A SEED IS PLANTED
Experimental film, visual essay 10:00 min, HD, DCP
Sound: Stefan Németh
Voice: Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972), AI-generated
Text: Excerpts from the book: Esther Leslie: Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form, Reaktion, 2016
Year: 2024
Distribution: Sixpackfilm
PREVIEW
A Seed is Planted immerses the viewer in the materiality of forms as they flow, merge into each other, and drift apart – pulsating surfaces and polarized refractions of light. Complex field structures mysteriously emerge before disintegrating again or forming interference. Dancing drops crystallize out of heavy, reflective liquids, only to dissolve and melt away in the next moment.
The experimental film is an homage to liquid crystals. Accompanied by Stefan Németh’s atmospheric sound and a poetic-theoretical lecture which excerpts Esther Leslie’s book Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form, Gregor Eldarb devotes himself to the visualization of this technical phenomenon. In fascinating images, and with the help of the attractive, AI-generated voice of the writer Kenneth Patchen (1911–1972), he unleashes the essence of a substance that results from the interplay of the inherently opposing properties of fluid and crystal. Guided by invisible, waxing and waning forces, diverse formations emerge. The film’s allure comes from their constant reformulation and metamorphosis.
Although the images were generated using an analog, experimental setup, the film penetrates deep into the core of our digitalized world. Through their use in flat screens and computers, we encounter liquid crystals almost everywhere in everyday life. They are therefore elementary building blocks in the creation of images, as they shape our perception and view of the world. Read in this way, the film is a journey into the interior of the screen.
It shows us the screen not only as a carrier of information and dreams, but rather as a constantly changing, bizarrely autonomous, and seemingly lively material. (Annette Südbeck)
TURBULANCE IN A CHANNEL
Experimental, Artist Film, 12:00 min, HD, DCP
Sound: Florian Schmeiser, No Dialogue
Year: 2024
Distribution: Sixpackfilm
PREVIEW
The work Turbulence in a Channel is inspired by Friedrich Ahlborn's (1858-1937) research on currents, but also by techniques of photographic imaging of water surfaces or lines of force. It is composed of two levels: The currents in the experimental pool and the images reflected onto the surface of the fluid. As a result, there are two heterogeneous rhythms: On the one hand, the streamline shapes and waves created by the fact that the "liquid mirror" is constantly set in motion, and on the other hand, the rhythm of the projected images, which have their own temporality. In this way, a kind of collage of movement, flowing into each other and reflections of various images is created, from which the image filmed in time-lapse mode (5x) is ultimately composed. The "cinematic apparatus" is an experimental basin consisting of a movable frame and a screen. The screen is installed at an angle about 50 cm above the frame. The basin contains a mixture of black ink and silver pigment and serves as a kind of liquid mirror onto which I project various thematically associated images. The liquid moves from left to right or from top to bottom and creates a pendulum effect or a tilting moment in which the liquid produces various currents and surface patterns such as spiral shapes, waves, etc. Small metal obstacles are built into the experimental basin, creating fractures, resistances, symptoms, tensions - in other words, "turbulence in a channel". This channel could be understood as a place for the transmission of images, provoking questions about the interplay of different media and creating new unexpected forms that inevitably provoke associations with painting.
THINNER THAN TWO TEN - THOUSANDTHS OF A MILLIMETRE
Experimental, Artist Film, 8:00 min, HD, DCP
Sound: Florian Schmeiser, No Dialogue
Year: 2020
Distribution: Sixpackfilm
PREVIEW
Marcel Duchamp once described the relationship between the possible and what is actually occurring as "inframince", or razor-thin. The dimension of Gregor Eldarb's experimental arrangement is equally minimal, namely "thinner than two ten-thousandths of a millimetre" – as indicated by the title of his film. Soap suds, various framing devices and reflections off a computer screen constitute the raw material from which a highly fragile cosmos of the "infra-thin" unfolds, one step at a time. Whereby the process of the image being generated is perpetually in flux and quickly passé as it unfolds across the entire suspended apparatus. Electronic images on the monitor are not directly viewed: The scenes involving brief experiments and filmic manipulations are instead seen in the form of reflections on an oily layer of soap. Whether the imagistic rasterization is composed of individual, combined, or artfully spatial layers, it follows a geometry and temporality separate from the perceiving subject. The machine itself is independent of an observer as it creates sense-data. The musical pulse derives in part from the sound of water droplets temporarily flowing into compressed torrents and it intensifies the non-anthropomorphic character of the visible. The resulting fragility is not steered by an individual, it is removed from all subjectivity and proceeds even further: Projection monitors are suspended by wires, partly themselves in motion, ever on the brink of bursting and congenially presenting the perpetual threshold between briefly glimpsed virtual imagery and the once again no longer actually seen. Instability meets with a higher order of the ephemeral. Black and white original imagery radiates the most vibrant rainbow colors. The infra-thin world of sudden possibility flares up for brief luminous moments. (Christian Höller)