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"Spiders" © 1976 (9 minutes) |
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Prior
to "Spiders" in Australia there had only
been a few computing students' exercises
and the odd television promo or film
effect, but no computer graphic motion
works primarily conceived as a work of art.
Thus it is not all that extraordinary that
this project that eventually became the first
computer graphic 'Art Film' created in
Australia, started life also as
something else, an engineering
problem. In my fourth and final year
of my academic sculpture training, I was
very taken by a then recently published
documentation of Christo's 1972
"Valley Curtain" installation at Rifle
Colorado. With site specific sculptures
being all the rage we where set the task of
developing proposals for plausible works,
that given funding could realized with
minimal delay. My dream was to to hang
from a city sky-scrapper in the middle of
the night a monumental spider's web
sculpture (approximately
The film was shot on 16mm black & white stock then hand-coloured after processing before release printing. With improvised musical performances by couple of mates the sound track was done at Cumberland Street Campus of Alexander Mackie C.A.E. I did most of audio engineering, mixing then editing at the time using two Teac 4-track Simul Sinc machines and an 8 track mixer. The finished 1/4" audio-tape was transferred to 16mm mag. film then edited with image on a "Steenbeck". Click on the above block of thumbnails to view some more larger images ( frame-grabs). |
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"Symbolist Daydream" © 1977-78 (10 minutes) |
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During
1977 I continued working with experimental
video, exploring effects like chroma key,
quantizers, colourizers etc. In November I
was awarded a grant by the Creative
Development Branch of the Australian Film
Commission to complete a second film. Its
contents is
Rather than my previous strategy for Spiders of having friends improvise music to pre-existing footage, this time I hired three professional musicians to put down a jam session on the theme of a journey. Geoffrey Crane on keyboards, Richard Knight on bass guitar, with Kim Pentetcost on drums crafted about nine minutes of 8 track audio.. I created the dreamship (63.5 cm.(h) 106.7 cm(w) 88.9 cm(l)) from timber metal & fibreglass in my studio. The dreamship was shot with graphics and other effects onto 2" video. then edited down at T.P.F (Television Production Facilities Pty. Ltd Paddington) along with the 1/2" 8 track audio we'd created at Northsound Studio by combining the muso's jam with other effects. The final video to film transfer was done at Colourfilm laboratories in Sydney.. Click on the block of thumbnails to view some more larger images ( frame -grabs).
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See appendix 'B' for details of
"SPIDERS" & "SYMBOLIST DAYDREAM"
shows and prizes. |
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..... thence till now...... |
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Following the success of these first two experimental film ~ videos , I was subsequently invited to submit a new work to an international video festival in Amsterdam circa 1980. . Thus the Tri-Lingual Sci-Fi concept began a life of it's own some twenty years ago now. "ze incomplete Tri-Lingual Sci-Fi" ©. ;- a film story-board, a poem, a comic, in English, Arabic & Chinese. |
