Chronocutting

Keen followers of this blog may well remember the Chronocuts series that started back in 2008. It all began as a happy accident - whilst testing a new web page in 2007 which contained several movie clips I noticed that the movies loaded one after the other, in a sequential order, a one frame gap between each. By using the same footage for each clip an echoing repetitious moving image was created. With 24 clips placed side-by-side one could in effect watch one second’s worth of footage simultaneously upsetting the singularity of the cinematic moment.

Using web browsers proved to be too dependent on the speed of the web connection and indeed on the browser - in Internet Explorer the clips loaded sequentially but not in many others, so a technique was developed to create new single movies built from several slices. As source footage the Chronocuts used scenes from familiar films ranging from Lindsay Anderson’s If to Hitchcock’s Psycho. Our cinematic memory of the scenes and how they unfold makes the temporal and spatial transformation all the more acute. Rather than glimpse a movement once we see it repeated visually and aurally revealing new relationships and dynamics in the footage. 




So why the post now? Well next week - the 2cnd of December to be precise I will be screening 5 or so Chronocuts upstairs at the Memorial Gallery in Hastings. Especially for the exhibition I have made brand new higher definition versions and an extended version of Iffy plus a new piece Where the air is clear. 
 

Storm Bugs in the Wire

Get yourself a copy of the October issue of the Wire magazine to read a two page spread on Storm Bugs and  Film of the Same Name

Ice Yacht – Pole of Cold

Tucked away on Snatch 3 (the last of the Snatch Tapes compilations released in 1981) is a track by Ice Yacht called ‘0 Degrees North’. An austere piece of drum loop and drone music, there was talk of a full tape having been recorded by the band (?) but no documentation of any further releases can be found.

Rumour had it that members of Ice Yacht had embarked on an ill-fated trip to the North Pole attempting to retrace a journey made by the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen in 1888. This story was given credence when last year a polar research group uncovered a cassette tape in a vacuum-sealed case in the permafrost. The white tape was marked simply Ice Yacht – Pole of Cold.

After letting the tape thaw out it was then baked in a temperature controlled oven for 5 hours and though some oxide had peeled away the tape was playable allowing the transfer of the recordings. Pole of Cold contains six tracks of analogue electronics seemingly mapping an arctic exploration to the coldest place on the planet though exactly when and where they were recorded is unknown. 

Fragment Factory have now made 100 numbered replica copies of the tape and  it is available now on white cassette.