A Day in My Life
(2010)
makers: Jessica Hamilton, JIllian Sands and Mira Pangkey.
This work tries to build a structure from three different strands through the use of specific time cues as points of connection. The three strands are made by each of the participants in the project, so the navigation uses three individual icons where the same icon is always atached to the same individual's videos. In addition, the day is broken down chronologically in half hour incremements, so you might get one person at 11am, with a link to 11.30 as well as someone else for a time that is directly linked to the time of the video (ie the same time or a half hour either side). In addition they have used the same text for some sequences, and where the same text is not used have used a similar event (for example having a break).
The use of the thumbnails is interesting, as it provides a different way to think about structuring a K-film outside of just grabbing a frame still. The issue with a work structured like this is whether or not the time line 'works'. The use of keywords in a K-film defines the 'logic' of the film, the rationale that accounts for the relation between sequences. Here this logic is more or less abitrary in that it is defined externally, and once, and so there is little opportunity for a pattern to be realised in itself. (For example, imagine each participant filming what they were doing at 10am and 10pm each day for ten days, and then looking at that material to see what patterns existed, and then building a work that used these patterns.) So what happens at the same time for each participant could well be different, which is of course fine, but then in viewing the work how do I make sense of why I see video one, then video two, except for this external thing of the time? In the same way the timeline, once you realise this is the structure, might then work if you could see it all, for instance if there are 8 time periods then what if all eight were available, as times, and then I might see what was happening at each time. Combine this with a video triptych, so that when I choose a time I see what all are doing at that time, and then I can see what relations, if any, are between each. In this way I can make patterns, but at the moment it is cognitively hard to recall which icon you choose, for which time, and then to keep that in mind as you explore to understand if you are with the same person but a different time, or a different person at the same time, or a different person at a different time.
The concept is a good one, and worth investigating further.