This work is a series of short pieces made as a commission for Channel Four TV.
It comprised nine short video pieces some made in collaboration with other musicians and artists. It also includes three image and sound pieces made on the Atari computer. Two of these, Digital Still Life and Arbitrary Logic, were presented before and after the Channel Four transmission as free standing works projected directly from the computer.
Arbitrary Logic, an interactive audio-visual synthesiser was first presented under the working title Osnabruk at the Osnabruk festival of 1987 and later as part of an improvised and computer music performance with Keith Rowe at the London Filmmakers Cooperative, December 1989.
Digital Still Life (1984-86, Computer and video, colour, 8 mins) was originally made for projection directly from an Atari computer. The same computer programme defines the image sequence, the colour values and the music produced through a MIDI synthesizer. This version also edits in some of the original 'live-action' from which the digital images were made.
Like a Fox (1988. Co-directed with Gill Eatherly, colour, 6 mins) is a collaborative work with Gill Eatherley who wrote the script and shot the original footage. It is a poetic trace of a long experiment in living in a remote part of country France then facing the implications of unexpected nuclear fall-out.
Rock Wave (1988, colour, 8 mins, Music by Stewart Louis de Canonville) follows the act of creating an electronic sound improvisation by de Canonville and places it between an inner city reality and an evocative fantasy.
Juniper and the Myths of Origin (1988. Video, colour, 7 min, Music by AMM) explores an ancient landscape, the Gorge du Tarn, not as a present but as a myth of continuity. It is the part of a reminder that all things and all experience pass, decay. Maybe something can be grasped for a fleeting moment, film promises this and denies it at the same time.
Veritas (1988, colour, 6 mins) A visual homage to wine, the growth of the grape, making and drinking the wine, the sensuality of old men, the cyclops story.
Heads I Win - Tails You Lose (1986, 7 mins, Computer and Video) First titled Jazz Punk, this work is based on a series of drawings I made over a number of years of heads inspired in part by punk styles. These were scanned into the Atari and manipulated through the programme in various ways. The music is generated by the same programme and is intended to evoke an atmosphere of a jazz/punk night club. In the original computer version I played part of the sound live from a keyboard into the computer (though the MIDI port). This input slightly modified, interactively, the development of the programme. The tape version was edited from one of the 'performances'.
Beware (1988, colour, 5 mins) Driving in the rain, distractions of image and big text comments on media, press and politics. What is it really about? Do not ask the maker.
Et in Arcadia Ego (1988, colour, 8 mins, Music by AMM) Visual transformations of water lilies in a pond, the reflections in the water from day to night and day for night edited to an improvised soundtrack by AMM commissioned for the work.
Digital Still Life
