FInal Year Studio - Research - Incessamment

Image courtesy of www.babiole.net, originally uploaded by Jimbo (Alan James Wellock).

Above is a video capture from Cécile Babiole's Incessamment, a video and sound installation that investigates into the notions of time and space represenation.

Intrigued by the fact that our globalized urban environments have many 24 hour CCTV surveillence systems focusing on specific places, Babiole proposed shooting an whole urban landscape form a singluar view point. This is then edited together with various urban sounds of traffic and industry and then sped up to create an algorithmic elegence of visual and sound rhythms.

The installtion consists of two video projections in a single place with the audience sandwaged in the middle. Sounds from each location are then broadcasted throughout the area as the peice navigates through space and time, creating direct links of image and sound with the audience.

This peice is very interesting to me because of the way Babiole has simply intensified what the senses are taking in by simply speeding up the video and audio of the medium. It is a very good example of when images and sounds can take on, what Josef Alber calls a third meaning(1+1=3 or more). The speeding up of the video and sounds give the urban landscapes an almost robotic, 'ant farm' feel to them, which in some places can look communistic and in others simply comical.

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