REMOTELY IN TOUCH
A two-minute trailer for my first video work exploring how digital media and its possible 'immateriality' alters the way we move and perceive in the world and in relation to analogue materiality and phenomena. The ability to experience extreme macro views and internal micro views brings to light somatic questions of affect and subjectivity and in the context of epistemology and ontology.
This work signals the beginning of my examining the question where did colonialism go? in relation to the insistent propagation of information culture in the west.
The music soundtrack is constructed from digital sampling evolving from the first opening notes from Bach's Well Tempered Clavier: Prelude in C Major.
Year: 1998
Duration: 15:00
Country: Canada
Poetic and surreal, Remotely In Touch explores what we perceive as an image; what is 'real'; what is constructed or science fiction; and what are our new codes of signification created by systems of information. Remotely in Touch uses images created by remote digital signals — sent via satellite or robotic camera — and juxtaposes these with analog video images encapsulating a 'visceral moment' or an 'embodied movement'.
Imagery include: blood cells from the artist captured through an electronic microscope; the Pathfinder mission to Mars; ultrasound imaging; an underwater volcano; exploratory surgery using a robotic camera; Wing Chun martial arts; images from the Human Genome Project; satellite imagery of the earth's surface... all lyrically woven together with text and audio, utilizing a philosophical yet humorous sense of metaphor and meaning.
Conceived, written and edited by Laiwan.
DISTRIBUTORS
The full length video work can be found here:
Video Out, Vancouver
Thanks to Chris Welsby for graduate studies supervision of this project in 1998 at the School for Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University, and Video In Studios for technical and editing access.
Additional thanks to Michelle Frey, steve chow, Centime Zeleke, and John Fukushima for assistance in making the work.