15 September 2011
A Bump in the Night
For some reason I slept really badly last night. For the first time, I’ve been a bit jumpy. Living alone in the middle of the country, 3am, and you hear a downstairs door creaking…
Daytime was much more pleasant though. I went for a couple of long walks and have come up with some ideas for a couple of compositions. I’ve also made friends with a tiny robin who keeps following me around. He’s not shy, and seemed happy to pose for photos:
I managed to complete another video piece – this time using some time-lapse techniques. The music is a bit too Thomas Newman-y at the moment, but it feels appropriate to the atmosphere, I think. This is it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMfBT52hP8E
So, this is my last night at Clashnettie. I’m a bit apprehensive about returning to Aberdeen – the shock of being surrounded by other humans after nearly 5 days of solitude… Still, I’m feeling fairly refreshed and have a mountain of inspiration to take away with me.
For now, I’m enjoying some good red wine, a sunset and Van Morrison (Veedon Fleece). This is the life…
14 September 2011
Shifting Skies
I woke up to the sound of Molly barking outside at 4 this morning. I hadn’t properly shut the door to the room where she sleeps, and so got an unexpected alarm call.
I have a theory why Molly likes to bark so much. The house is situated at the edge of a valley. When she barks you can hear it echoing back a few seconds later from the other side of the valley. I’m sure she thinks it’s another dog barking back at her.
Anyway, I decided to take advantage of being awake so early and got some video recordings of the shifting skies. This looked so cool that I ended up leaving the camera recording for several hours throughout the day, occasionally pointing it in different angles. I’ve started making a time-lapse piece using the video that I collected and I did some ambient sound stuff that might fit along with it too.
I also managed to complete two glitch shorts. One is called Still Life. It uses “found” footage of an old man taking photographs of plants and flowers. The film is extremely saturated, so you only get hints of the original colours. The sound element consists of hidden electronic laptop frequencies that I’ve layered in various pitches. This is it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCsTVhL7o8Q
The other piece is the re-contextualised projection scene from The Stranger. I don’t know if the sounds work yet, but I think it’s a decent start:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQhYsa38Ixg&feature=related
13 September 2011
“In Harper, there’s nothing to be afraid of…”
A productive day. I woke up in time to see the sunrise which was pretty amazing. On the downside, I’ve gone deaf in my left ear again. There must be enough wax up there for a church candle. Disgusting but true…
So, I decided to concentrate on some visual stuff. Last night I watched Orson Welle’s The Stranger, a noir-ish post-world war II thriller. There’s one very powerful scene where one of the lead characters is shown projected film of Nazi atrocities. The footage cuts between the character’s horrified reaction to what looks like stock footage of a concentration camp. The implication of this scene is that her husband (played be Welles) is a former Nazi. Shortly before this, she assured him that in their hometown of Harper, “there’s nothing to be afraid of…” This gave me some ideas for a new audio-visual short. I’ve taken excerpts of these scenes and re-contextualised them into something else. I’ve written most of the music – although nothing will be final until I can hear out of both ears!
Something that I’ve realised about this residency is that there isn’t enough time for me to complete all the things that I wanted to. But rather than drift unfocussed between tasks, I’ve decided to relax a bit (which was exactly the point of my coming here) and give my full attention to only one or two things. It took a long walk with Molly to figure that one out…
We were both feeling a bit pensive by the look of things…
12 September 2011
Arrival
My hearing has now fully returned – just in time for the first day of the residency. I’ll never take my hearing for granted again…
I’ve got all my gear set up…
…now I just need to do something with it.
The studio space is amazing – really bright and spacious, and best of all, there are no interruptions. The weather is crazy – it’s changing all the time. I suspect that this is the tail-end of Hurricane Katia…I can’t ever remember seeing two lots of clouds blowing in opposite directions before.
My only company is Molly the dog, Scarface Claw the cat, and a couple of chickens. However, the first creature I spotted on my arrival was an enormous rat running under a shed. Huge thing! I might be able to make a hearty stew if I can catch him.
My plan, now that everything’s unpacked and set up, is to wait until it’s dark enough to project some video I’ve been working on onto the studio wall and experiment with sounds and other images.
7 September 2011
A Half-Muted Haze
I’ve been busy preparing for next week’s residency and am becoming increasingly excited about the prospect of living in isolation. I hadn’t anticipated that the experience might be a bit more isolating than I had bargained for, though: I’ve gone completely deaf in my left ear! I don’t know whether it’s a sinus problem or some really gross wax build-up – I’ve got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, so fingers crossed…
It’s not without its perks though…hearing the world through a half-muted haze does strange things to the mind – well, at least to my mind. It’s like viewing the world from behind a pane of glass – you feel like a spectator – sometimes in a voyeuristic kind of way.
Still, I really hope that this clears up. I had great plans of engaging with certain elements of the world, not being utterly disconnected from them… Or perhaps, I should see this as an opportunity; to put my other senses to use; to discover other forms of engagement.
Maybe…
2 September 2011
Aberdeen Apathy
It’s ten days until my residency/retreat at Clashnettie Arts Centre. I’ve spent the summer note-taking and invigilating in exams and I’m really starting to notice how badly I need a break and to escape from Aberdeen. I’ve become very irritable and impatient lately with people and things. The greyness of Aberdeen is well-documented, and this summer has certainly been no different: months of oppressive cloudy skies interspersed with a handful of sunny days…and while Edinburgh enjoys another festival, we’re treated to…Alvin Stardust!
It’s difficult not to feel a sluggish apathy when living in this city, but I feel that some hope lies with the pockets of creative people struggling to bring some desperately-needed culture to the foreground – and I don’t mean the piper that stands on Union Street playing the same three clichéd songs for hours each day on his poorly tuned instrument.
But it would be naive of me to overlook the cultural resources and venues that thankfully do exist in Aberdeen: the Sound Festival, Citymoves, The Belmont Picturehouse, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Peacock Visual Arts… Without them Aberdeen would undoubtedly lose the little character it currently possesses.
And so, in ten days I’ll begin my residency at Clashnettie – an arts centre hidden in a valley in Strathdon. There’s no mobile phone signal, I don’t drive, and there’s not a soul around for miles…so it’s going to be a truly isolating experience. I can’t wait! I haven’t made any steadfast plans for the work that I’m going to do while I’m there, but I hope it’s enough that when I eventually return to Aberdeen, I’ll have shaken off that apathy…
