A tranquil stroll in the Royal Botanical Gardens turned into further investigation. Sitting at a bench, I was inspired by the ripples in Ornamental Lake and their woozy, meditative nature. After focusing long enough on the movement of the ripples and the way that they distorted the reflections of the trees, I found myself in a sort of trance, completely removed from whatever else was happening around me.

I thought that this would be worthwhile capturing, and in keeping with the portrait approach that I’m choosing to explore with these investigations, I quickly pondered what the best way to frame this effect might be. I thought that it would be effective to only feature the lake in the shot so as to direct all attention to the activity in the lake, in turn isolating the examination of the aesthetic space created by the surface of this lake. The resulting footage is quite brief and spontaneous but follows these guidelines, producing what can only intuitively be assumed to be the surface of a lake due to our familiarity with the way that ripples appear in water and the implications of the audio in establishing a lakeside setting – otherwise it is quite an abstract, morphing perspective of the trees and sky.

After uploading the footage onto my laptop, I decided to flip it 180 degrees so that the reflection of the tree is upright in the footage. I feel that this emphasises the abstract effect and extends the idea of conveying a strange, wobbling alternate reality. Following this change, the ripples indicate a clear upwards movement in the shot, a movement which is apt for the trees they distort in the way that they seem to sprout. The way in which the reflections are animated by the ripples causes them to split, jump and tremble which redresses them as glitches in the screen of the lake. From the footage, one could consider what is “natural” in a number of ways – in no way has this perspective been intentionally treated, although it is surreal, in the same way that a computer glitch naturally occurs in the context of the codes that give it life.

The comparison of unspoken elusiveness and glitches is something that I may emphasise and explore in future footage. I do not mean to reference glitches with their reputations as failure within a system in mind; but rather for their mysterious, unanticipated and above all curious existence.

 

Water Ripple from Timothy Palstra on Vimeo.