Nostalgia
(2010)
makers: Clare Anderson, Laura Stephens and Wichaya Kim Jensen.
This is a work that is elegant, and is one of the best projects completed. There is an opening credit sequence which contains all the necessary information, including music credits, but the first thumbnails also immediately load so I can choose to skip the credits if I wish. This might seem trivial, but when you are viewing the work for a second or third time you really do appreciate this, and it helps show that the work is quite aware of the user as a consequence.
The interface is simple, but pays attention to the grid so that the four thumbnails do align with the main video pane, and they also are balanced in terms of the distances between each thumbnail and the video. Again, simple but many projects have not done this and it is the difference between something that is visually strong, yet simple, and something that is visually messy. The difference matters not just aesthetically, but also here I am paying attention to the work via the interface, rather than paying attention to the interface. The two graphics on either side frame the video, and also recall the curtains at the side of a cinema, as well as possibly sound levels, it provides a frame and stops things just floating.
The use of text is very good, with highly associative, almost abstract, aphoristic comments that appear to revolve around a love story (well, song) about loss, loneliness and the plunge of the fall out of love. There is a strong use of music with each clip, though I wonder with a work like this if a single, continuous soundtrack would have been more effective.
Finally, the video material itself is abstract in terms of it being descripive and evocative, rather than narrational. It is not telling a story but describing or sketching moods and ideas, even possibly emotions. There are strong patterns evident, through the careful selection of frames for the thumbnails, so I might get a series of beach and sea horizons, or water, or blurred things, or parts of the city. Here choosing the beach brings me to more water, and then again, and then one that is out of focus which takes me to a cloud of city sequences, which, after some exploration bring me to what seems to be a smaller cloud of highly abstract clips.
As I said, this is elegant work that has achieved a lot in moving away from narrative as sovereign god of video and in its place thinks about poetry, song, and lyricism.