release date: 10 august 2021
listen on soundcloud
Well into the second month of another COVID-19 lockdown here in Sydney, with high daily infection rates indicating no end in sight for a while…
This episode presents the soundtracks to a collective series of abstract digital video sequences titled ‘colourforms’ that I made in 2017 for a gallery exhibition.
Anyone who has seen my Instagram posts during this lockdown will be familiar with my ‘digital dusk’ series of one minute visual abstracts. The origin of the technical methodology I use to make them might begin with the colourform series, but the aesthetic was certainly in play a lot earlier, in the 1970s, when I’d draw directly on Super 8 and 16mm celluloid film with overheard projection pens and make 35mm slides using cellophane, packaging and any other translucent materials that could be cutup and glued together on that tiny work area.
Today I construct and film simple kinetic assemblages with my iPhone, bring the scenes into Final Cut Pro and manipulate exposure, saturation, filters, time, and layers blending to explore abstract visual potentials, completely disassociating the filmed scenes from any semblance of real world recognition to place them squarely within the context and historical traditions of abstract art.
The six tracks of this podcast episode were constructed in a similar way, developing abstraction from both the captured vision and its accompanying sound. Each track is introduced by its original title, ably though awkwardly spoken by a digital assistant.