Purling

Direct animation that intertwines – 'purls' together – two lengths of 16mm film. Purl is a stitch in hand-knitting made by putting the needle through the front of the stitch from right to left; purl also means a swirling stream of water. On the strip of clear leader, coloured abstractions are hand-painted and overprinted with dyes; The second strip uses ‘a photogram technique to bleach abstract shapes and marks into the emulsion of black leader, then selected frames are engraved and overlaid with Lettraset letters, numbers and diacritics. The percussion of an original sound composition derived from audio field recordings performs a counterpoint to the flow of visual music, as the pair of film strips intertwine and superimpose.

Purling foregrounds the materiality of 'analogue’ film. The digitally scanned 'frame' shows the entire width of the 16mm strip, including the sprocket holes, as well as a section of each preceding and successive frame. Also visible are the incidental marks of hand-painting, such as tiny specks of fluff, airborne débris, scratches and fingerprints, and the frame-by-frame notation between each sprocket hole that guides the choreography and ‘beat’ of the visuals.

Notes:
EXHIBITION + SCREENING
Punto y Raya Festival Fernando Lopes Cinema, Lusófona University, The Lisbon Museum, FBAUL Academy of Fine Arts, and ESML Music School, Lisbon, Portugal; International Competition (11 to 15 October 2023)

Ionian Contemporary Animation Festival ICONA 2021 organised by the Department of Audio and Visual Arts of the Ionian University, Corfu, Greece; in competition, Professional programme 4 (3 to 5 December 2021)

Medium: 16mm film (direct animation, 2 film strips overlaid)