Incantations is a new three channel video piece (10:00 run time) that makes use of lots of the processed video clips I've been building up in the studio over the last year. In particular, it is based upon my favorite Prayer Wheel footage showing a close up of the rotating mantras on the wheel's surface. The very nature of the prayer wheel when intentionally rotated spreads its mantra (Tibetan glyphs on the wheel itself) outward, envisioned as a spiral flow of blessings into the environment at large. This is the underlying prayer incantation, often accompanied by ritual chanting or music.
A series of visual themes came into focus in roughly three groupings:
Maya - delusions of the world: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Mind
Dharma - path & practice: Ritual, Mantra, Meditation
Karma - cycles of life: Death, Bardo, Rebirth, Redux
As I worked on a range of variations of these themes, I realized what would be really interesting would be to present the footage (set into a vertical aspect ratio as determined by the original prayer wheel footage) on a series of side-by-side vertical monitors. Thus, there could be simultaneous variations and visually repeat rhythms across the channels not possible on a single channel display. The basic presentation configuration is three HD display panels side-by-side, visually mimicking the way multiple prayer wheels are often mounted side-by-side in a temple compound so that a visiting perambulator can walk past the row of prayer wheels and simply activate (turn) each in turn. Although the digital displays don’t offer that level of hands-on interactivity, a complex meditational space can still be achieved.
In order to present the 3 channel video in this online context, I recorded all three simultaneously as one HD program.
This program is too large file-wise and really deserves a higher definition encoding than provided by Blogger. So, please view the complete program on my Vimeo site:
Incantations - https://vimeo.com/1146248666
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