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“Hover [Royal Park & Films For MSL]” plays with what super 8 can do when it’s treated as a living medium. Developed to accompany the CD “Fit” by Sydney’s internationally acclaimed jazz group, the Alister Spence Trio. Hover is an abstract choreography that leaps off from an edited abstraction of a small excerpt of bassist Lloyd Swanton’s playing, coupled with Alister’s piano textures. Curham and the Trio have been working together since 2007, exploring how image and sound augment and expand one another into new audiovisual experience, quite different from the experience of just the image or just the performance. As live work, Curham is a fourth presence on stage with a pair of super 8 projectors.
The first section of the work features footage shot in Melbourne’s Royal Park at dusk, on tri-x b&w film. By shooting in such low light, Curham teases out the grain in the stock, which can handle an unusual degree of latitude in exposure levels.
The camera swirls around the park, a choreography for camera, trees and sky. The next sections feature treated flowers and plants, where the film surface is distressed with bleach, ink and scratch, a choreography for breeze, flowers and interventions. Also in this part of the work is pure kinaesthetic abstraction created with cameraless film heavily laid with cheap acrylic ink and bleach. Peppering the film strip are typed characters, super 8 is the perfect dimension to fit the standard type writer.
The DVD features the work of film artist Louise Curham set to the band’s music. She is at the forefront of Australian moving image art, highly regarded in the experimental film world for work using ‘obsolete media’. Her hand--worked Super 8 films reinvent the home movie medium of years past, through colour, texture and abstracted image.
http://www.rufusrecords.com.au/catalogue.html