UMBRA SUMUS (2015)

​Single channel printed frame animation & video loop, 7 minutes.

Shown at the Barbican and as part of CultureTech in Derry-Londonderry (see below)

"And now that I want to hold fast to and describe this most important thing, or at least something of it, everything is only a mass of separate fragmentary pictures which has been reflected in something, and this something is myself, and this self, this mirror, whenever I have gazed into it, has proved to be nothing but the uppermost surface of a glass plane."

(Herman Hesse, Journey to the East)

 Umbra Sumus is a fragmented representation of an imagined cityscape that constantly disintegrates and rebuilds; realised in fleeting shadows and flickers of memory and loops of time.

Digital video and 3D animations are manipulated using analogue processes, reflecting, distorting, and fragmenting the images to create abstract geometric scenes, disrupting the everyday through repetition and interruption. One of these techniques I have named ‘PaperKino’: printing each frame onto paper then photographing and re-animating. This creates a technologically obsolete technique that connects with the themes of performed nostalgia and memory in the piece. In contrast to using editing and animation technology, it is a labour intensive process, adding not only a material, tactile element with its attendant chance of imperfections but a craft-type practice.

Screenings/exhibitions:

INTERFACES, the Barbican (2015), London

INTERFACES, Studio 80-81 (2015), Derry, NI