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.

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.

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)

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

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