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Is thinking the associative process of gathering the scattered ideas of our consciousness, as Heidegger would lead us to believe? Perhaps. Or is it more exactly the method of rational inquiry that uses our powers of logic and reason? But rigorous reasoning can quietly lead into a winding labyrinth of madness: “I think therefore I think I think I am.” Or perhaps thought is a more all-pervasive phenomenon — at the same time, both porous and pedestrian?
Yes, You Should Expect Delays is an experimental video that suggests “pure thought,” — thought that has lasting consequence beyond the present moment — does not happen under control. It does not birth from our conscious pre-conceptions. Rather, it surprises, comes upon us, like a thief in the night, like a flash of lightning, like the shifting gaping ground of an earthquake. And only over time does this crack in our consciousness have its full effect or consequence.
A voiceover text. A series of images disrupted in their relationship with time, shuffled, scrambled. Past, present and future forced to confront each other.
Produced • Virtual Image Productions
Text, visuals and music • Douglas Porter
Format • 9:34 minutes • HD • NTSC • © 2018
Distribution • www.vtape.org
Screenings
The Orillia Recreation Centre had been the venue for local amateur hockey and lacrosse games, figure skating and other public events for more than half a century. As it aged over the years, it was twice closed as “structurally unfit.” During the summer of 2014 it was finally demolished. proper desert incorporates 204 still images displayed in rapid succession with a text that muses on the contemporary strategy of pursuing location through dislocation, stability through instability, creativity through destruction.
The visual style is quite formal.
Produced • Virtual Image Productions
Text, photographs, audio and editing • Douglas Porter
Format • 6:44 minutes • HD • NTSC • © 2016
Distribution • www.vtape.org
Screenings
Produced • Virtual Image Productions
Written and directed • Douglas Porter
Camera, editing, and animation • Douglas Porter
Funding • Canada Council for the Arts • Nova Scotia Arts Council
Format • 25:19 minutes • SD • NTSC • © 2006
Distribution • www.vtape.org
Screenings
Run Into Peace presents a text adapted from the writings of Meister Eckhart, a controversial mystic, priest and religious teacher from 14th century Germany, who did much to vernacularize the religious contemplative life.
The text is simple and simultaneously self-contradictory; it recalls a world where language did not have to mean but could merely express, a world where the self knew better than to attempt defining the world. The images are also often contradictory, juxtaposed in flowing layers: highway landscapes, blood maps, vacant rooms, hands against the ceiling, glowing streetlights, invading icons, circular staircases.
Dedicated to Louis F. Capson [1944-96]
Produced • Virtual Image Productions
Written and directed • Douglas Porter
Narration • David Renton
Soundtrack • Steven Naylor
Funding • Canada Council for the Arts
Format • 12:57 minutes • SD • NTSC • © 1998
Distribution • www.vtape.org
Screenings
Losing Sleep presents interview footage of a self-confessed computer hacker who is struggling with chronic insomnia. His work on the computer has become such an all-encompassing cyber-world, that for him returning to the grounded physical world is a frightening endeavour.
‘Giving in’ to sleep seems like a violent surrender. Yet only by submitting to simple physical acts, such as a long, deliberate walk late at night, can he find any rest.
Produced • Virtual Image Productions
Direction, camera, and editing • Douglas Porter
Sound recording • Jane Porter
Funding • Canada Council for the Arts
Format • 14:27 minutes • SD • NTSC • © 1996
Distribution • www.vtape.org
Using a text adapted from Paul Virilio’s Pure War, and scenes of pedestrian movement in urban landscapes, combined with the visually arresting treatment of archival images of twentieth century warfare and wartime, Walkers explores our changing experience of space and time as everyday life is shaped by the military developments of technological speed and spectacular motion.
Part Three of the TIME SIGNALS trilogy
Produced • Virtual Image Productions
Edited and directed • Douglas Porter
Text adaptation • David Barteaux & Douglas Porter
Narration • Ludwig Scharfe • Felicity Redgrave • Jane Porter
Sound design • David Barteaux
Funding • Canada Council for the Arts
Format • 22:00 minutes • SD • NTSC • © 1992
Distribution • www.vtape.org
Screenings
Past, present, future. Always present, never grasped or contained. Sleeping, waking, dreams, memories. What is the reality of time? This videotape presents musings in the first person on the nature and experience of time. What are the ways in which we construct and imagine time? Can we imagine time without distorting it?
The imagery is presented as live video, rescanned video and computer graphics: clocks, a metronome, dissolving sugar cubes, passing through bedrooms and hallways, a bathroom towel.
Produced • Virtual Image Productions
Direction, camera, text, and editing • Douglas Porter
Sound recording • Jane Porter
Funding • Canada Council for the Arts
Format • 08:24 minutes • SD • NTSC • © 1991
Distribution • www.vtape.org
Screenings
Modern technology has given us the capacity to perform the most contradictory of tasks. An example in the cultural realm is the call-in radio talk show that makes it possible for individuals physically separated by thousands of miles to carry on a conversation that is simultaneously overheard by thousands of other individuals. The result is an acute displacement of all normal space and time sensibilities for everyone involved. There are no immediately recognizable side-effects: the “program” works according to specifications. However, the long range effects are inescapable.
The images of the tape (domestic interiors, telephones, astronauts and space capsules) are computer manipulated from various appropriated sources. The soundtrack is the program conversation from the side of the radio talk show host. The on-screen words are based on a text by Jean Baudrillard.
I’d Like To Move On If I Could, Please is based on the audio work “Last Word To The Caller” by Micah Lexier.