Stuart POUND – beautiful uncertainty
Film | Royaume-Uni | 00:01:00 | 2023 |
beautiful uncertainty
The Abyss is a Danish silent film from 1910 that tells the story of a young woman who chooses a dangerous, exciting lover over a safe, reliable one – and her inevitable downfall. Stuart used a mix of software on this clip of the couple quarrelling, AI to separate the figures from their background and a now obsolete font for the numbers in what looks like a countdown but in fact goes nowhere. The sound is a disco track played backwards.
Rosemary is first of all a poet and took this photograph at “Les Abbatoirs” liking how the words looked on the mirror. Later we noticed her wet umbrella in the bottom left corner, and Stuart started from there to animate the photograph, opening out to the full image.
The brown spots on the pages of old books are called in English “foxing”. This poem was written in 2022, celebrated as the centenary of modernism. It’s odd that designs from the 20s still look so modern, when most from the second half of the century look dated.
The Abyss est un film danois d’avant la parlant, de 1910 décrit les affres d’une jeune femme qui à un amant sûr et fiable, préfère un amant dangereux et excitant jusqu’à son inévitable chute. Stuart Pound mêle divers logiciels pour cette dispute, l’IA pour séparer le couple de son arrière-plan et une police désormais obsolète pour les chiffres de ce qui ressemble à un compte à rebours mais qui ne va nulle part; quant au son, c’ est un morceau de disco joué à l’envers.