video web log [-\\/] video blog

19.10.02 exquisite corpse

note: this work requires serious broadband, or you can download it here and run it from your local hard drive. Do not move the files once installed.

downloads (25MB)
.sit | .zip | .tgz

liner notes

Corpse is an interactive video developed by Clare Stewart and Adrian Miles. The video is a short work directed by Clare which was originally designed for traditional tape based screen delivery.

The original video project consisted of ad lib commentaries where the last line from each participant become the first line given to the next speaker, a performance version of the "exquisite corpse" drawing game. These commentaries where then edited into three different, though similar, versions and each complete version (which included all of the speakers) was then joined so that the video would show one complete series, then the second, and end with the third.

Adrian redesigned the content for interactive screen delivery and so the work now consists of three 'child' movies that load into individual 'panels' within a single 'parent' movie. Each of the individual movies is simply one of the edited series from the original video. Each of the child movies has an independent duration, though they are more less of similar length (4' 24 to 5' 27), and loop, which means in theory they have an infinite duration.

To play the work (and play is taken literally here) you mouse into any of the top or bottom bars over each video. The loop that the bar is attached to will now play at 24 fps, and this is the soundtrack that you hear. The first loop to the right will also play, but at 12 fps, while the final loop will now be playing at 6 fps. Mousing into other bars simply has the same effect for that particular loop and changes the frame rates accordingly.

The effect of this has significant implications. First of all it is important to appreciate that what this is a 'film' that has no canonical sequence, so that each time you play it the film is different simply due to when and where you choose to mouse. It is a simple outcome, certainly no more complex than the combinatory algorithms found in a simple slot poker machine, yet it produces an almost infinite number of combinatory possibilities because you always move around the work differently, and with the variable playing rates of the clips complex variations occur.

Secondly this is a film that has no fixed duration. There is no end to this movie, simply because the three films loop, and the manner in which the narrative come commentary works is that the end of one loop and its restart is not a 'start' but becomes a return or a reprise. If you like the narrative structure and style is much more musical than what is usual within film with its fixed direction and duration. I might add this is also why this work is quite different to something like Mike Figgis's Timecode (2000) where the split screen requires each to record the same duration, and all four must have the same duration for the film to 'end'.

Thirdly, though this work does not perform this, it is important to realise that the technical architecture has a simple parent movie which is a very small file (36 Kb) but it loads much larger content which can be stored elsewhere (online, local hard drive, local area network, CD, DVD). This other content could consist of, for example, any number of video sequences but they would only be loaded as scripted, whether this be triggered by user action or any other programmable variables. For example, using this technology it would be possible to have different videos load in adjacent panels if a user moused or clicked into a movie (or part of a movie) at a particular point in time, and so your 'movie' might have several hours of content, but any individual viewer/user might only ever see a small part of this, perhaps because they don't want the rest, they aren't interested, or simply have achieved their version of closure.

Finally, a project such as corpse foregrounds questions relevant to cinema in a digital enviroment: what is montage in corpse? Where does it happen? Who does it? What sort of montage is it when it is no longer only the relation of one shot followed by another (sequential) but one shot or sequence juxtaposed to another (simultaneous), etc. I'd like to think that corpse proposes many more interesting problems than it answers, and is a beginning to new futures for some cinemas.