week three: sound and vision

In reading Jenny Odell’s How To Do Nothing, I came across her discussion of the artist David Hockney’s ‘joiners’ in which he combined dozens or even hundreds of Polaroid photographs to explore the phenomenology of seeing.  Hockney writes that we actually see ‘in discrete, separate glimpses, which we then build up into our continuous experience of the world.’  I agree with Odell who suggests that ‘something like collage is at the heart of the unstable and highly personal process of perception.’  The three videos I made for this week’s assignment use a sort of collage approach in an effort to capture ‘a living impression’ of the ecosystem here in Jackman, Maine, filtered through my own nostalgia and reverence for this wild place -- my effort to cultivate the bioregionalism that Odell encourages.  From the overambitious stash of footage I accumulated (and had difficulty storing and transferring!) I found myself inevitably selecting clips more based on visual connections (and narrative potential) and less based on audio content.  In many cases, my novice recording techniques just yielded a lot of ear-splitting wind sounds, which was disappointing -- something to consider more carefully going forward.  Apologies, too, for uploading after the deadline.  Posting to YouTube in my small town took more than three hours, an interesting and ironic test of my patience and willingness to slow down...