Making things

One of the activities which has given me pleasure in the late summer and fall has been preparing presentations.  One on the history of the "leather" subculture in the US, another on pre-exposure prophylaxis to prevent the spread of HIV.  These have involved research, writing, and what I'll somewhat pretentiously call "visual production:" slides and short videos for group talks.  

This is re-visiting some old territory for me: I once taught video documentary production, and have done a little off- and on-camera narration for non-fiction projects like documentaries and industrial videos.  I'd forgotten how much I liked it.  Not just the story-telling part but playing with images and sequences.

Of course, I'm not the first person to be intrigued by the forms of natural "objects." O'Keefe and Mapplethorpe come to mind. This short clip was pure play, rewarding for its own sake, and with absolutely no purpose.

So part of what I want to do is take the show on the road.  Take pictures, and videos.  Maybe talk to people, maybe listen to flowers and trees and grasses.  Put those together and upload them so people can see them.  On blogs, YouTube, maybe Vimeo... it's now possible to make images, still and moving, with relatively inexpensive equipment, and edit it carefully on a good laptop.

That's why the inverter and solar and extra battery in the RV: not just to have light, but to play with images and share them.

I have no idea how this will work.  Maybe it'll turn out not to hold my attention.  But for now, I'm thinking of the Beast as the Mobile Media Wagon.  We'll see.