a modernistic memory | finding ghosts in familiar places | in love with a ghost | introspection
“A Modernistic Memory” is a new conceptual series based on the connectivity of memory attachments as they relate to places of significance in my past.
“Finding Ghosts In Familiar Places” is an experimental video art piece and re-captured video still remixes that explores the fluid ambiguities and the interwoven hints of nostalgia within the memories of the artist’s past. The film, through its visual and aural construct creates a symbiotic digital awareness that embraces both a conscious mindset of past experiences and the emotional embodiment of the heart found in those experiences. “Finding Ghosts In Familiar Places” is by all accounts a journey of personal recollection and interpersonal intimacy for the artist.
INTROSPECTION.
a modernistic memory | finding ghosts in familiar places | a fading failing memory | creativity
“A Modernistic Memory” is a new conceptual series based on the connectivity of memory attachments as they relate to places of significance in my past.
“Finding Ghosts In Familiar Places” is an experimental video art piece and re-captured video still remixes that explores the fluid ambiguities and the interwoven hints of nostalgia within the memories of the artist’s past. The film, through its visual and aural construct creates a symbiotic digital awareness that embraces both a conscious mindset of past experiences and the emotional embodiment of the heart found in those experiences. “Finding Ghosts In Familiar Places” is by all accounts a journey of personal recollection and interpersonal intimacy for the artist.
CREATIVITY.
linear data | a room full of things we left behind
The interior room of things. Colorful. Composed of data and moments. The beautiful memories we left behind.
linear data | in a room of things
Here in the interior rooms, we find the things we left behind. The data of memories and moments.
the interior rooms and the endless distance
A reflection of moments in time. Our interior rooms with the persistence of place and memory; beautiful and alarming, from past to present. And from attachment to freedom, we give thanks for the smallest of things such as breath and the endless distance.
into abstraction | form and data | on the edge of everything there is | a moment in time we can never bring back
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There is so much one can say about the possibilities inherent in the creative process. Do we move definitely in a pre-determined direction (unwavering, specific in structure), or allow our intuition (and the tool itself (in my case, the computer)) to guide us. Perhaps a little bit of both. Creating contradictions, beauty, and ambiguities along the way: Magic and loss while searching through memories. Finding that time does not stand still at all, but evolve and return. A returning ecstasy. And so does a work of art. And so too the recollection inherent to its evolution. My video work is a collection of memories, images, and sounds, purposefully or unconsciously contradicting and re-inventing themselves. Disintegrating into loops of color, texture, movement, geometric form, data, time, and space. I want my work to reflect our internal and external existence; to visually and musically create a sense of things happening all at once.
into abstraction | form and place | holding our absence | a returning ecstasy
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“Into Abstraction | Form and Place” continues my exploration of various forms that manifest elements of the surreal, abstract and memory attachments. The piece structure is centered around a time-lapsed progression. It moves from a visual kinetic movement to a slower more meditative movement. The electronic sound scape mirrors this movement with several layers of organic and industrial sounds centered around a continuous ambient drone. Within this complex musical structure, different distinct modalities emerge. And after several minutes of frenetic movement, the sound structure slowly washes away (with ocean waves) into a quieter more delineated infused drone. In each new video in the series “Into Abstraction”, I am attempting to find new ways of manipulating the film software. This process is very satisfying because the possibilities seem endless.
I have been working on this piece for several weeks. And over that time, I found myself contemplating many aspects of my life, as I often do, and searching for visual parallels that may compliment the emotional context of the moment. As in most of my work, I find that I repeat and remix many of my images, sounds, thoughts, and voices. Sometimes I wonder if the emotional connections of the past and the present ever change at all, or just evolve into the future: Evolve into the continuum which is the work. Evolve Into Abstraction, where form and void, form and memories, form and mutation, form and impermanence, form and dreams and form and place become one. Art has a way of giving us a moment of clarity, but does not necessarily save. Our work at times can reveal the life that lives in shadows. But may never quite give us the answers we seek to sustain us. So we are driven to go at it as if there were no history before now.
into abstraction | form and memories
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Into Abstraction | Form and Memories, the artist Walter Smith continues his exploration of field recordings translated into abstract constructs.
into abstraction | all the days are long | a we’ve come so far remix | a place of subtle nuance
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In life it seems, at times, that all the days are long. Caught in-between work, play, dreams, and aspirations. Those days can take the form of too many hours worked, too many hours away from home and loved ones, or too many memories and missed opportunities–taxing, struggling, pushing forward day after day. Sometimes we get a moment of reprieve; a day at the beach, a solitary place in time and space, the joining together of friends, family, and loved ones, or a beautiful hike on the summit of a mountain. Subtle nuances all converging in daily life, testing our resolve, our purpose, or giving pleasure and peace to our efforts.
into abstraction | a better place
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Sometimes in the waking the reality is more pressing than the dream. And the search for “a better place” takes me inside the abstract. It seems that for only a moment, when art becomes a reality, that I am free from the stress and trials of life. When burden by the complexity of life, I long for escape: Into the abstract. Into the meaning of what it is to be alive. To delineate the constraints of the mundane. To have passion. It is here, in the expression and story of my life through the process of creativity, that I encounter that which gives me any measurable sense of peace and self-awareness.
“Into Abstraction | A Better Place (a viable nuance remix)” continues the theme of the smallest of nuances being the focal point. Within those nuances, the layering of sound and imagery are explored through the digital process. Each film builds upon the vision and nuances of the previous films.
into abstraction | nuances – extended video remix | an abstract thought becomes reality
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Nuances, the extended video remix is a further working towards the abstract in form and complexity. Each element of the video is explored through various micro-tonal nuances via add-on effects. Through this process, I am gaining insight into the various visual options I have via the software and how to implement them to create a visual cohesive construct. The variations seem infinite indeed. Again I am using both my own film and stock film together. Musically I am continuing the theme of electronic ambience, through the use of sound samples, field recordings and piano phases. As I explore the makings of sound for my films, I will be utilizing various sound effects and recording techniques in the process. Slowly things will evolve, as the learning curve for both the visual and aural elements are investigated, manipulated and constructed.
into abstraction | nuances
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This is the first film of 2015 in my new series entitled: “Into Abstraction”. The piece is called “Nuances”. It is a short multi-layered video and electronic soundscapes. As the series implies, the idea is to progress towards a state of abstraction both psychologically and visually: An inward emotional journey; full of delineated thoughts, complex constructs and fused memories. Although this piece contains figurative images and landscapes, it is the nuances of the film that contain elements of the abstract. I hope to slowly evolve through the series to a more definitive state of abstraction. It is true that I often merge, both surrealism and the abstract to create my visual themes. I also will be experimenting to the best of my ability to create beautiful and challenging electronic soundscapes, full of sampled ambient drone, field recordings, glitch/IDM, and thematic sounds.
into abstraction | all these nights in blue are where our love use to be | rooms of indigo paintings | i dream dreams without you
My first piece of 2015 in the new series entitled: Into Abstraction ~
all these nights in blue are where our love use to be
rooms of indigo paintings
i dream dreams without you
your world beginning | piano and trails – day 9
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Day 9 in “Your World Beginning” is a multi-layered abstraction of landscape and portrait. Filmed in beautiful Haywood County, North Carolina during the Fall, while on the back roads to Waterrock Knob off of the Blue Ridge Parkway. This is my second video featuring the trail and summit of Waterrock Knob (see the post Maps Mountains and Trails – Day 7). This is the second video using my new Sony software, and I wanted to explore some layering effects with a colored pencil effect as well. And again, I am combining samples of piano and electronic field recordings for the soundtrack. Actually the audio composing, is a very exciting aspect of the video production. Especially when it is within the realm of ambient and electronic composition.
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but Nature’s sources never fail” ~ John Muir
your world beginning | piano and waterfalls – day 8
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The video “Piano and Waterfalls” continues the series “Your World Beginning”. It is an exploration of organic nostalgia i.e. a reflection of the beautiful times and places gone by. “Piano and Waterfalls” was filmed while hiking the Graveyard Fields trail to the Lower and Upper Falls located in the Balsam Mountain range in Western North Carolina. This film is of the Lower Falls which one arrives first after a short hike through the barren fields (a fire burned a large segment of the mountain range in the early 1900’s). Then the trail continues on with a more difficult hike to the Upper Falls. I shot various short segments along the way, which I will feature in a number of parts.
This video is also the first film I have produced using new software. My computer upgraded (without my consent I must say) to Windows 8.1 leaving me with an incapable AVID Studio. I loved working with AVID. And after nearly two years of using the software, I was really beginning to fine tune my use of it. I tried without success to find and install patches that would enable me to continue to use it with Windows 8.1, but with no positive results. So I just purchased the Sony Movie Studio Suite. And it is a learning curve all over again. My goal is to continue to produce quality videos that mirror the progression of my previous work. With this first attempt, I am discovering that there are some questions to the quality of the final video production as an uploaded internet movie. Formatting is a key. Especially when I am using my own video footage. This is a technical challenge, which I hope to conquer in order to create the most visually pleasing and technically diverse films possible.
your world beginning | in a place of subtle distance
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“I love you, so I don’t care what I think of you” – Joan Crawford
… in a place of subtle distance
your world beginning | we could live forever chasing this feeling
as things evolve in fragments,
blown by the winter wind
in the gray and distant place
deep within this conversation
– with self
and anyone who will listen … being so far away
we could live forever, chasing this feeling
your world beginning | a history before now
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Day 6 in the “Your World Beginning” series is entitled “A History Before Now.” This film has a more ambient feel to it than the previous “A Life of Contradictions and Disappearing Things. It is sparse in its visual content, while imploring some elements of poetic prose inspired by a fellow poet. It continues the theme of the exploration of daily life, with hints of ambiguity and historical musings as abstraction. Initially, when I created this series, I wanted it to be a distinct leap from my previous series entitled “Your World Disappearing,” giving birth to a new beginning. However, the emotional content that fueled the “Disappearing” series has slowly found its way into this series as well: ‘Everything changes except a persistent memory.’ To some degree, although everything is in constant flux–giving way to things disappearing and beginning simultaneously, there is an ambiguity and mundane existence to it all.
your world beginning | every artistic moment has its place – day 4
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As we move forward in our creative process, we sometimes travel back on the unending edge of everything, endure a storm or two, exist in solitude, and find that every artistic moment has its place.
