Storytelling Images
Cillini: The Art of Drone Documentary Storytelling
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Joseph Duffy
The Cillini spreads across rural Ireland, dotted along margins, the corner of fields and the interiors of circular fairy forts, each of its rocks a marker, each stone a grave. Iron age circles as liminal spaces, betwixt and between worlds embedded with mythology and folklore, fairy tradition, taboo and curses. The Cillini take up root as traumatic sites of oppressive religious practices, they are the sites of unconsecrated burials, of suicides, of unchurched mothers who died in childbirth but mainly of unbaptised infants. Within this paper, I discuss the use of drones and 360 degree cameras as a form of practice to reveal stories embedded within the landscape. The harrowing spaces of the Cillini are explored using drones to create an emotive sense of place, an eerie encounter between worlds, the contemporary and the ancient, the world of the living and the world of limbo, of fairy lore and tragedy in a landscape embedded with sorrow. 360 degree cameras in my work allow viewers to experience the interior of these sites and begin to engage with the storytelling opportunities they encounter. Whilst these sites refer to exclusion, trauma and of being forgotten, my work Is to aid in the remembrance of these sites, to evoke a memory space and provide an opportunity for communities to grieve. The use of technologies in order to tell the stories of these sites aids access to spaces that are hidden from sight and enables the creative potential of technology to the documentary storytelling process.
Panorama of Online Reality and Embodied Spatial Phenomenon
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yang Geng, Cicely Chen
Virtual reality reintegrates into the perspective of natural viewing from a technical point of view, which makes the panoramic image of online reality a new visual expression with its own new way and logic. With the help of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception, this paper interprets the concept of body schemata, and sets out the three dimensions of body perception, including the space of body perception, the body nature of whole space, and the expression of body space as three dimensions of complex network, to re-examine the various ways of creating online reality panoramic image and its inner logic.
Documentary as Performance: Reframing the Observed for an Immersive Environment
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mark Thomas
Focussing on two works created for and with American artist Suzanne Lacy - Shapes of Water - Sounds of Hope (2015) and The Yellow Line (2018), I discuss the use of multi-screen immersive environments to reframe documentary-based content. Through navigating (and embracing) the inherent contrasts and contradictions between the natural, observed source material and the staged, performative output, I aim to explore how the immersive can enhance the tactile, the aesthetic and the emotional engagement of a documentary-led narrative or experience. Within this paper, I address the balance between authenticity of character and narrative subtlety with the sense of spectacle offered by utilising immersive, projection-based environments. Drawing on examples from my own practice and across the field, I outline some of the strategies, technological means and future considerations of this output, and how this seemingly incongruous pairing provides grounds for an emerging aesthetic across gallery, museum and live audio-visual (AV) environments.
