Ice/Thaw - Vaavatnet, Norway
This work arose out of a commission we had to travel to Norway in 2006. On this journey we became fascinated that 60% of Norwegians have 'huts' (small wooden houses) in the countryside where they spend much time with their families in nature and relative isolation. Trondheim is a modern city, yet the people seemed to have retained a natural and admirable connection to their landscape.
The Norwegian landscape contains great drama, but for us, an intensity experience was felt most acutely at the site of a mountain ice lake called Vaavatnet (Snillfjord, Soer Troendelag). Filming on site, we were drawn to close-up observations of melting, the slow and steady rhythm of the drip-thaw, with great sheets of ice and snow covered over with a thin shimmering layer of water.
This work was produced from a period of total absorbtion in the act of observation, a point where critical detachment, thought and selfhood become suspended.
The final work was authored as a series of five 'movements'.
Each movement lasts between one and three minutes on a continuous loop(see
below for video clips). Individual movements can be shown on single or multiple
screen systems. The work is available on a designed four screen display
with built in media player to be wall mounted or stand mounted. The wall
mounted four screen system has the following dimensions: Width 187cm, Height
37cm, Depth 24cm
Quicktime video clips from 'evanescence':
evanescence
(movement 2) - 1 min single screen extract - 1.2MB
Documentation clips of the four screen installation:
movement 1 (2m55s loop) - 6.4MB
movement 2 (1m loop - silent) - 2.5MB
movement 3 (1m54s loop) - 3.9MB
movement 4 (45s loop - silent) - 2.1MB
movement 5 (3m 20s loop) - 7.2MB
You will need Quicktime 7 to view these movies. It is a free download. To save the movies, ctrl+click (Mac) or right click (Windows) over the text link and select 'save target as' (Windows) or 'download linked file' (Mac).
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All text and images © hamilton & ashrowan 2006
