Marina Zurkow Interview

HERE: among other things, she talks about her massively long video piece, Mesocosm. (Image from it above.) Here's one of a number of interesting parts:

I sent a questionnaire to the head of the geology department at the University of Houston asking him to describe, as vividly as he could, what the drill bit sees when it goes through the rock hopefully towards its target of oily sands. I’m interested in how a geologist sees. And how you visualize what you can’t see.

Or indeed, what a drill bit sees...Or try this bit:

I stopped being interested in making pieces that worked like music videos, and wanted to make works people could live with. For the past few years, I was already working with silence, a static camera, no edits, and seamless loops that were dense enough to provide hypnotic interest over repeated viewings. But the more I made ambient worlds, the less it made sense to author every move. I wanted to push what it meant to have a long relationship with an unfolding landscape, and surprise myself at the recombinant cast of actants.

The computer does unfathomable time really well; it also performs unpredictable or idiosyncratic time, and procedural unfolding. I want to use data as narrative fodder, crafting narrative time that reflects the data but doesn’t illustrate it.