touch & avoidance
John Sturgeon © 2013
10:25 minutes, HD [1080p] video, stereo
Artist’s Statement:
Funded by a US-UK Fulbright Scholar appointment to London 2012-13, this video stems from a passion for investigating connectedness through a sense of place, as well as the development of alternative representation and perception strategies. touch & avoidance comes from over six months of recordings throughout the UK, but the only one made exclusively from iPhone recordings in the London Underground.
Each discrete sliding vertical frame is in a sense – unedited. Meaning the windows appear, slide across the field of vision and then disappear without any continuity editing. The iPhone brought a remarkable sense of anonymity to the process of observational cinema. Offering such a perfect disguise, watching-recording with the ubiquitous device as the other passengers, was assumed to be doing – well… whatever everyone else was doing.
The result emulates the crowded rush and swiftly jerking comings and goings of the Underground, while focusing on a visceral embodiment of what we - know - of modern life yet often do not - see.
VIDEO:
touch & avoidance
John Sturgeon © 2013
10:25 minutes, HD [1080p] video, stereo
… this is a great art video. The use of the iPhone is innovative. The composition of the images was intriguing with the play of black segments with segments of video moving across the screen. This slow drift of images creates visual poetry that is at once beautiful to look at with a deep insight into modern behavior in the age of cell phones.
Carlton Davis comments on touch & avoidance - [2013]:
Your new video is fantastic. I really like the way the sliding panels seemed so appropriate for the subject matter, not just as a device on their own. The brief interlude with the busker that wakes up all the sleepy commuters for a moment… shows an alternative side to the relentlessness that is London.
How technology mediates contemporary life is an important point to document and explore and I think you've posed some very interesting questions in this piece. Really great.
Kate Pelling, Chelsea College of Arts, London, England 2013
I always have a visceral reaction to your work. I can feel it for an hour afterwards. You take the viewer places they haven't been before and present the information in a way that can be deliciously disconcerting. That is where part of the physical reaction comes from.
It is a nervous trip to another reality. Gorgeous colors. Very pure images. Amazing from a phone. The look is like bright candy. But the people, what a horrifying life they lead in this tunnel. These poor souls, all paying attention to these devices, like creatures consumed by the “Borg Hive Mind.” What on earth will they do when the net crashes? … Scrumptious!
Mike Lyon - remarks 11.15.13
