Recently attended a follow-up day led by James Holcombe (from no.w.here) working with 16mm film stock, (see In Genial Company and A Weekend with Bolex) which was organised by CineStar.
This time, we used a variety of household chemicals and dye stuffs to dismember a reel of found footage, a reel of black and white optical print with sound. This is a method of ‘camera-less’ film making, creating a sort of expanded projection or ‘animation’ of the original.
By immersing fragments of the footage in these baths of prepared chemicals, the images can be watched as they slide and slip away or become stained by baths of dye or solutions of heavy metal salts. The ‘toning’ affects the silver on the film and can be arrested at any point by taking the footage out of the solution and plunged into a bath of water. The resulting imagery, dried and once more randomly spliced together, becomes a ‘direct animation’ version of the original footage.
Here is a snippet of the result:
<iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/jtZdue-qZ5Y?rel=0″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen>
I am now wondering how I might use such a technique in my walking practice.
For other ‘saturated’ imagery, here.