We spent most of the day recording around the Scanlin house today. This is the house that we had our social on Monday. Monday was very nice because it was a little “put you in a room and start talking” exercise. An exercise we all passed I must say. It was also one of the few time so far that I’ve been able to talk with some of the staff of Ox-Bow. It’s hard for me to imagine staying here year round. It feels very remote (which I know it’s not) and also has this odd abandoned village feeling to it.
The shooting that commenced today centered on very isolated gestures and actions with in the space of the small cabin. The Scanlin consists of a fair size living room with two beds and off of the main room (living room) there is another smaller room primarily for sleeping as is the loft above that has two small windows that allows one to gaze down in to the main room or out the rather large window in the ceiling. We also shot a really nice clip of my hand interacting with a light bulb from a string of Christmas lights. I wanted a very simply play of hands exploring material in slow motion. Hopefully I shot it well enough so that once it has imported and then switched to 24p(the footage was shot in 60p) the footage will have a nice soft slow motion feel to it. I also shot a series of fake tree limb shots. Apparently, there had been some tree branch chandeliers that were made of real limbs, fake leaves, “silver berries” and white Christmas lights, that had been used and then discarded only to be rescued and then hung outside the Scanlin (lovingly called Scantron). I shot a lot of stills today just for giggles and am very pleased with the results. And then there is Jerome. Jerome is one of many Ox-Bow’s four legged residents. We did a small photo shoot as well. I will include photos of as many things as possible. After lunch we began to use my Nikon 60mm macro on Jennida’s 7D! Earlier this summer I ran into a former undergrad film student from VCU that put me on to an adapter that allowed the use of aperture ring model Nikon lenses to be used on Canon camera. Much experimenting ensued. Results still out. Also began playing with the portable mini video flips and trying to put them places you might not think or desire to with an “expensive” full size video camera.
After dinner I took a quick jaunt into Saugatuck to get some supplies and arrived back just in time to give our presentations. Every resident and all staff make a small presentation of their work. Tuesday night we got to learn about John the handyman’s creation and exploration of “Pricker Boy.” That I think was the highlight. It is a bummer however that most of the presentations will be made after we have already departed. I’ve had many interesting conversations with some of the other artist but I still haven’t gotten to see what any of them have been doing. I actually was supplied with people’s info before hand but decided to abstain simply because I thought it would be more interesting to encounter the people and the work simultaneously. Ah Well….
All in all the presentations went well and we invited everyone back to our studio space so that everyone that wanted could see what we were up to since we haven’t been the most social (totally busy), but also to see and talk more about things in general. I was fortunate to have a really good and long discussion centered around “locative arts” and what could be the possible course of actions given the current mobile app selections at our immediate disposal…. And I recorded it all with my binaural mic and Sony Mini Disc recorder. I haven’t had a chance to listen to it all but I think it will be good reference material as I continue musing on the emotional and temporal nature of “place.”
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