I&P Exercise 4.5
Find words that have been written or spoken by someone else. You can gather these words from a variety of means – interviews, journals, archives, eavesdropping. Your subject may be a friend, stranger, alive or dead. Select your five favourite examples and create five images that do justice to the essence of those words.
I&P p.102
You may choose to present your images with or without the original words. Either way, make sure that the images are working hard to tell a story. If you decide to include the words, ensure that they add to the meaning rather than describing the image or shutting it down. Try to keep your image-and-text combinations consistent – perhaps they are all overheard conversations on a bus or all come from an old newspaper report. Keep them part of a story.
Consider different ways of presenting the words. Audio or video might lend itself well to this kind of work, or a projection of images using voice-over. Experiment.
[18Mar21] I started thinking about this last night after completing ex44. Nothing came, at first, but today I thought:
1. What available events with some narrative arc currently exist (still in lockdown on 18th March)? Not much, just local journeys – a walk, a bus and a train at a push.
2. Are there any poems about country walks? The answer is an unlimited number.
3. Then I thought of a time lapse and maybe my standard Asg.3 dog-walker rural route.
4. I’ll run a trial.
5. And an assemblage of relevant poems, overlapping to a pleasing cacophony of equal length to contrast with both the textual context and the idyllic rural setting (well, suburban rather than rural).
6. First run probably on Saturday (2 days hence) if it’s not raining..
I have run a couple of time lapses so far in this degree, Mondrian stained glass for EyV Exc 3.2 and Eltham Hight Street for EyV Exc 4.3
[25Mar] The video is done. The poetry credits are below (and at the end of the film).
What I’m aiming for here is a conglomeration of rural walk verse narratives from several centuries, the cacophony mirroring the juxtaposition of urban and rural locations.
I found the experience, from conception through execution and realisation very rewarding and will pursue this branch of the genre.
Poems
1. Daffodils, Wordsworth, read by Martin Clifton.
source: librivox.org. Available from https://archive.org/details/wandered_lonely_as_a_cloud_librivox/wandered_lonely_wordsworth_apc.mp3 [Accessed 23 March 2020].
2. the sky was, e.e. cummings, read by loubet. source: librivox.org. Available from https://librivox.org/short-poetry-collection-103-by-various/ [Accessed 23 January 2020].
3. Leisure, WH Davies, read by Michael Dalling.
source: librivox.org. Available from https://librivox.org/short-poetry-collection-103-by-various/ [Accessed 23 March 2020].
4. The Sound of the Trees, Robert Frost, read by Winston Tharp.
source: librivox.org. Available from https://librivox.org/short-poetry-collection-103-by-various/ [Accessed 23 March 2020].
5. The fifth was going to be Walking, Thomas Traherne but I could not find a public domain reading.
I&P Exc 4.5 References
Boothroyd, S. and Roberts, K. (2019) Identity and place [I&P]. Barnsley: Open College of the Arts.
