Films
frequencies
Frequencies was conceived as a live expanded-cinema event and is concerned with the sensory experience of the interaction of slowly changing frequencies of sound and light and phase shifts of beats and flicker between two loudspeakers and two projections.
vimeo link
password: Frequencies-viewing-copy
TAILINGS 2018 (single screen stereo sound)
… material left after separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction of an ore.
Filmed from a single position at Wheal Maid tailings lagoons, Gwennap, Cornwall, April 2018, onto 16mm colour negative film scanned and edited digitally.
Audio, including a football rattle played around the lagoon and two bowed bell cymbals, recorded in stereo digitally.
Vimeo link
password: Tailings-viewing-copy
DESCENT / ASCENT 2018 single screen (with Jo Millett)
An open loop of 100ft of film (two minutes forty-four seconds) was dropped down a well shaft and exposed with a descending piece of burning magnesium. A crackling sparkler was lowered down the well and recorded with a directional microphone from the top. Sound and image edited togther - one minute and forty-four seconds forwards and one minute and forty-four seconds backwards.
For 100ft of Deep Time
Mayes Creative / Cinestar Summer 2018
ROOTED OUT(with Jo Millett) 2017 16mm projection and sound event.
digital version (extract) Rooted Out
FIELD RECORDINGS: GOONHILLY (with Jo Millett) 4 mins SD video sound 2012.
Field Recordings: Goonhilly
Remote (extract) from Rob Gawthrop on Vimeo.
REMOTE 6 mins 16mm/DVD 2010 FILM NOISE 3 mins 16mm/DVD b & w, sound, 2006. POPLAR CINEMA (with live musical accompaniment ) – 2½ mins 16mm/DVD sound 1996/2010 WHAT THE EYE DOESNT SEE Post Industrial Studies No 1 - Coal & Transport (with Mike Stubbs) 12 mins b&w sound 16mm, 1993. THE MILLER AND THE SWEEP with Jo Millett, 5 mins, b&w,silent 1984. Available for hire from LUX PROJECTIONS FOR..PERCUSSION ETC. 16mm, 3 mins,, b & w, sound 1990. Available for hire from LUX PROJECTIONS FOR... PERCUSSION, ETC. , 14 mins, 16mm twin screen / twin speaker, b&w, 1990. COASTAL CALLS, 16mm, 1982, sound, colour, 12 mins. Available for hire from LUX PROJECT I & II 16mm, 12 mins, colour, twin-screen/speaker, 1981. MARRIED PRINT 16mm, 6 mins, colour, sound, 1982. DISTANCING 16mm Silent 1979. Available for hire from LUX LITTLEHAMPTONS 16mm colour/b & w, sound & silent, 33mins 1974-80. MUSICAL 16mm, 15 mins, colour, sound, 1979. Available for hire from LUX PLACE ON THE HILL 16mm, 6 mins, colour, sound, 1979. Available for hire from LUX PRESERVATION 16mm, 24 mins, colour, sound, 1976-82. Available for hire from LUX NIGHTLIGHT 16mm, 6 mins, colour, silent, 1976 OPERATION 16mm, 4 mins, colour, silent, 1978/1996 OLD HARRY ROCKS 16mm, 6 mins, colour, silent, 1978 RUINS 16mm 5 mins colour, silent 1976
Dis/locating what is seen and what is heard. The picture originates from filming, with outdated16mm stock, the sea and sky from three locations on Spurn, East Yorkshire. It was shot during cloudy conditions at different times during daylight hours with continually varying exposure values and layers of superimpositions. The sound was recorded at the same location, close to the the sea, using a table-top guitar played by the wind, amplified through a distortion pedal to two distant battery powered speakers. Picture and sound were transferred and combined to digital video.
Film Noise from Rob Gawthrop on Vimeo.
Made by hand in the darkroom without a camera. Raw negative film was successively given longitudinal scratches over the picture and sound areas, contact printed, processed and repeated over ten times. Various tones and noises are produced through the optical sound system which coincide with the visual scratch.
GB Bell & Howell Practice Lacing Film followed by leader and rapid-fire poplar trees with burst of (live) loud amplified distorted ukulele thrash.
Pans over wet coal superimposed pos/neg, pit-heads, coal train, archive sound recordings of steam trains shunting.
Dust, grain, flour. Negative/positive; film history / representation, figure antics and play. (After George Albert Smith)
A range of percussive instruments, whistles, shawms, toys and radios were played in the light beam of a projector, in their own shadows and re-projected and re-filmed again and again, alternating positive and negative. Cut together dynamically and in two parts using two types of ‘system’.sitive and negative). Cut together very quickly and sequentially to reveal the structure of its making.
As above with longer takes and edited with blank spacing using chance procedures.
"... a film which deals with primary filmic elements and produces constantly shifting relationships between them. The film is of slow pans of a beach and its surrounding landscape with focus and exposure in constant change. The sound is that of space (sea, wind) alternating with that of a wind instrument (Shawm). Only at specific instances do focus and exposure match to give an image that is readable in illusionistic terms, so that any attempt to place oneself is subverted by the constant perceptual shift applied to the image ... never gathered into representation but only crossing points of unstabilised representation, as if by accident." - Michael Maziere, Undercut. (extract)
Projections within projections. Made using a projector as a camera (colour positive and negative), projected and filmed using a camera. Printed positive and negative, edited and projected with projector noise.
Anti-monarchy, anti pop-promo. The Sperm Wails celebate the weeding of Charles & Diana. Fast & loud.
Transparency, objectivity, focus and illusion are the main concerns of this film. Shot from the interior of a room from which can be seen a plant, a persons head, raindrops on the window, houses, the sea and the horizon. The point of focus and the films exposure are continually changed and are set into flux with each other while simultaneously the image is superimposed onto itself allowing even the slightest difference between sequences (of time and image) noticeable, bringing into question the very act and accuracy of cinematic depiction.
Available for hire from LUX An absurd Super-8 experimental home movie was subjected to various re-filming strategies and was re-made several years later. The accompanying \'song\' was treated the same way. A sort of structural joke. Featuring Alan Baker, Ian Davies, Rob Gawthrop and others, Littlehampton theme Rob Gawthrop & Alan Baker
An improvised musical construction. Three performers (only two are ever seen) play an array of metal and wooden percussion suspended from trees, wearing fur coats and gloves. They play three times for each 100 ft take, superimposed onto itself with fades/dissolves of image and sound. Featuring Jo Millett Alan Baker & Rob Gawthrop.
Two copies of a film of a man (Alan Baker) speaking a phrase of single syllable words were mathematically re-cut together to render the words as sounds without meaning. The fragmentation and repetition are made more visible because of the peculiar activity in the background.
In four parts (including the films INCLINE and STEAMING), concerned with image/sound, time and duration. It is also a celebration of the steam train. Filmed on the Sittingbourne & Kelmsley Light Railway, Bluebell Railway plus various steam railway heritage events.
Fifty frames, looped and superimposed, of a view out of a window at night.
SUPPORTS 16mm, 6 mins, colour, silent, 1978
Multiple zooms through the support arches of a brick viaduct giving illusory motion and abstraction.
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Made from several seconds of found footage of a medical operation. Visual objectification of medical action on the body and a disintegration of temporal continuity of image.
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A picture post-card view of the famous Dorset chalk outcrop - shaking (Old Harrys rockin' tonight)