Monday, December 3, 2007

GARBAGE

So I just finished editing the video loop for the GARBAGE performance. Posted here is a short compressed version of it. It has no sound, as the soundtrack will be played separately. I will try to get those sounds up here in the next couple of days. The scene is as follows:

5pm, weekday, it has been getting dark for the past half hour, night fall is almost set. People are driving home from work. Most of the wives are done their daily downtown shopping. The sidewalks are pretty much empty. except for the small percentage that commute on foot to-and-from work. This is a transition hour, and somewhere in a dark alley way something strange is happening. If you are of the few who stumble accidentally upon it, this is what you would see:

There is a dark alley ahead. You hear loud industrial noises sounding from its belly. You take a closer look. Halfway down the long, tall alley there sits a trash can. Inside it there is placed a glowing television set. A video plays. It appears to be a video feed from a security camera. The image on the screen is fuzzy and over exposed. The motions are jumpy. You can't quite make out what you are watching. Is that a trash bag? Is it moving? Then someone appears on the screen--a man. He cautiously approaches the writhing bag. He opens it. Out from the bag emerges a business mannequin. The man runs down the alley afraid. The mannequin has freed itself from the garbage and makes his was towards the camera. The camera pulls out to reveal that what you have been watching was a video feed on a television screen; however, the same action is also happening in front of the TV. A picture within a picture. Video feedback. The video continues to fold itself upon itself and forms a continues loop.

You look further down the alley. The video was a suggestion. There down the alley sits the exact same trash bag. the form of a body protrudes out from it. Should you open it? Just then there is movement at the very end of the alley. A dark figure stifly dragging a large black garbage bag across the alley way where it hurls the sack into a large dumpster. The figure (the same mannequin as in the video) recedes back the way it came. Then out from the dumpster crawls another one of these figures. This sequence of events repeats itself, until you realize you must be witnessing some sort of businessman disposal plant. Your attention shifts back to the writhing bag just a few feet ahead of you. Do you open it?





This video is a compressed version of an already low quality video. So it may be difficult to view some parts. It was shot on VHS and effected in Final Cut Pro. *NOTE: this isn't the final version. The 'whole' thing is supposed to be choppy, but technology has been giving me problems. Final Cut...More like Final Cuts Random Things Out of Your Video Project. I tried to upload the complete, final version this afternoon after hours of screwing around with things, but it was taking way too long to upload. And my soul has been broken by endless waiting for things to upload, render and burn, so this is what you get.