Landscape Studies
This is an ongoing project with completed works and work in progress (often in collaboration with Hector Centeno Garcia) where I experiment with modes of photographing, filming, and field recording in natural and human-altered environments. Influenced by the work of filmmakers in eco-cinema, slow cinema, and landscape film, I am attempting to develop a way of creating immersive sound and moving images that retain the compositional, formal, meditative, and contemplative aspects of photography.
The focus of the experiments lies in the intersection of human activity, altered landscapes, and fauna and flora. I record very still moving images that fix the viewer's attention to the flat map of elements in the frame while the sound of machines, radios, wind, tree leaves, birds, accelerating cars provide a deep and assemblage of human and non-human activity.
The camera is fixed using a normal lens that approximates the average field of vision of a human. There is minimal editing if any. Sound is recorded to accentuate the spatial dimension of listening while retaining a stereo configuration. At present, these videos are best viewed on a large screen with stereo speakers or on a desktop or laptop computer with headphones.
Running times of the videos range from about 2 minutes to 20 minutes.