your back is a landscape
Practise Research // Visual Poem
[c. Jan 2023]
https://fredadsouza.cargo.site/your-back-is-a-landscape-[2023]
your back is a landscape explores the feeling of being overwhelmed by the infinite detail in everything; from the outside world, to the revelation of healthy love, to my own personal inner world. It is an expression of the mixed emotions this brings up- sometimes I celebrate the beauty of this and sometimes it fells me. For this video I wanted to utilise audio visual composition as a creative tool, using each element to inspire the other’s creation, in a ‘collage-like process’ (Cook, 2013).
I began by writing a prose piece inspired by a conversation about opposites I had with my partner (appendix A). I then gathered footage and rewrote the prose (appendix B) inspired by this footage. Next I worked the footage around the rhythm and themes of the prose and added music inspired by the same, reworking it until it all slotted together to make a cohesive piece. I wanted to take the video in a more musical direction so to fit with my collage process, I created building blocks of audio that I could freely layer and rearrange, just as I had done with the footage. This included the layered chord, violin drone, spoken word, sounds of footsteps and the sea, and much more that didn’t make the final cut. Once I had these building blocks, I moved between DaVinci and Reaper, shaping these elements around each other and allowing them to inspire creation between each other.
Visually, my initial kernel of inspiration came from photographers Sayuri Ichida and Bill Brandt. Both explore the merging of bodies and objects by abstracting form with camera angles and black and white colour grading. Brandt merges these things often within the same photos (figure 1), whereas Ichida places images alongside each other to create a ‘visual dichotomy’ (figure 2). I overlay images to convey in real time the tension between my desire for slow focus and the busy world, as well as allowing images to complete each other (figure 3). I decided to lean into the shifting focus of my phone camera lens and my often unsteady hand to create a P.O.V effect of looking out to the world.
The second half of the video shifts from looking outwards to looking inwards, so the film world become less concrete and more abstract. It is built around a textural shot I made by placing my phone under a plastic box full of water in the sun and moving my fingers around inside. To continue expanding the film into a new space, I overlayed this shot with itself, slowed it down and gradually added colour. The creation of the shot was inspired by my ongoing practise of underwater singing (as first done by soprano Juliana Snapper (2008)). For ease of recording, I sang on the surface of the water and it created a unique, ripple-like texture which matched up well with the video. I added reverb which contrasted the dry spoken word, allowing space for both elements. Throughout the video is a wispy violin drone which I made by bowing the bridge of my violin and closely mic’ing it to capture the range of harmonic texture; an audible representation of the infinite detail in everything.
The skeleton of the video is spoken word, much akin to Chris Marker’s ‘vococentric’ Sans Soleil (Harvey, 2012, p. 7), a travelogue montage film (Marker, 1983). It begins with a T.S Eliot quote (Figure 4)- a poet who has greatly influenced Jeanette Winterson. Referencing this, I began my video with a Winterson quote from Art and Lies (figure 5), a book that often references T.S Eliot and has inspired much of my own prose. In Sans Soleil, Marker highlights the flaws of moving image, poetic prose and music, using each medium to fill in the gaps left by the other to make a multimedia work. I have tried to do the same in your back is a landscape, employing a ‘multimedia mentality’ (Cook, 2013) by using audio visual composition as a creative tool.
Walter Murch posits that emotion is the most important element of film making as an audience will remember above all how they felt (Murch, 1995). I followed this advice and edited instinctually to prioritise emotion. I add more layers of meaning by ‘recycling… images and fragments of… text’ from the first half of the video in the second half (Wollen, 1986, p. 168). My working process of rebuilding visual and audible components around each other is undeniably messy, but it affords me freedom to convey the ‘ineffable’ in layered, nuanced ways that I would be unable to plan (Cook, 2013). Because of the all-encompassing nature of multimedial practise, audio visual composition has enabled me to express something I have never before been able to express
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brandt, B. (2022) Bill Brandt: The beautiful and the sinister – in pictures, The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2022/apr/18/bill-brandt-beautiful-sinister-in-pictures (Accessed: January 16, 2023).
Chion, M. (1994) Audio-vision: Sound on screen. Translated by C. Gorbman. New York, NY: Columbia University Press
Cook, N. (2013) “Beyond Music: Mashup, Multimedia Mentality, and Intellectual Property,” in J. Richardson (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics. Oxford University Press.
Harvey, D. O. (2012). The Limits of Vococentrism: Chris Marker, Hans Richter and the Essay Film. SubStance, [online] 41(2), p.12. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/23260788.pdf?ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_SYC-4946%2Fcontrol&refreqid=search%3A5ba6a3be023abf951f848e358bc39eb0 [Accessed 9 Feb. 2020].
Ichida, S. (2021) Absentee, Sayuri Ichida. Available at: https://www.sayuriichida.com/work/i (Accessed: January 16, 2023).
Marker, C. (1983) Sans Soleil. [film] Directed by C. Marker. France: Argos Films.
Murch. W. (1995) In the blink of an eye: A perspective on film editing. Silman A James Press, pp. 17-20.
Snapper, J. (2008) You Who Will Emerge from the Flood..., Juliana Snapper • Work: You Who Will Emerge from the Flood... Available at: https://www.julianasnapper.com/?pg=work-you-who-will-emerge-from-the-flood (Accessed: January 16, 2023).
Strickland, P. (2012) Berberian Sound Studio. UK: Curzon Artificial Eye. Available at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Berberian-Sound-Studio-TobyJones/dp/B00IK6R4E6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1P6EBNIZH8SJY&keywords=berberian+sound+studi o&qid=1642169352&sprefix=berberian+sound+studio%2Caps%2C41&sr=8-1.
Wierzbicki, J. (2016) “Sound Effects/Sound Affects: 'Meaningful Noise in Cinema',” in L. Greene (ed.) The Palgrave Handbook of Sound Design and Music in Screen Media: Integrated Soundtracks. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Winterson, J. (1995) Art and Lies. London: Vintage
Wollen, P. (1986) “Ways of thinking about music video (and post-modernism),” Critical Quarterly, 28(1-2), pp. 167–170. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8705.1986.tb00015.x.
APPENDIX A
Bodies and Objects
Bodies/objects
Table/ no table
Nature/ nurture
Constructive/ destructive
Hot/cold
Subjective/objective
You and I, me and you, us two, we, us
Communication/ argument
Growth/death
Romantic/ Sexual
Tenderness/spite
Empathy/defensiveness
Hope/surrender
Effort /Resignation
Tension/touch
Healing/dying
Closure/wounding
Spending/saving
Eating/starving
Caring /avoiding
Speculating/communicating
Burden /forgiveness
Guilt/apology
Possession/freedom
Passion/suppression
Smooth /textured
Soft/rough
Thinking/feeling
Changing/festering
Movement/stagnancy
Respect/dismissal
Vulnerable/scathing
APPENDIX B
Your Back is a Landscape
You are smooth. My fingers search for your skin. Table/no table; the absence of your form is everything else, all things rough, dense, busy, wide.
The presence of your form is tangible and safe. In all things there is infinite detail. How am I to take it all in?
How am I ever to leave the house again? I will not get past my front door for gaping at the extravagance of its grain.
How am I ever to finish gazing upon your face when I am still counting each speckle in your iris? I cannot keep track of the colour of your eyes, which change with only the slight of your neck. In all things there is infinite detail.
In listening to the still hushing of our skin rubbed together, I am recovering from the violence of the underground.
Smallness is enough for me. Your back is a landscape; vast terrain made jagged and changeable by gentle light and the softest of movement.
In all things there is infinite detail.
I have zoomed in and am unable to zoom back out again.
How can I function when I am lost in the folds of a tissue made brilliant under the sun of a desk lamp?
In all things there is infinite detail. There will always be more of you to take in.
*
If I see a landscape in the surface of a shell, how can I not close my eyes to the vastness of the sea?