A short video about the Arctic Circle made from a montage of found Aurora Borealis images, superimposed with my own footage of vapor clouds. Audio composition sampled from ghost trains and windchimes. A visual extension of a text project involving myth, magic and the investigation of belief as a medium shaping our perception of form:
“live video feed of the Aurora Borealis; air from the Arctic Circle collected in mason jars then released into the room; pine needles fallen from trees one million years extinct–”
This piece is a study for further development of visual narrative, based on themes of belief and honoring the Arctic Circle as the last frontier, the site of a myth-in-progress: I’m interested in pushing honest material forms (colored lights, a strobe, mason jars, thousands of pine needles peeled by hand, ice cubes, styrofoam coolers) beyond representation. Ultimately the drive to transcend representation will fail, insofar as constructed objects are concerned, and the effort itself will become the homage, a ritual of love and offering. Ice cubes will melt and pool, mason jars will collect and release air (but it will be imperceptible), colored lights will glint and bounce off of glass jars (yet still be colored lights in the end), a strobe will (only) simulate excesses of light and darkness.
A disappearing, temporal plane.
Arborealis
video, soundscape
1 minute, looped
2012