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NOTE: Spoilers below.

The video contains 2 pieces of copywrited music,
and so therefore can not (either legally or in
good conscience) be published. A description of
the work (screenplay, shooting schedual will
soon be avail instead).

We appologise for the in-conveninece.


The work (see artist's statement below, as well) centres around the
common things that we see around us. In this case, it's mainly about 
"crossings". BTW (by the way), this ties in with my work on the so-called 
"iconosphere" and the concept of "iconicospheric cross products"; ie, 
taking ideas from one area (eg, musical arrangments) and translating 
them into "foreign terms" in another area (eg, using musical arrangements
to create video arrangements, or even creating a quantum mechanical
model of say "a certain duck" -[What? (here)]-

START AGAIN

The work consists of three phases and represents "yet another cycle".

Part the First is a rainy day at Brookhaven College; i took my undergraduate
studio art classes at the Brookhaven College, School of the Arts. The
scene is the front of the student services centre and is of course 
centred around the foutain. Despirte its rather un-impressive size, it
IS the first impression of the campus that one views upon entering the
campus by "the front entrance". As such the images combine rain and and
the fountain. I chose for this part, "Wedding Rain" by Liz Story.

I first encountered Liz Story in the old days of "vinyl" (LP's - Long 
Playing Records). Her works have had a hard journey (again a parallel
motif for life in general, and the (ahem) journey of your current 
narrator). Pure "jazzists" (again refer to the IconoSphere link above)
considered here stuff as "lite jazz", pure rockers considered her stuff
as "hard core jazz". Long before there were groups like "Enigma" (and
even later Philip Glass (I'm thinking "Itaipu"; esp, "The Lake" -- 
again with water as symbol).

Long before that; there was, Liz Story.

Specifically: "Pure Colour" (published as "Pure Color").

Her works have survived the buffets of time, space, and those most
horrible to craggy shoals and sirens' song:  Marketing. Her works
are classified (now) as "New Age". Indeed, it IS a new age isn't it?

********* PUT e-links to Liz's stuff here ****

These introductory scenes are all about establishing a slightly 
etherial feel for the work. The idea here plays off of three 
major elements:

1) Water; the rain, the fountain sounds in the b/g -- the fountain
   is never really shown.

2) Sound; the ambient sounds (i tried as much as possible to "mix"
   the human voices so that they were NOT recognisable. When i first
played this vid in class, people were trying to make out WHAT the people
were saying. Alas, i just wanted the presence of people to be in the
b/g and that the water sounds (and of course the music) to "take us
away". As with web pages, when you show layouts, people start reading
the TEXT instead of looking at the way the text is laid out. Thus, the
creation of the "psueudo-latin" text. In the same way the voices were
supposed to be "psueudo-speech".

3) Light. The work beings and ends with light. 


As a contrasting element, we move to the second "movement" with very
different music. As i started "piecing it together", i knew that i 
wanted the tie in with the birds (see almost ANY discussion of Jazz,
especially "Charlie Parker" - who was known as "bird). But, since there
is an IMPLIED (and explicit as well) sense of "the passing of time",
i actually went backward in time to the Bach piece. LIz's stuff is
almost timeless and as such it was almost supposed to represent the
"primordial". In working the piece up, i actually started by working
with Stravinski's "Rite of Spring" -- carefully avoiding looking over
my shoulder that "it's been done before"; ie, "Fantasia" by Walt Disney
and company. However, i finally decided that the opening was just too
heavy, and then decided to move that "feel" to the second movement. 
Finally, i came up with the three elements:

   distant, etherial (pre-cosmic?) past
   the present now (from Bach's point of view, eternity)
   the future (more on that in a bit)

I had about 1-2 hours of footage taken at various times in the evenings.
Once i had decided on the "passage of time" as unifying compositional
element -- that's really THE big leap of faith that we as artists always
have to make -- finally, things started falling into place. 

The final movement was really the most difficult. As i was working
(i'm listening to Glass's "Itaipu: The Dam" right now), the second 
movment out, i had all of this late evening images and then of course
my usual "repetoir of shadow". And then i finally found that picture
of the water tower. This is beside a path (in Addison, TX, Terra 
-- see map) that i often take home from the bus stop. And of course, 
those wondrous trees in the mid ground. That's when the idea of the
light worked itself in.

I had started (again with cirularity, theatre of the absurd, etc) with
"Fire Lane - No Parking" and while looking for more evening pictures
(that's when i came across the vid and still of the birds), i came 
across the "DON'T WALK" sign. I had the distant footage and then the
close up. And then "I saw the light" -- and it was flashing! This 
tied in with the close ups of the fountain lights and then i worked
those back in even more (the long shot still that closes the first
movement). 

So, then i went back through everything and started looking for something
"modern". At first i was thinking of "third eye vision, five start 
dimension" by the Black Star Rap team (Mos Def and Equaal Talib) but
decided that i needed something with a bit more beat. While looking 
through my CD's, i finally remembered the film "Mystery Men" and 
was going to choose "Rainy Day Parade" by Jill Sobule which is the
theme for Janeane Garofalo's part as "The Bowler". She was responsible
for getting Ben Stiller to play the part of "Mr. Furious". This is
a particular favorite of me and my family. I bought "Feel This Book"
by the two of them for my daughter when she was in high school -- again
books by actors about acting, life, the universe, and everything. 

However, the music was a bit too upbeat" and by that time, i had 
decided on a night theme with the flashing light. So, from the same
album, i chose (you should have heard the groans) "Night Fever" by
Barry Gibb. I was of course lambasted in class for "you can't rip 
off Barry Gibb's work; you'll have to hire someone [to compose music."
Here i am, living off beans and rice at the end of the month, still
trying to get some sort of permanent work before they toss me out
of my apartment. 

Of course, this "hand held productions" feel is a large amount of 
the aesthetic of my work. Someone actually asked what camera i had
used (the department has about 10 or 15 high end vid's but you can
only check them out for one day every two weeks; we lost one entire
week during "spring break" and the entire campus was closed down.
And so, the editing "bays" were crammed as people scrambled to get
things done at the last minute. So, i held up my $100 Olympus (a 
bit proudly) saying, "just this; it was all gurilla camera work".
Of course, then i got attacked for the camera movement as i shot
things -- if i get my act together, i "could" drag my slightly
damaged, $8.99 tripod (i kid you not -- on sale at MicroCentre 
of all places!) around town. 

Well, that's about it. Oh, yeah -- that FLASHING LIGHT?  As i 
was coming out of my mocap (Motion Capture) class, one of the
CEILING lights was clearly about to go out. So, i set the 
camera on the floor and set it recording -- natch people 
came up and started talking and wondering what phoht that 
"crazy old guy" was up to. So, instead of being able to 
catch the great GIZZZIHT, GIZZZIHT sound that the bulb was
making, i had to blot it out. 

I *do* appologise for the seemingly "corny" ending. I actually
thought to change the credits to read:


     XTAL PRODUCTIONS                 (that's "crystal" btw)

      in association 
         with

    Flashing Light Pictures

but, i decided that it would just be "too" over the top. The
groans in class when i let Barry's music bleed over (since the
"in situ" sound was nixed) told me that (other than GNO and 
couple of other art-type froodz) no one would appreciate the
actual delicateness of:

    Light and Shadow.

--42--
Frank.




xing redux - artist's statement

   Someone was working with John Cage
   and asked what his phone number was.
   He replied that it was in the phone
   book. When pressed as to why he didn't
   have an unlisted number, he replied:
   "I have spent my life listeing to sound,
    why would i shut myself off from any
    sound experience?"  -- not an exact quote


When the photographic camera was introduced early in the 1800c,
many professed that it would put artists out of work. And indeed
it did -- and of course created the impressionist and expressionist
movements. As the modern-day photgrapher, Karen Long has put it:

    "With painting you start with nothing and
     have to create everything. With film, you
     start with everything and have to move
     towards nothing."

In the same way, what i am attempting to do in this "small films" 
-- i refer to them as "miniatures" -- is to take a "second look"
at the commonplace around us. In much the same way that Degas,
??name?? (the people crossing the street) and other artists that
first started using cameras to not only document but to "arrest in
time" events much as they would with a still life -- they saw the
possibilities of the opposite as well. 

That is, with modern digital cameras (that can act as both still
cameras as well as "moving pictures" cameras) it becomes possible
to externalise our experiences. That is, in much the same way that
many people now use their mobile phones to record their life in 
real time, it is possible to record the *impressions* of life with
a camera. 

Note that this is almost a complete parallel to the works of the
early impressionists; especially Cezane, Monet, van Gogh, etc. Much
of their aesthetic revolves around returning to the same place at
the same (and different) times. Studying the way that light changes
with the time of day, the seasons, or even the variety of scenic 
textures. In this same way, i feel part of that on-going dialog.
As i travel by bus, i take basically a combination of three different
routes several times a week. As such, i get used to the patterns of
life, movement, colour, sounds, etc in both the semi-bucollic ??sp??
city (suburban) life, as well as those small bits of countryside
that have somehow managed to NOT be consumed by mans needs to urbanise.
The degree to which these are the case are somewhat removed from the
extremes; ie, the suburbs are NOT the city and the mowed and trimmed
fields are NOT the forest or wild. To a certain extent, this "tones
down" the images and sounds that present themselves to me as possible
sections. 

At the same time, they present me with a variety of mixed media as
subjects. For example, the cleared fields being ready for a new housing
development in the middle of formerly quite wild forest area. Quite
literally the road (a major highway - Preston Road) cuts a straight
path through the quite twisted, gnarlly and completely free growing
trees and shrubs whose "design" is only tempered by natural law and
not the hand of man. Juxtaposed (in some cases literally side-by-side)
are carefully coffieured ??sp?? "gated communities" that resemble
something out of a remote Tibetian Monestery poised on the side of 
a remote mountain. 

And of course, in the middle of all of this are numerous places where 
"life finds a way" --  as Jeff Goldblume says (as "Dr. Malcomb" in
"Jurassic Park" by Steven Spielberg, based on Michale Criton's novel).
Indeed, the birds constantly "settle down" at night, and then of course
the sounds of the nearby small airport -- nothing larger than a Lear
Jet. As well as, the urban streets: Rather than super highways -- 
nothing faster than 40 mph (65 kmph), and so forth. But, of course 
as with all such settings the hand of man is ever present. The most
interesting sign is the constantly replanted flower beds at key 
intersections and in front of corporate buildings. And here to, even
that is "softened" -- nothing over 12 stories high, no large sprawling
malls. 

As an artist, i plunge myself into the "commonplace". There are of
course always direct signs of artistic design in the structure of
buildings, roads, landscaping, etc. And yet at the same time "accidents"
happen. That is, patterns emerge due to technical constraints. One
of my favorite such things is when the telephone and cable lines are
slowly "built up" over time. I first learned of this important sign
of "urban evolution" from the works of Robert Crumb -- best known for
his work as an underground/hippy cartoonist, lives of the Jazz 
artists (issued as "trading cards"), as well as recent works illustrating
literary works such as Charles Bukovski, Philip K. Dick, etc.

Once telphone poles are installed (a major urban undertaking especially
along busy streets), they then become a backbone onto which more and
more lines are hung, until the either resemble music staves like 
something out of Pendereski's "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima"
or else bundles of muscle fibers in body builder's arms or legs. And
of course, birds find these convenient places to pre-nest for the
evenings: Forming notes upon the staves and then later retreating to
the cookie-cutter tress planted in precise delineations along the 
streets and sidewalks. As night falls, they begin their nightly chorrus
of "settling in". And as the night begins to "heat up" - especially
on Friday nights -- the drone of the daytime, mundane and pragmatic
traffic yields to the almost sensuous rhythms of night life diners,
theatre goers, club seekers: Comedy, jazz, and of course danse. 

These are the rhythms, sounds, and strokes of paint that make up 
suburban life. That's what these "miniatures" are all about. 



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