Program Notes for Scott Morrison's Video Work - Ballad(s) for quiet horizons

Canberra Contemporary Art Space (October 2007)

Wave upon wave…motion folded into motion

Singular perspectives on the natural world have been foundation material in Scott Morrision’s video work in recent years. Within this context Morrison reworks moments and plays with and upon the sometimes austere and sparse images. Such interpretations, articulated through a schema of edits, amplify and elucidate in the work, Les échos de l'océan understated but formidable imagery of grass. Although inherently poetic as this is, Morrison’s interpretive reframing of individual and collective motion within the imagery creates an entrancing and provocative adjunct experiential level. His interpretive modality strengthens our awareness of the underlying interplay through crafted iterations and a striking repositioning of points of reference. These points may well function to anchor our attention but also to remind us of what and how we are watching. In the oscillating changes of perspective we might well also well read that a critical or comparative analysis is in progress. How do we relate to the dynamics of the scenes? This, of course, is a challenge as we view the natural context but here Morrison is providing the way for us to study the natural forms and the focus of his camera work and in this respect, we find our way into the imagery itself.

So in the directness and in the manipulation of our viewing experience, we are enticed to construct readings from the formal structuring of the repetitions. In this process we strive to create an exegesis from what we are witnessing. At first, a tentative relation is established between the elemental dynamic of wind and the fragile but resistant grass stems. Soon we become aware of a repetition of motion. As we dwell on this artifice, we begin to meditate on notions of sustainability and resilience. This resilience is appreciated through the inherent strength of the grass stems, not by any control over the prevailing force of the wind itself. We read into this our lives. As the wave motion expresses pressure and release, we understand the wind to have variable pressure points. The motion of the grassess reveals this and we know then that force is rarely uniformly or constantly applied. We sense the analogy through the memory of moments in our lives.

To gain further insight into this work, it is essential to broaden the experiential domain. Morrison may well be speaking to us through the scrupulously edited moments of randomness and indeed timelessness, about a special place in his life which he knows well. He seeks, through his creative process, to establish a composite poetic form. We understand in part that technically this is constituted by a tighly bound relation between sound and image. The sound, which in some instances is almost transparent and set at a subtle cognitive threshold, at first simply fills space. Something we seem to pass through, like a mist all around us and of limited impedence. Eventually we experience the sensation of a complex mix of primative oscilations from the natural world. Oscilations that have accrued in our consciousness over eons. The sound of wind blowing through grass.

Taking this further, the concept of song arises, not of human construction or realization but of a form constituted as energy shaped by nature and experienced through motion and sound. In fact, a resounding of that endless struggle in nature and life that evnetually changes everything and is so whistfully and lyrically expressed here by Pound:

A blown husk that is finished

but the light sings eternal

A pale flare over marshes

where the salt hay whispers to tides’s change.

Ezra Pound, Canto CXV

In a push and a shove, but we fell out of this together, is the experiential relation between image and sound altered? That is, the visual experience reduced agains the sound? It isn’t hard to imagine a world percieved through half closed eyes, in something of a semi-conscious state, where our thoughts are of things far off. Sound providing the sense of space. Our ears are taking in an energy that only seems vaguely alluded to in the image. This energy is being curiously mixed at the subconscious level and triggering memories, thoughts, aspirations and emotions that struggle for priority in this dream state. The sensation of partially seeing the familiar is somewhat hallucenogenic. We drift in and out of consciousness, remembering what we are looking at only to drift back into reverie or thought about the sound.

Momentum in this work is largely attributable to the sound. Movement of the imagery initially seems circulatory or meandering but eventually, in conjunction with the sound, it is appreciable as organic and changing. Indicative of something evolving and when we eventually do understand what the image is of, we understand that we have been observing process. The slow, natural process of growth. So sound is time fused with energy and though it exudes an atmostphere through which the imagery is experienced, it can be understood as contributing to the overall nature of the what we are watching.

Clearly, the relation between sound and image reflect a codependency, with perhaps sound in a slightly more assertive position. The sound has detail seemingly withheld from us in the imagery. Our gaze is sustained by aural detail. This is supported through listening to the cyclical patterns or shifting between certain sound objects involuntarily while absorbing the image motion. In any event, a convergence or melding takes place that satisfies our need for detail and structure.

Overall Morrison‘s imagery is reminiscent of the abstraction of the 19th Century Pastorale but without the Euro-centric romanticism of simplicity, bountifulness and idyllic rural life. Morrison takes very specific elements of the Australian landscape, sets them in a dream-like resonance and often makes minute details sing to us with a monumental expressivity that we, as Australians tend to take for granted. We know the vastness of the uncountable, of individuals unified in the space of a relentless and uncompromising Australian landscape. However, we need to be reminded, to be retold and to experience again that to which our senses have grown unresponsive or forgotten.

Morrison represents a generation of digital artists who are beginning to understand and work with sound and image as a convergent practice and it is in the nature of the outcome here that we are increasingly interested. It is also only in the digital context that this practice can be worked out against a vast repertoire of recorded material. The process of refining and repositioning the data is dependent on the development and understanding of tools and techniques that are both known and emerging. That one person is able to understand the creative implications of sound/image fragments and rework those with such sensibility and effect, heralds the arrival of a new art practice.