Working with film and video I investigate new ways of experiencing these mediums. I see the process of working as important as the outcomes and work experimentally to challenge traditional notions of how things are understood. I often start with the specific nature of film or video and then use this to test and invert how we understand it. This questioning of the medium acts as a metaphor for how we might or might not question the world around us.
‘Wishful Thinking' was made in response to a trip to CERN. Here, more than just questioning the world they are investigating the universe. My work shows footage of shooting stars (meteors) projected into a black suitcase open on the floor. The footage is collected from UCL's auroral video camera in Spitzbergen, Arctic . This experience has been mediated through a projector and a suitcase. It is not real, yet for a short time the viewer forgets it is a construction. The experiments at CERN are also a construction. The stars in the suitcase might seem magical but this is off set by a cynical reading; how we humans try to package the universe into a suitcase.
The viewer has to watch and wait for an event that takes under a second. This second becomes more important than the time spent waiting. At CERN they are trying to understand, amongst other things, how the universe began. The experiments are observed over and over again and the scientists wait for results. At its most basic level the footage is just white dots on a black background. This 2D rendering is enough, though, to suggest space and depth, made stranger by the suitcase being on the floor and looked down into. The procedures and experiments at CERN are complicated and often use concepts that are hard to imagine. The scientists rely on analogies to explain these concepts. This is my analogy of CERN.
