"Bicycle Camera" (ongoing)
“The Bicycle Camera” borrows the spectator’s preexisting visual impression of the road as viewed from a moving bicycle as a basis for contrast to a manipulated film that depicts the action. This film belongs in the genre of “City Symphony.” Like films by Dziga Vertov, René Clair, and Walter Ruttman, it simulates our experience within a physical space by mimicking the visual transformation of city landscape during travel. Creative control is enabled by changing the camera motor technology as opposed to the scripted narrative. The narrative takes place in the city of Providence, Rhode Island, where a diverse group of cityscapes are lumped together into close proximity. Such anthropological variance offers opportunities for a dramatic are and embed emotional meaning into the activity of travel through the filmic medium. The implementation of the project as described: a motion-sensitive motor is attached to the spoke of the bicycle’s front wheel. The faster the bicycle travels, the more frames per second of film are exposed by the camera shutter attached to the motor. During playback, the speed of the motions taking place around the bicycle is slowed down when the bicycle accelerates. The relationship between the speed and action of biking is inverted. The physical continuum of the path traveled becomes the only constant in dictating film’s visual component; no matter how fast or slow the bicycle moves, the same amount of imagery is recorded. The material chosen to create this work is celluloid film for two main reasons. One, I want to emphasis the direct linkage between the motion that characterizes the filmic medium and the application of transportation. The two technologies exist hand in hand, and it is most appropriate to have one quite literally drive the other. Two, the filmstrip, too, is a path, an unbroken continuum that maps out a space. This project is currently ongoing, pending some technical changes and weather improvements. |