crosstalk

This piece was inspired both by an old diary, and by a 1949 Kriesler Model 11-20 'Bakelite' mantel radio. I wondered about its sturdy old components - what horrors and sorrows and joys and japes had passed through them, to the entertainment or indifference of several decades of listeners? Vital news that no longer matters, chatter forgotten even as it was being gabbled, music that delighted or bored or irked. To energize its circuits again, and hear today's anxious tempos and febrile bulletins buzzing inside its frayed speaker was somehow soothing. Its warm valve hum, even cold static, seemed more human than our digital perfections.

I sampled sounds from this and other radios; from a typewriter and a sewing machine (the diarist was a seamstress); I sought the co-operation of a singer and a woodwind player. Inspired by the diary, we improvised; the composer extemporised passages on a cranky old piano. I made and I scanned many images, and with this material, I tried to bring back to life a mind and a machine; both antiquated, both perhaps disordered, but neither without their appeal.

This is an excerpt from the complete (15 minute) video.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• war
• psychology
• diary
• biography
• women
• mental
• health
• paranoia

[hatvbmirs]

Wow, this is amazing. o.o

[belltolls1984]

thats cool