Buddha Trainwreck

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about film projects. The film-feedback project and a work-in-progress got me thinking about the things that film can do that other media cannot. I guess if we wanted to, we could sort through the masters of each individual medium and find that what they did was unworkable elsewhere.

Sure, it's a conjecture, but it might be what makes a work good. The impressionists were responsive to photography, right? "A photo can do this? Well, a photo can't do that."

So, in keeping with properties of media that cannot be replicated, here is my proposal for a new work:

Two Buddha Machines play a loop in tandem from two separate stereo channels. The loop is less than a second long. Due to the minor difference in length (the wonderful imperfection of this machines), they begin to trainwreck after a few 'measures.'

Basically, their rhythms will fall further apart. If you don't know 'trainwreck,' it's a DJing term.

Two projectors will each be displaying the same or a different piece of film on two halves of a screen. The halves will mimic the stereo channels. Each projector will be loaded with a loop of film exactly the length of the corresponding Buddha Machine's loop (or precisely twice, no more).

As the looping of the audio falls out of sync, the looping of the film will do the same. The viewer's mind will make new connections between the sound and audio just as they make new connections between the 'instances' in the half-second loop.

It's a trainwreck meditation.