Category: Videos

BODY LINE 2021

Posted on by Rachel Wolfe

 

BODY LINE, 2021, 10:01 minute, single-channel video with stereo audio. Performance and edit by Rachel Wolfe, sound composition and arrangement by Zainab Lax and Oh No Noh (Markus Rom). Filmed at Selbusjøen, Trøndelag, Norway. The relationship between vision and body, landscape and humanity are arranged in congruence with sensitivity, harmony, allegory and myth. The elemental nature of water becomes embodied by the Body Line emerging from the water upon the land. After spending some time on land, the form gains a darkened torso before rejoining with the elemental nature of water. In a time the world experiences a great liquidity of change, the visual impressions of the audio-visual experience created to project, relate the language of water and body, in a deep feeling sense as a memory, for viewers to tune into.

 

“Delicate and sober as always. The staging and performance of the slow and soft movements fit perfectly with the mountains and the water surrounding the figure. Had the video lasted two hours, I would still want to see more.” – John Wagner

 

July 2021, The World We Live In, Groningen, Netherlands

MARKUS ROM

Born 1990 in Weiden i.d.Opf., Germany, has studied electrical guitar in Weimar and Leipzig. As an instrumentalist and composer he is active in all kinds of musical formations and interdisciplinary productions – mainly in his solo project „Oh No Noh“. Besides that he composes music for film and multimedia. Markus is mostly at home in the broad fields of experimental indie, electronic and ambient music. Apart from playing instruments (mostly guitar, also bass and synths) and using Ableton Live, he likes to find sounds by modifying things like cassette tapes, telephones and gameboys and integrating them into his musical setup.

Zainab Lax was born and raised in Germany. She is a multi-instrumentalist and music therapist, with specialisation in Harp. With a western classical background she later focused on several eastern instruments such as the Indian Sarod and the Iranian Tar. With roots in Germany Turkey, India, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan, Zainab has the flexibility and cultural sensitivity to easily adapt to other cultures. In 2017 she graduated as a music therapist at ArtEZ Conservatory in Enschede, Netherlands. She is currently completing a Master at the Center for World Music in Hildesheim, Germany.

BLÅTIME SOL 2020

Posted on by Rachel Wolfe

 

BLÅTIME SOL, 2020, 5:50 minutes, single channel video for projection. Film, performance, edit by Rachel Wolfe. Original soundtrack by Mehmet Dogu. Sun video, clay sculpture, and text by Mudi Hachim. This film was made possible by the support of AiR Kjerringøy and Bodø Kommune.

 

2021: Prague International Film Festival; New York Tri-State Film Festival, Award Winner, Pure Magic International Film Festival, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; ISAFF International Symbolic Film Festival, St. Petersburg, Russia; Fullshot Film Festival; The World We Live In, Groningen, Netherlands

 

The Sun’s Traveling

As a dream, the screen technology transmits the sun. The process of solar transmission touches the memory of the first moment we see sun in our life. This sun remains within each one of us. The warm light resides within us forever. This traveling project with the sun, transfers the sun through a spiritual ritual derived from Sumerian civilisation. The image reminds each of us, we move everywhere with this sun inside, and shine this sun from within.

By enacting rituals established 8,000 years ago, good energy from the sun is transmuted through the video. The light is refracted from a container, made from paint and clay. The container used in this work contains writing from texts originating from The Epic of Gilgamesh (the sun within you). The texts and container return the memory to the sun within; even in darkness, this warmth remains. The four sections drawn represent stages of the idea, or revelation, of this project from idea to certain, to implementation. In the result, the performance through dance (expressive movements) create forms to represent the process of transmitting light.

 

 

 

AFJORDANCE 2019

Posted on by Rachel Wolfe

 

 

AFJORDANCE, 2019, single channel video, soundtrack composed by the digital armature joint movements referencing an open source audio library of wind. The video looks at the new complexities emerging in Artificial Intelligence, the ways humans create mirrored structures, and affordances in the notions of Intelligence itself. Exhibited in California, Norway, and Italy.

 

February 2020, Corwin Pavilion, University of California Santa Barbara for AWMAS Conference.

March 2020, Arteriet, Kvinnekroppen Utstillingen, Kristiansand, Norway.

October-November 2020, LoosenArt at Millepiani, Rome, Italy.

June 2021, New York Tri-State Film Festival.

 
Norwegian: AFJORDANCE, 2019, er i enkeltkanals video, med lydspor komponert av de digitale armaturleddbevegelsene som refererer til et lydbibliotek med åpen kildekode for vind. Videoen ser på de nye kompleksitetene som dukker opp i kunstig intelligens, måtene mennesker lager speilvendte strukturer og overkommelige i forestillingene om intelligens i seg selv. )
 

Performance & Edit, Rachel Wolfe www.rachelwolfe.com

Affordance Technologist, Harald de Bondt www.movingmaking.com

Videography, Børge Indergaard www.indergaard.net

 

 

FULL TEXT

AFJORDANCE, 2019, Approximate run time 13:50 minutes, single channel video (with audio).

Affordance is what the environment offers the individual, and refers to all action possibilities depending on users’ physical capabilities. For example, a chair “affords” being “sat on,” “thrown,” “stood on,” and a continuing use of probabilities. James J. Gibson, coined the term “affordance.” The video portrays a dance at the fjord as movement research for technology lab-work.The project developed from the Solfège Souche video performance. The relationship between the human body and the natural world remains full of misunderstandings and spaces for insight. As Artificial Intelligence becomes part of human life, and human relations are increasingly dependent on technological screens and interfaces, the question of what is knowing and the way Intelligence is understood comes into question in the video. The wind sound in Afjordance are from open source libraries. The composition is made by refercing the joints in the wire frame armature. This armature positioned antagonistically opposed to the fully covered body. The body becomes a form without much identity other than it shows the proportions of a female body. The wire frame of the body becomes the composer, making a track of wind sounds as an echo of the movements of the body. The feminine as a figure of the earth or “mother nature” in certain instances is faced with the exorcised image of itself which can scarcely mirror the motions from the limited human body. The video is intended to be projected with sound, to create an immersive experience for viewers to consider the themes of technology, the body, nature elements. The experience provides a multi-sensory meditation on the possible meanings and implications of the emergent technology.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ARTISTIC RESEARCH: DRAFT FOR JOURNAL