Reflection
For the second part of assignment one, I performed a restoration with my hands and body of a destroyed DVD copy of the classic, Saturday Night Fever. I made this video using my camera, a tripod, DIY lighting from my bedroom and various craft tools. In the video you can see me re-ordering strips of the DVD cover and interweaving them with themselves and strips of white A4 paper. During the process I reflect on a YouTube clip from the film and copy some of the dance moves on top of the weaving. When the weaving is done it is stamped by recycled barcodes and text holes are filled with a byro pen. The backing track is distorted audio of ‘You Should be Dancing’ by the Bee Gees, taken from the camera audio file and captured from the YouTube video of John Travolta dancing. There are also distorted vocal snippets from the dinner scene of the film.
The main idea I was beginning to explore was that of storytelling, cultural memory and how we store these ideas non-physically. I was referencing a popular video style of ‘restoration’ video, where creators restore objects in a meditative way. These videos have a relaxing effect as they often incorporate an ASMR element. My video is a distortion of this, suppose an alien attempted to make one. What I am restoring in the video is the essence of the film and its storage object, not the object itself. The music and choice to weave the cover back together evoke this more spiritual aspect. Textiles have a strong relationship to human spirit and craftsmanship, choosing the weave the paper rather than collage or simply tape it back together also leans into the spiritual element of my philosophy, so does the dancing. I chose to weave in a twill pattern as this reflects the way a television screen glitch when the X and Y pixels are misaligned, interlinking this idea with my memory of the film on screen.