Traversal – First Passage

Traversal – First Passage

Traversal – First Passage is on the one hand, a person’s journey across Australia (travelling from south to north and back again) viewed out a train window while searching for a relationship with the land traversed; passing scenes are witnessed through the train window, experienced by the traveler as images flickering on the cinema screen. Yet, the film is also an exploration in how we perceive the world around us and how individual experience is multi-dimensional, influenced by history and situation. The film, shot mainly on HD video, comprises sonic field recordings, still images, found and written text and an experimental soundtrack that offers a very different sensory experience of the visual image.

HD video, 5min, sound. (2010).

The overarching soundtrack of the film is made as ‘visual sound’, an experimental procedure Nightingale uses and connects the optical sound films of Guy Sherwin to digital video technologies. The technique of ‘visual sound’ translates light frequencies, read with a specially designed microphone, from the projected film, turning them into audio frequencies that become the film’s soundtrack. The result is a direct correlation between seeing what we hear and hearing what we see as an alternative form of perceiving the visual image.

Traversal – First Passage and Traversal – Second Passage are two related works (video and photography) that explore the embodied and disembodied travel experience. Encompassing vision, the panorama and perception, the works sets out to critique the image’s ability to represent the lived experience.