This film is part of Free
Wind Vane II
Gusts of wind on Hampstead Heath give shape to an exploratory film that seeks to present landscape in a different way.
Overview
Lush green trees blow and the film cuts between three different cameras set-up in a triangular formation, each one positioned with a wind vane and a wind indicator attached to the tripod, determining the structure of the film. Only one camera was ever running at one time and the three ten-minute rolls of film were cut together to create a chronologically sequential document of the event.
Welsby made a series of rigorous yet exploratory landscape and weather films over the course of the 1970s and beyond, this one returning to the core idea behind the twin-screen 1972 piece Wind Vane. Scientific in scope, in many ways, his films were intended to resist the romantic tradition of landscape presentation in art, being more akin to systems art than say 18th or 19th century painting. This particular work was supported by the BFI and made in partial collaboration with Chris Briscoe, a computer and electronic pioneer in the ‘Depart of Experiment’ at the Slade School of Art where Welsby was teaching.
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