Description

Video "How Nature Works"

An outrageously large flock of European starlings fly and settle in patterns that are totally chaotic, but the birds seem to have an inner sense of where to go. The waves of birds reveal previously unseen wires and respond to still-unseen, natural cues. This dramatic flight sequence takes place before a backdrop of steadily rolling cloud banks. The clouds make me think of the unstoppable force of nature as it proceeds through time.

This very short video loop was made as part of a multimedia installation about human nature and how it seems forever in conflict with rationality.  The video introduces that idea in its broadest sense; that despite our constant fretting over work, school, where to live, even the perils of carbohydrates, we are still basically natural creatures in a natural world. Like the birds, we respond to nature's dictates: we are born; we depend on our parents, then move out to find a life beyond them; we participate in the culture (the flock); maybe we reproduce; and then we die to make way for others. Nature moves through us to build our world. Our lives feel independent and controllable, but in fact we exist within the many millennia of nature's patterns.
 
Notes on the Soundtrack:

The soundtrack to this video is the found sound of starling flocks and highway traffic combined with the music of guitarist David Tronzo.  I sent Tronzo an audio-free DVD of the edited piece and some writing about possible interpretations of the visuals. He returned to me two scores to consider for the sound, which he wrote, then performed live as a kind of test.  I chose one of the scores and mixed it in with my found sound over the course of the 15 minute run of the video loops. The sound you hear in the first run of the loop is balanced differently from the sound mix you hear later, when the traffic and birds are more prominent, increasing the three dimentionality of the video’s effect.