This work came out of a journey we made to trace the source of the 119 mile River Tay to its source at Ben Lui. The sources of rivers are rich in mythological and metaphysical meanings and our experience of pursuing this river felt much like a kind of archetypal, ancient form of pilgimage. From the great and powerful river downstream, we followed the Tay to a small burn running down the Ben Lui mountainside, where the water flowed with a clear, glassy sharpness, entirely unpoluted by the dark red moss and debris that characterises the water downstream. Ascending Ben Lui to it's mist shrouded summit, we were captivated by a kind of primitive and passionate desire to find a source point, a point of real and innocent purity.
Yet the burn descending down Ben Lui slowly breaks into multitudinous smaller rivulets, bubbling out from all directions from beneath stones and moss. A mass of sources, growing ever more indistinct and indefinable became apparent. And upon the summit, great swathes of luminous bright green moss seemed to leak water, bubbling from nowhere, as if by some kind of magical process of creation, with no obvious source but the surrounding mist.
''source' is a series of short moving image sequences, a meditation on the beginnings of things and our desire to reach toward sources, to distil meanings, to go to the origins of things in our attempt to understand their nature.
Quicktime video clip from'source':
Source of the River Tay (2.9MB)
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
