The Song of Creation (2017, 6:00)
16mm film with an optical soundtrack.
An exercise in pattern and sound. Inspired by film pioneers Oskar Fischinger and Norman McLaren's early experiments of drawing directly on film to produce music.
Here, I take a more modern approach, using an office printer to create a lexicon of different patterns and tones. The patterns are printed directly onto the 16mm film, the printer's unique errors give the film a gritty and degraded quality.
As the film is projected, these patterns begin to animate and also produce the sound heard. This is because the patterns are printed on the entirety of the filmstrip, including the last 2mm, which is usually reserved for the optical soundtrack. My process evolved as I learned this new language, first creating patterns to see what kind of sounds they would make, then beginning to make patterns based on the anticipated sound.