Accidents in celluloid and pixel (2:36')
(video: Rosa Menkman, music: Goto80, 2009)
All footage was originally part of a selection of celluloid films the Filmmuseum Amsterdam offered for the Celluloid Remix project. The three videos I choose to remix all have particular accidents as subject; A petrol burning in Vlissingen (1917) and two train disasters (1917 and 1926).
The changes in terms of materiality (the grain) of the video are created by different compression accidents (or compression artifacts). Through remixing the celluloid I drew an analogy between the materiality of the celluloid and the digital pixel (I did not use any filters except for lumakey in the middle of the video to make a transition and adjusting the contrast).
Even though, the original footage changed so much it is sometimes hard to recognize. This is because some digital compressions changed the grain of the video into squares while others added particular (random) colors to the video.
This is actually another analogy between celluloid (only in celluloid this happens over a longer time span). In this video I think it becomes clear that compression glitches are a new materiality in the digital realm.

Soundtrack: Goto80 offered me his raw sound material (10 min) created on the ARP 2500, during his residency at WORM, Rotterdam. I edited a little bit to make it shorter.


Screening
25-09-'09 - Celluloid Remix / Nederlands Film Festival, Filmtheater 't Hoogt 1, Utrecht, Netherlands.