User:Nan Wang/self directed dust
Dust Narrative
Dust narrative is a 10 minutes 47 seconds audiovisual work I have been working on this Trimemster. The visual part of this work is made of 6593 frames of dust which I have been collecting and scanning manually for two months. I use those dust images as sequence of animation playing in 30 frames per second editing with some digital video footage in the background, in this case those dust not longer stays as still images, but appears as flickering and moving particles. The Intensive visual elements and visual information of this video allowed me to apply "Pulfrich Effects" to create 3D illusion. I made a special glasses which has one darker filter over one eye in order to create 15 milliseconds delay of signal transmission for one eye. (visual system latencies are generally shorter so that the visual system responds more quickly.) In this way, this 3D effect create an illusion for the viewer that the flickery dust movement slowing down and flowing horizontally in space.
The sound part of this work including recorded sound and computer generated sound composed together in separated left and right stereo sound channel.
Quote:
“Originally we had in mind what you might call an imaginary beauty, a process of basic emptiness with just a few things arising in it. And then when we actually set to work, a kind of avalanche came about which corresponded not at all with that beauty which had seemed to appear to us as an objective. Where do we go then? Well what we do is go straight on; that way lies, no doubt, a revelation. I had no idea this was going to happen. I did have an idea something else would happen. Ideas are one thing and what happens another.”
-- John Cage, "Where are we going? And what are we doing?"
For me, John Cage always hold a tendency toward an ambiguous and uncertainty aesthetic. I am inspirited by that. The soundtrack for dust narrative. I use environment noise and combined with electronic noise and minimal style melody. To create the atmosphere of ambiguous aesthetic. The feeling of lost and immerse into dust, however, at the same time have the feeling of seeing something (moving traffic, crowd, street lights), but lose it again after few seconds.. Everything is in between: lost between 2d and 3d; analog and digital; real and fake; virtual and actual. Don't know where you are what are you looking at, but there is no way to escape.
Stills
