Winterscape

Winterscape explores the relationship between form, content and visual flow in the context of the landscape of the Canadian Rockies. The visual material includes studies of snow, ice, water, sky and mountains that play out across a range of scales - from the wide expanses of the mountain landscapes to the equally rich visual pleasures of the finer details of snow, rock, ice and water. The white of the snow captures the play of light and form. The soft texture of snow and water is at the same time reinforced by the flow of sky and cloud, and held in sharp counterpoint by the weight and contours of the mountains themselves. Rivers and waterfalls form an arena for an ongoing struggle between the lively freedom of the moving water and the crystalline cage of intricate and delicate ice formations.

Stunning as these images are on their own terms, the work is not a paean to mere visual beauty. At its heart, Winterscape is a refutation of the standard logic of film and video construction. The moving image has relied on the hard cut as the dominant instrument for the ordering of shots. Winterscape has a different aesthetic. The work completely abandons the hard cut, along with its reductionist illusion of instant and invisible transition.

Winterscape never hides transition - rather it celebrates it. Each shot change is in fact a subtle series of constant morphs. Fresh individual visual elements from the new shot gradually layer in over the existing shot. This process continues in stages until the transition is complete and the new shot fills the frame. As soon as it is visually complete, the cycle begins again as a newer shot gradually supplants this one. This is an evolution in the fundamental treatment of the moving image. An original and immersive combination of spatial montage and visual current has replaced the standard cinematic conventions of temporal montage. Combined with the natural imagery, this visual flow creates a gentle but inexorable momentum that sutures each visual facet and component within an ongoing and seamless holistic evolution. Subject and technique mutually support this dialectic of connection and change. Landscape, detail, form and transition are fused within an organic unity of space and time.

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