Media Arts
Multiplying Images: Four Videos Utilize Repeating Patterns
Jennifer Wood and Fescennine are long-time collaborators, being choreographer and composer, respectively. Here we explore four videos they created together.
maybe festivities
maybe festivities
A solo dance adjacently related to the Holidays.
Jennifer Wood and Fescennine are long-time collaborators, being choreographer and composer, respectively. Here we explore four videos they created together.
Fescennine:
I originally created the soundtrack for a different video. I was making some replacement music for a composite montage of a 2014 Suchu Dance full length show, Nebria, and kept making things and not being happy with them. This discarded piece was perfect for this video, though. The only edits I had to make were for length. The way the soundtrack and the video both jump from one thing to another with a feeling of …anxiety maybe? I think that’s what made it work. When I watch it I imagine Jennifer is someone who really doesn’t like the holidays much, and feels obligated to entertain or shop, but is having an anxious inner dialog about it.
Jennifer Wood:
When capturing the original footage, I set a timer for each clip where I was only doing movement for a short span of time. So that dictated the nature of the quick changes between clips. Since it is all just me alone in a white space with a string light, I began to multiply myself when I was wishing for more of an ensemble feeling. I really began looking at the relationship between the pink and red colors against the white. I was focused on the patterns the movements and contrasting colors created when in a mirror image or multiplied many times.”
“When I watch it I imagine Jennifer is someone who really doesn’t like the holidays much.”
Jennifer Wood:
“I had made a previous (as yet unreleased) video of myself in my Bangalore apartment with my favorite white wall and white floor. So this time around, still not feeling like going outside to a location, I was faced with the same set up and needed something, anything, to be different. I had this string light from Christmas that I never put away because, well, it was really cheerful. Usually I kept it dangling looped on my wall, but for the video I strung it across the room. That’s it. My big change.
My apartment is very noisy during the day from things going on outside but I was planning on working with it and keeping the ambient sounds. Well that wasn’t working when I got to editing, so I decided to try putting some music with it. This piece from Fescennine was the first one I tried and it was perfect.”
In the Park
In the Park
Physical Training Becomes Art
A man, wearing a weekend’s worth of stubble, brown sandals with velcro clasps, a red t-shirt, navy shorts and a stunning fanny pack/belt bag to match, walks into a public park and proceeds to do an array of physical exercises.
We are in Bangalore, India, as a man uses exercise equipment. Reality becomes skewed as the human body and equipment are broken into fractured images.
Thus our Wellness contributor, Socrates Pshaw, was the unwitting star of Jennifer Wood’s video. Using footage captured while Pshaw was exercising in a public park, Wood took the clips and transformed them into a series of kaleidoscopic images. Due to the repetitive movements of the exercises, a visual and auditory rhythm is created along with the ambient sounds of Bangalore.
Socrates Pshaw:
“I had asked Jennifer to video me exercising so I could prove to my friends back home that I had really started exercising. Without proof they would never believe me. I didn’t know she was going to make a psychedelic video out of it!
When this video was taken, I was just beginning my journey out of depression. Exercise was my first step.”
“When this video was taken, I was just beginning my journey out of depression. Exercise was my first step.”
Jennifer Wood
I love the unsteady trembling motion of the hand held camera in this case. As a dancer I know, the body is in constant motion, even when standing still. I also enjoyed the effort in some of the exercises. This is in a public park. Most of the parks I’ve seen here have this same basic equipment anyone can use. Some of the equipment is unusual to me; I’m American and this park is in India. For example the yellow wheelie things I find so amusing.
Pshaw’s human body, in the video, is fractured and rejoined making some strange creatures. Sometimes his body almost completely disappears and it seems the equipment is moving by itself. Other times he is dehumanised entirely, headless with his red shirt becoming the multiple petals of a strange flower.
Radiant
Radiant
from a simple line drawing, Fescennine and Jennifer Wood conspired to make this exuberant video
Fescennine:
“In 2015 I created this music for the Suchu Dance production of begin wide which was based on radioactivity. The performers were all in electric blue and the set was a stripped black box theater. I wanted to keep the music full of energy but be a little cold.
“I was inspired by the formations of choreographer Busby Berkely in those depression-era Hollywood extravaganzas.”
Jennifer Wood:
“This video is based on a simple line drawing which you can see as the very last image before the credits.
In manipulating the lines of the drawing, I was inspired by the formations of choreographer Busby Berkely in those depression-era Hollywood extravaganzas. Berkely intentionally choreographed his dances to have many sections filmed from above. From that perspective, one can see the numerous dancers making formations, flowing from one shape to another.
Sweet
Sweet
From a quick photo taken of a view in a park, this candy confection is made.
Pink gardens shift to the sounds of a deconstructed, lush ballad.
Jennifer Wood:
“When I first arrived in Bangalore, it was kind of by accident, definitely not planned. That was in July 2019 and I’m still there. Early in my stay I would wander my area and spend time in the numerous parks. In the photo used to make Sweet, I was attempting to capture the magnitude of the height and size of these palm trees and the portal they created. I was just learning and doing some first experiments with this kind of image manipulation.
“This particular track is a deconstruction of “Some Enchanted Evening” by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein, in a recording sung by Frank Sinatra.”
Jennifer Wood:
I changed the color of green to pink. When I did that, the complexity of the leaves, vines and foliage suddenly appeared as a kind of lace. Also the symmetry and triangulation of the moving parts kind of look like a muff to me.”
Fescennine: “Tee-hee”
Jennifer Wood: “Well it does.”
Fescennine:
“The music used in this video is from the Suchu Dance production Ella Paradise, which was a very surreal, dream-like show. The majority of the music for that show consisted of deconstructed music from the early to mid 20th century. This particular track is a deconstruction of “Some Enchanted Evening” by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein, in a recording sung by Frank Sinatra.”