Edmund Cook (UK)

The writing is divided into two interlaced scripts.

The first script uses descriptions of a selection of video clips to reconstitute a fictional live experience for an unspecified group of viewers, narrated by an individual. It takes place in a city much like Rotterdam, mainly in the bowels of a very large handling warehouse by the docks.

The second script reflects on some of the theoretical issues that the first script evokes. These include the materiality and distance of images, the subject-object relationship, vernacular and coding, affect and the virtual, liveness and incipience. It uses images at certain points, but never as a direct illustration.

The first chapter, 'soft artefacts', concentrates on the relationships between objects and bodies. This is reflected in the first script by the viewers seeing different interelations of these things, accompanied by very physical manifestations of sound.

The second chapter, 'speech filters', moves on to discuss the voice, specifically songs and improvised speech. Consequently, in the first script, the scenes viewed by the group start to become less involved with things and more about what is said around them, even beginning to involve them directly.

Over the course of the writing, there is a gradual change in focus from what is seen to what is said, from physical material through the image to its dubbing, from the concrete to the live.

This incorporates a rising level of feedback generated through the development of a personal authorial voice.

Through the writing i want to explore the different types of agency that an image has in its relation to text, and how a voice can emerge to speak though it with its own vernacular.

Essentially I want to understand if something that is distanced can be reanimated and made present through a consideration of the borders of its materiality.

PLAN: [[ after open day to interim assessments (25th march-4th april):]]

Drafting of second chapter. Keep parts separate.

Developing the voices at play in both parts, working on use of images, developing ideas covered in detail, clarity. Pacing of overall structure.

Proofreading, editing, design. Last minute stuff.