and conversations on the line near the respective lights I would match the sounds with. My friends were all very surprised to discover I had recorded all of our conversations, but telling them would have destroyed the project’s integrity. The bell tower

I laid my “day sounds” over the areas of light in my film and altered the sound of the dark to something like static on a radio.

The Word on the Line

The word is dark.

Shadows

The Line into the Dark

you came from the warm Dark into

flourescence

pulled, screaming, from it

you heard its nocturnal breathing under your bed

your mother said it was in your head

for she came into the Dark

for silence

and someday you will too

come into the Dark with tired eyes

and stay.

Pictures of the dark:

These images are meant to convey the loneliness, mystery, and creepiness of the dark but also the intrigue of it. The pictures are blurred and distorted to give them an ambiguous feeling.

      

  

  

Word Definition

This image is dark in many ways.

Exploring the Line

Constants: 

• 5 feet wide
• It is always the same time across the line  but we can never be at different points on the line at the same time.
• On the surface there are practically no flat parts of the line. It would be interesting to cut the earth to make the line flat path.
• Anywhere you are on the line, you can find dirt and trash. It’s a little sad that trash was one of the most noticeable continuities on the line.
• The only organisms that exist at every part of the line are insects.
• There is always the sound of human activity. Even in the woods you can often hear voices or a car or at least the sounds of the trash they have left behind underfoot.
• Alterations made by people. (graffiti in civilization and trash in the woods) It’s almost as if we feel uncomfortable not marking things. In the case of the graffiti, I guess people want some form of attention or a visual record of being there. People can’t handle the thought that they may go unnoticed and eventually be forgotten. Everyone feels they must leave a mark, so for some people graffiti is their solution. I wonder if we subconsciously feel the same way about trash in the woods. Maybe people need to prove to themselves that the woods aren’t all wild, that people have conquered that too.

Changing Variables:

• Lighting (fluctuates between partially sunny and florescent and then changes to dappled sunlight)
• Types of people (goes from college students in baggy shorts or camo hats to townspeople, old men, and families to art students)
• Amount of people (less in town and in the woods than in the campuses)
• Sounds (goes from yelling and construction to traffic and bells to yelling and music to bird sounds and me wheezing up a hill)
• Architecture (campus to town to campus to woods)
• Terrain (sidewalks change from cement to brick, grass changes to dirt and roots)

Doorways:

     

Graffiti:

         

Personal Territory Tour

Directions

50 Things to Describe It

50 Things Continued and Parts of Conversations Overheard From the Tree

Some drawings of parts of the tree

Women in Mythology

The front and back cover

Persephone

Medusa and Aphrodite

The Three Fates: Clotho, Lachesis, Atropis

I made this little book in my Honors Text and Image Class last week.