Wk 8 - studio projection tests

I wanted to see how some of the videos from last week would function on a larger scale. After projecting them into the studio space, two things have become apparent:

• the speed that the bouquet video moves at is too fast - as a viewer, there's not enough time to focus on any one part in focus before it shifts out of focus again. Needs to be slower if this is something to be pursued

  • I almost wonder if it works a bit better as a static image than a moving image - will experiment with much slower pacing over the coming week and see what happens

• there are some beautiful moments in the mustard plant video's projection, but for the most part it looks too ambiguous. I think it's strayed too far from its original form and is now in the realm of ambient colour and effect than contemplative thing...

  • perhaps this kind of application would work better if the entire room was projected into (creating an immersive "field" of plants and flowers that had been captured on LIDAR or film...); I think the larger scale is good for enhancing that feeling of being on the same scale/level as the plant, but it also doesn't feel like it's achieving this well as the digital treatment of the object overtakes the experience of the work.

The question of background is also something that comes to mind - in isolating these scans, the subject becomes the centre of attention. But if the processing that is being applied to it overtakes the subject itself, then the background feels a little too ungrounded... may play around with how these scans could be situated, or how selective focus could be used to highlight things without abstracting them from their environment completely...

I still believe that the ability to play with scale is a strength of this kind of technology - in making the viewer comparatively small and disorientated in relation to what is on screen, there's an opportunity to question their relationship to these natural objects and entities, especially those commonly unseen or unobserved from the perspectives presented.

I think the bouquet image (below) functions better than the mesh-form modifier treatment of the scanned object - it in itself is curious enough to me to draw me in for a closer look, but ambiguous enough that I'm unable to tell exactly what, or why, it is. Perhaps this could function as a large-scale photograph or static image on a screen...

Thoughts for the coming weeks:

• does this treatment (whatever it may be at the time) add anything to the work?

• when does the language of the tool used (film, digital tech) start to detract from the work, or speak over the work itself?

• how can a thing/subject be centred or explored without the work being overly prescriptive or distilled in meaning/reading?