Progress and transcendence (short version)

Salutations and felicitations my dear beam dreamers and a happy new year!

This is the short version of first post of 2011, click here for the long version.

What an excellent opportunity for experimentation, learning, discovery, contemplation and equipment acquisition the seasonal holidays have proved to be.

Just prior to the break I took time out to spend 2 days immersing myself in making tests using the JK optical printer and Debrie contact printer at No.w.here artist filmmaker’s lab.

Welcome to No.w.here

The first day was spent on the optical printer. Test blow-ups were made from colour positive Super 8 to 16mm B&W negative. The results were hand-processed and dried.

JK optical printer

Then on the 2nd day the contact printer was used to make positive test prints using the optically printed negatives made the previous day. These were again hand-processed and dried.

The formidable Debrie contact printer

The end goal is to produce multiple prints for looping from a single negative master. Endlessly different varied prints can be made from the same master and worn out, warped, melted and ultimately destroyed without harming the original master.

By some serendipitous chance a previous visit to No.w.here intended as a practice run for these 2 days put me in touch with a work colleague selling an Elf 16mm film projector and a looper, which enables film of up to 11 minutes in length to be run on a continuous loop through a conventional 16mm film projector – just the addition to our arsenal that I had been searching for, at exactly the right moment! This presented the perfect opportunity to test run the resulting print on a continuous loop and simultaneously practice using these newly acquired devices at home during the midwinter break.

As the new year was born and we passed into January and milder weather, we paid a visit to the Wellcome Collection on London’s Euston Road to see the highly stimulating High Society exhibition which explores the utilisation and influence of mind-altering drugs in human society and culture. The exhibition explores drug cultures throughout world history and their manifestation in artistic endeavours. Two particular exhibits piqued our interest.

In a booth shrouded by black curtains in a corner of the exhibition space visitors could sit with eyes closed before Bryon Gysin’s legendary  Dreamachine (a replica made in 1998). With some patience it induces a state of hypnogogic vision.

Very close to the Dreamachine an entire wall pulsed with constantly shifting coloured light patterns, this could only mean an installation by the Joshua Light Show was in town! Most exciting of all to the aspiring purveyors of live visuals that we are was the exhibit behind the projection screen: the automated projectors, colour wheels, transparencies, various bottles of coloured oils and hand painted glass slides that comprise Joshua White’s legendary light shows of the late 196os happenings at New York’s Fillmore East, here reconstructed.

On that note we’ll leave you with a video clip of John Whitney’s 1966 film experiment with early computer generated imagery – Permutations (seen recently at the BFI’s Essential Experiments series), a wonderful example of the kind of ‘expanded cinema’ that inspires us:

Until once more our vectors intersect, we bid you adieu dear beam dreamers – stay switched on until we next tune in!