The Blindspot Variations I (Version 2 of 7)

 

Show Description

The Blindspot Variations I (2014-2016)

I shot this film in September, 2014 in Trinity Bellwoods Park, Toronto. Four cameras are mounted to the same automated head, each camera pointing in a different ninety-degree direction as the head slowly pans (one full circle every ten minutes). The focal lengths of the lenses are almost the same, so when viewing all four channels at the same time, in four quadrants, a panorama is rendered…but one with blindspots. What’s happening in the blindspots? What is a blindspot?

I staged four scenes in the park that work in conjunction with all of the ambient activities. Eleven musicians are performing a piece of music and conducting a delicate passing of instruments, a three-legged dog is incognizant to its missing limb, a man is playing tennis by himself, and a thousand other events are happening in and out of the blindspots. I have performed this film in six different versions. During the first iteration (screened at the School of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of California, Los Angeles, November 2014), I read from a prepared text that…somehow…resonated with the film…and with the themes of “participation” and “non-participation.” The second iteration was on the theme of Survival--for which over 80% of the spoken narrative changed, the third interation was for an event called "Enthusiasm for Revolution", and, again, over 80% of the narrative changed ("The Bindspot of Revolution”, Florida, March 2015). The fourth iteration was for an experimental sound conference ("tuning speculation") around the problem of audibility and inaudibility. And so on. and so on.

Here is a version delivered at the University of Western Ontario: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5QRmTVlWKw

Fifty minutes.
Digitial Video
Cameras: Sony FS 700; Sony VG 900; Sony VG30; Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera
Kessler Crane Revolution Head