Insoluble {1994}

Philip Sanderson

Through the power of video transubstantiation, a form is created out of liquid. I looked at the year 1994 and some of the key events that took place then such as the death of Kurt Cobain etc and thought about making a video about that but that seemed a little too documentary so instead I thought about video technology and in particular how 1994 marks a real transition from analogue to digital video with the introduction of devices such as the Connectix Quickcam, the first commercialy available consumer webcam. I started to think how to reflect this transition from analogue to digital video in an interesting way and then remembered an idea I had had for reversing the footage of a shot of a headache tablet dissolving in water so that it starts to appear from out of the liquid. The process of form created out of small particles or bits is in some ways similar to the creation of the digital image from bits of data and yet at the same time there is also an approximation to a detuned TV screen as the glass fills up with white particles before resolving into the tablet. So somehow in an enigmatic way it seemed to capture the spirit of 1994 and the transition from analogue to digital.
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