Home Videos in the Block

And we're back for the next session, in the multimedia arts space the Block on the Creative Industries Precinct. The presentations in this session will be by my colleagues Patrick Tarrant and Keith Armstrong, and blogging them will be an interesting experiment as they're largely multimedial and it's very dark in here.

Patrick opens with his project Planet Usher, billed as an interactive home movie. It is based around 20 years' worth of home video films created by his brother Peter who is deaf and gradually losing his sight as a result of Ushers syndrome. The project was always also devised as a creative practice as research project.

Planet Usher deals with a time after images, brought about by the videographer's increasing inability to view these images. It is somewhat similar to Derek Jarman's final film Blue in this respect. The project's own presentation format mirrors this by offering an interface that points to memory loss and the increasing existence of these films in the memory of their producer only. The archive represents a process of memory making capable of producing afterimages, in a sense. It thereby also builds on Lev Manovich's model of the loop as a narratve engine - the looping of images in the creator's mind is now all that drives forward the narrative in an otherwise static environment.

Peter's work in essence was transforming the home into narrative for future preservation at a time when he wouldn't be able to see any more. It captures a view of the home from within, even if that home is contested territory and invaded by the very technology used to produce the home videos. But the work done by Peter is not necesssarily that of a prosumer - the professional consumer - but rather of an amateur producer playing with the conventions of professional media. This is especially poignant in the use of sound in the 'crazy news' sequence.