Mossley, As In A Dream

Home movie from a ramble around the hills of Mossley, April 2010, shot on expired AGFA Moviechrome, slowed down but otherwise un-edited.

I really wanted to experiment with sound design on my home movies but the Institute's steam-powered editing chambers aren't currently up to anything beyond sticking a sound file and a video file together and waiting to see if the old Macintosh engine gives out. So instead I shamelessly lifted Delia Derbyshire & Barry Bermange's The Dreams: Land piece from 1964, which seems to create a few interesting juxtapositions and, you know, keeps their work alive.

If anyone would care to add their own soundtrack I will happily provide the video file and reward them with an over-familiar pat on the shoulder upon completion of the work.

6.92 Billion Portraits: an ongoing side-project

Having been dispatched to Valencia, Bucharest and Poitiers last Autumn to represent L'Institute Zoom at screenings of our short film It's Nick's Birthday, I decided that rather than clog the Institute's archive with further shambolically improvised Super-8 travelogues I would instead set myself the task of exhaustively documenting the people and places I encounted in a series of 10-second audio-visual portraits.

"Circumstances" (wine, time, cowardice) prevailed and I was only able to take three portraits in Valencia, three in Bucharest and none at all in Poitiers. Thus, to preserve my own dignity I have adjusted the terms of the project so that this handful of films should now be considered the first batch in my ongoing task of creating a portrait for every living person on Earth - which, day to day fluctuations in world population figures notwithstanding, should eventually account for around 6.92 billion of us.

Below are the first six, the inaugural portrait subject remaining anonymous as an exercise in legend-making. The remaining 6,199,999,994 will appear here in reverse-chronological order as they are produced. Whilst the basic tenets of the portrait-taking process will remain consistent, I sincerely hope my technical skills show some improvement as the millions and billions pass.

Please contact me to arrange your sitting ASAP.

SUBJECT: Anon
LOCATION: Valencia
DATE: 20.11.2010

SUBJECT: C.L.
LOCATION: Valencia
DATE: 20.11.2010

SUBJECT: C.M.
LOCATION: Valencia
DATE: 20.11.2010

SUBJECT: S.M.
LOCATION: Bucharest
DATE: 26.11.2010

SUBJECT: A.S.
LOCATION: Bucharest
DATE: 26.11.2010

SUBJECT: A.B.
LOCATION: Bucharest
DATE: 26.11.2010