'Here & Now'

The first piece of the project I have been working on was created under the title 'Here & Now'.

I decided to work with video and audio as these media are always at the forefront of my mind whenever faced with a project. I use my iMac and the software 'iMovie' to create video pieces, I have become very familiar with how it works and can feel a theme developing with every art work I create.

'Here & Now' provided plenty of potential when it came to subject matter. 

As I have mentioned before in an earlier blog post, the concept of time has been an important part of my research and development for this project. How we perceive time and deal with it in day to day are things that I have thought about all summer.

To gain a fresh perspective on this subject I wanted to record some audio, specificly a voice. I also wanted an innocent feel to the video piece so I asked my 8 year old cousin Diarmuid if he wanted to participate in the project! He was more than happy to, so I arranged a time with my auntie to go down and visit.

I had to prepare a set of fairly straight forward questions that I could ask and that he would understand. I wasn't worried about whether or not his answers made sense, I just wanted a running narrative that the viewer can listen to whilst taking in the visuals.

I have recently been converting our old home videos into digital files on my iMac, so I wanted to immerse myself amongst these videos and hand pick from about 40 hours of footage, the most appropriate visuals. The ones I picked all related to 'time' in some way. For example one clip was my family celebrating the 2000 millennium year, and others were memories that I hold dear to my heart and moments that I can clearly remember. 

Once I had the audio material, I got to work on compiling the home videos and creating a strong, 1 minute piece. Deciding how much of the audio to use was a big problem. Some answers Diarmuid gave related really well to the visuals, other answers not so much. I managed to arrange them in an order I felt worked, for example there were short small audio clips that played when something quick was happening visually.

Whenever I make video pieces I always think about how it will be received when people get to see it. I always ask myself - Will they relate this to that? Will they understand that part? Do they know that was supposed to look that way? These questions help me during the creative progress but also get in my way.