INHABITING SPACE

At the vernissage, we had a little impromptu performance in the space. Cooking in the kitchen at PRIM, in the middle of the installation, surrounded by 8 channels of video and 4 channels of sound, really allowed us to fully experience the piece.

The exhibition is now closed. I'm sure it will have a second life some day, perhaps in a different setting, lighter in terms of technology, maybe with a different subject, shot and presented in different locations.

In the pictures: Myself, Yolaine Lefebvre, Beatriz Herrera.

SIDE NOTE

I stumbled upon this blog entry while looking for information about the Canada Post sorting facilities' past, present and future histories. Aside from featuring another installation of mine (yes, shameless self-promotion), it is packed with historic facts about Little Burgundy, Griffintown, the Lachine Canal and reflects on these areas' uncertain future. 

Interestingly enough, when walking along the Canal bike path a couple nights ago, I noticed that someone had removed the 'NO', leaving only 'THERE IS    USE LOOKING BACK" (which is syntactically incorrect). Maybe we should be looking back, maybe this whole dialogue with the environment is a result of a more complex and distant past of exchanges and communications.

I think I will go back this summer, interchange 'THERE' and 'IS' and add a question mark.

GIVING BIRTH

"Space is invested with social meaning", says ethnographer Marc Augé in Muntadas' On Translation: The Audience". Yes, indeed...

Today was set up day at PRIM. After this week's hard work in the editing room, polishing all four channels of sound, exporting and burning eight channels of video, the work can finally, too, occupy space and, to a certain extent, engage in non-linguistic exchanges with the audience.

I don't care that all the monitors are different, I don't care that there are cables taking over most of the floor. I don't care that the piece is set up in a kitchen, in the basement of a postproduction studio. 

From my sketchbook: "Technology, just like language, is a medium. We should not attempt to make it transparent. On the contrary, we should constantly be reminded that images are representations, that language is a set of symbols, that everything we do, see, say and hear is filtered, transformed by the medium, and recontextualized in the environment." 

And yet, language is all we know, and impressions are all we can leave behind.

UTOPIAN PRESENTATION SETTING

How amazing would it be to be able to present the piece in its original setting? Despite de cliché mise en abîme, it would be an amazing way of returning its memory to the space. I believe that environments are alive, they breathe, they grow, they learn, they evolve and they interact with us just like we interact among ourselves. Putting the piece back where it belongs, with the addition of more intimate sounds and further exploration of language in relation to space and context, it would be my gift to the land, as a mark of respect, but also as part of an exchange between the space and its inhabiters. The location I chose might be a 'dead space', or a terrain vague, to some, but to me it is a privileged witness of life.

There is a pile of cement bricks in the middle of the parking lot. I would like to project the 8 channels as a continuous, flat panorama, directly on the blocks. That would require a projector, a DVD player, some way to incorporate sound and a generator... So maybe not this time.

TITLE

Occuper l'espace/Parler du langage

It really is about occuping space. And talking about language.

FIELD RECORDING

This weekend I went back to the location to record ambient sound. Even though it was only one week after the shooting, the atmosphere was incredibly different. I had forgotten how sound could capture the essence of the environment just as well as video, if not better. There are as many audio microcosms as there are people and things to point a microphone at.

The main idea was to construct without scripting. Just like for the video, creating a setting and letting the content emerge from the environment.

I recorded from the actual shooting location, along the canal and by the lock. Sometimes it sounds like it could be anywhere, even in the jungle at some points because of all the birds. But if you listen carefully, it is the sound of home. Wild and tame.

I also recorded some tracks inside. Sounds of intimacy and non-linguistic verbal exchanges (which have become a focal point of my piece). The sound is the inside looking out, as opposed to outside looking in, in the video. Hopefully, the superposition of both will provide an interesting contrast.

For the presentation, I am thinking of having the sound separated in 8 channels (4 stereo channels split between opposing monitors). Most likely half will be of the actual location and half of the more personal recordings.

Uhhh. Yeah. This is getting techno heavy. Shite.

I am trusting my instinct on this one.

EDITING TEST, TAKE 2

Low-tech.

METATITLE

The piece still doesn't have a title. But it sure will include the prefix 'meta'.

You never know when inspiration is going to strike.

This is the metapizza, a pizza topped with mini pizzas.

Some more serious/pretentious ideas:

Metafiction

Metameme

Metatheria

Conversations about language?

SOUND AND LANGUAGE

The original plan was to exclude sound from the piece, in order to emphasize the distance between context and meaning. But during the shooting, I stopped for a few seconds and listened. There was an amazing sound ambiance, birds flying back from the south, children playing, distant church bells... You could hear spring. Sound is an essential part of the environment and should be included in the presentation. I will go back next weekend and do some field recordings, maybe mix them with bits of conversations, maybe not. 

It would be interesting to capture non-linguistic verbal exchanges. I have been thinking a lot about language lately. How language has become a representational, conditionally imposed set of boundaries, that often fails in taking the message across. Language is drifting further and further from the sensorial and emotional inner discourse. It is time we reappropriate language, create new means of dialoguing and let go of the heavy, impure symbolic that keeps real communication from connecting people as a community. 

In any case, I think the sound should be really loud, as natural and raw as possible, enveloping, inescapable. If time permits, I would like it to be spread around the 8 channels.

SHOOTING, TAKE 2

On a beautiful Saturday afternoon, I went back to the shooting location and shot what I believe will be the definitive footage for this (still untitled) project. The snow had mostly melted, which is unfortunate because the image of living bodies in a sea of white, cold, purity would have been powerful, but the warmer temperature was easier on the gear and allowed me to shoot for a couple of hours without running into any obstacles.  The sun was shinning, the birds were signing, people were walking their dogs and love was in the air.

The cardboard and duct tape rotating contraption I had crafted proved to be very efficient and precise, although difficult to level with the tripod. Hopefully the angles in all 8 sequences will be consistent. The colors were nice, even when "à contre-jour", but I might rework them a little in postproduction, to even out the luminosity and maybe give it more depth.

With all 8 points of view, I think I have succeeded in depicting Montreal as both specific and generic, breathing and inert, cruel and forgiving... There is the canal, of course, the high rise buildings of downtown, the abandoned Post Canada "centre de tri", the carriages headquarters and the sometimes fascinating, sometimes distressing emptiness of a gigantic parking lot with no entrance, no exit.

Photos by E. Tremblay.

LOCATION IS EVERYTHING

FIRST DAY OF SHOOTING

Last week I took a long walk around my neighborhood in search of interesting shooting locations and found tons of potential spots. There are plenty of empty parking lots, vast public green space (note to self: watch out for dog poop, spring is near), creepy alleys, etc. What I enjoy most about this area is that it is anonymous, there are no billboards, no advertisements, very little traffic, not too many passersby at this time of year and the buildings are nameless... It could be anywhere, it could have a different meaning for different individuals. And it is meaningful to me. I decided on a very large 'terrain vague' by the Canal, close to Guy St.

Today I went for a first try at shooting with a wireless camera and reciever, a miniDV deck and a tripod. 

Soon enough, I realized that winter and electronics don't mix. After only a few minutes, the camera's battery cable broke. I switched to the other camera (the infra red one, I believe), but after another few minutes, the batteries died one after the other.

I still managed to capture precious images and, more importantly, to try my ingenious 'cardboard and duct tape' rotating mechanism. And it works just fine. I have decided not to go with the constant rotation but with 8x45˚ separate shots. After speaking with a techie friend, I came to the conclusion that synchronizing 8 channels would be pretty much impossible. And I do want 8 channels so it's a decent compromise. 

I am also very satisfied with the look of the footage that I shot. I posted some snapshots I took from my TV on my other blog. I will post some clips soon. Over the next few weeks (probably during the spring break) I will go for more tests and hopefully it will be a little warmer outside. And sunny, because I like the blue sky contrasting with the white snow. For some reason I had always envisioned it in black and white, but I'm loving the wireless camera's warm/cold color contrast.

To be continued.

TO ROTATE OR NOT TO ROTATE

I'm having trouble with the rotating platform. I guess I overestimated my skills in electronics. Plus I'm not very satisfied with the tests I did in the editing room. A classmate I was telling my project about suggested that I shoot each channel separately. I could just place the camera in the center of the space and rotate it by hand, 45° (for 8 channels, 90° for 4, etc.) at a time. I would loose some fluidity and simultaneity, but it would make it a lot easier to assemble afterwards. And since there won't be a lot of movement in the environment and in the subjects, the differences in time should not be too noticeable. Another advantage is that I would not have to synchronize all the channels by the frame since they would all function independently. I could use 8 DVD players and start them approximately at the same time and have the same effect. That would sort another major problem and make presentation easier (and more site-specific friendly).

I will continue to work on the rotating platform for a little while, but if by next week I haven't figured it out, I will use this other technique instead.

SITE SPECIFICITY

I had an awesome (but equally utopic) idea. How great (and site-specific) would it be to walk around town with a TV transmitter (more expansive version here) and broadcast my piece for TVs in people's home to receive? Or... Hack a station's broadcasting system! I wish I still worked in television, and I wish people still watched non-cable television with rabbit ears antennas.

KARL MARX AND GUY DEBORD

I have become increasingly intrigued by Karl Marx's writings on capitalism and his views on the relationship between mass production and mass consumption. A century after Marx's Capital, Guy Debord referenced in his book La Société du Spectacle the alienation resulting from the replacement of social life by representation.

In my piece, I would like to address a new alienation, that of the recording and mapping of identity and relationships. Starting from Marx's idea of the reproduction of commodities and Debord's view on the reproduction of society, I would like to explore the reproduction of indentity. In this new society, where individuals market themselves in search of collective approval, representations mediate interactions between people and between multiple recorded identities of a single self.

Now, the challenge is to translate those concerns and integrate them in a piece that is both demonstrative and engaging.

THEMES TO KEEP IN MIND (CONT'D)

More thoughts:

> Referencing the virtual records/memories of people, events and emotions we keep through photographs, video recordings, journal entries, etc.

> Highlighting and questioning these records' limited capacity of recreating 'the moment', by their lack of context and physicality

> Representing the metaphorical distance between reality and constructed reality, with notions of physical distance, imprecision and absence of sound

> Exploring the consequences of the shift in interpersonal communication on human relationships

TECHNOLOGICAL BRAINSTORM

Other possibilities for technical exploration:

> Using 3D modeling for testing (I learned Softimage XSI a few years ago and could probably manage to create a decent virtual version of my shooting and presentation spaces, but don't have access to it right now, and learning another software would be extremely time-consuming)

> Using Quicktime VR (I'll have to do a little research, as I'm not familiar with this)

> Using an omnidirectional camera (probably way expensive and hard to find, but extremely cool, nonetheless)

> Looking at facilities at SAT and other multimedia centers (I don't think it's compatible with my budget and timeframe, but it's worth investigating)

EDITING TEST (CONT'D)

I tried pasting all 8 channels together, making multiple and have them move in the opposite direction asfrom the movement, to cancel the rotation, but couldn't find the exact speed and got lost in the process. 

Click on the image to see it full size.

The transitions (black lines) between the different channels were visible, too, so it didn't look too good. I will have to try again later.

EDITING TEST (CONT'D)

Having the same image (ie. framing) in the same channel all the time worked in theory, but is just not possible in practice. I would need to use multiple cameras, and still then I would have to modify the footage in postproduction to keep it stable. 

As an alternative, still using the same footage, I selected really short clips (1 frame), which I slowed down (2%) and mixed together (22-24 frames cross fade), using only the frames with the reoccurring image (approx. every 1.5 second).

For some reason I couldn't upload the video with Blogger, so I uploaded it here. It looks bad and weird, but it's a useful illustration for something that's really hard to explain with words. 

EDITING TEST

With all 360 degrees represented (imagine first and last channels linked). But that's not what I'm after.

FIRST CAMERA TESTS

Crappy camera test. Works well.

Infrared camera test. Works fine, but the camera angle should be parallel with the ground to insure continuity.

MIRANDA JULY

Another interesting reference is Miranda July's Joanie 4 Jackie project. The concept of the video chainletter is just brilliant.

Like in Gillian Wearing's piece I referenced earlier, there's something about the way interpersonal communication circulates on video that makes it both more distant and more real. I will definitely investigate this paradoxical impression in my work.

JIM CAMPBELL

I'm crazy about Jim Campbell's Ambiguous Icons series, which was exhibited at the MMFA last year. Today I came across an older piece of his, entitled Memory/Recollection, which kind of relates to the piece I'm working on, both aesthetically and conceptually.

I like the way he reconstructs history through the manipulation of time. I will be working with similar intentions, but in terms of meaning and space. I also really like the look of the monitors he is using.

SHOOTING LOCATIONS

Original ideas:

> On top of the mountain at my parents'

> A dirty back alley, maybe in Chinatown

> The vast terrain vague by the canal near Des Seigneurs

More possible locations I visited or thought of during the holidays:

> A large field in Ile des Soeurs after an ice storm

> The rooftop of the Friendship Cove, a loft/live venue in Griffintown with a fantastic view of the city

> The Pound, an industrial loft/live venue in Little Burgundy

> At school, during peak hours, maybe in the Hall Building

Related thoughts:

> I'm glad it's winter, the white snow will act as a wide canvas and emphasize the subjects

> If I'm going to shoot outside, I need to keep in mind that all the equipment has to be self-powered

EDITING TECHNIQUE

Click on the image to see it full size.

This is how it would work with a still subject and a moving (rotating) camera.

I need to find the formula to match the speed of the rotating camera with the number of frames to offset each channel.

If the offsetting matches the rotation speed perfectly, each channel will show the same 'frame' (geographically speaking) and if the spacing between the monitors is right, it will give the illusion of a 'stable', continuous, 360 degrees environment.

BASIC EDITING CONCEPT

The basic idea is to duplicate the same video footage on two different channels, creating the illusion of continuity by offsetting the video in the second channel by a few frames (30 in this example).

This is how it would work it a moving subject and a fix camera.

THEMES TO KEEP IN MIND

Starting with:

> Contextual impacts of the environment on relational interactions

> Intimacy in the public sphere

> Deconstruction and reconstruction of space

> Exhibitionism and voyeurism

CAMERA TESTS

I tried the wireless security camera kit I borrowed from the video depot.

Camera > (wireless) > Reciever > (RCA cable) > VCR > (RCA cable) > Monitor

Both cameras worked fine, one gave a clearer image than the other, but I will have to try with different lighting. I will also need to try it outdoors, with either a portable mini DV deck or mini DV camera. But I did like the texture and 'life' VHS brought to the party.

I will upload short video excerpts soon and play around with them.

ROTATING PLATFORM TESTS

I tried placing the camera on my turntable, but it spins too fast. Slowing it down 'by hand' is not constant enough.

GILLIAN WEARING

Gillian Wearing's Confess All On Video. Don't Worry You Will Be in Disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian Version II is great and relates to my intents. 

In my piece, the role of the mask will be played by the distance, the absence of sound and the lo-fi aesthetics. 

KELLY MARK

As suggested by Donna, if the multiple monitors idea fails, I could project from different windows of a building, kind of like Kelly Mark's Glow House. 

I'm not sure how I would translate the 360 degrees effects with this presentation though, or how I would maintain continuity between the different channels are still create the sort of 'stability in chaos' I'm after.