Walking

Wednesday the 8th October Today I walked from home into Dartmoor village, which is about 8km. Mainly long straight roads; I detoured into the verge and bushes, then spent along time in the pine forest plantations which run parallel to the road. I recorded sounds, took photos and collected things as I went. In the forest I made some videos and collected lots of pine needles to use on the 35mm used film I got yesterday. The forest is strange, they usually scare me, but I started of having fun, then went in deeper and began to get a little anxious spinning round the perfect rows of trees. On the final kilometre I was continually attacked by magpies, it was like being in 'The Birds' as they swooped straight for my head screeching. As paranoia and panic set in I was convinced it was one bird following me and franticly tucked in jewellery and hid my shiny lenses thinking that's what it was after. I ended up running the last stretch backwards, waving my arms and cardigan in the air and shouting. Scary stuff. Back at the museum I began laboriously sticking pine needles to film with splicing tape. I find it hard to visualize what I will see when its projected, I seem to get in a muddle when I try and think to technically about the spacing: how may frames a second, whether the lines will go up and down or be solid, and whether the optical sound will work. I will keep experimenting with some more scavenged bits of nature, and try and borrow a projector from Clinton next week. I am annoyed that I can't upload my videos on my computer because the camera didn’t come with a fire wire: a brand new camera and no fire wire! I rang up cannon to try to get them to send me one but they weren't having any of it, and apparently my imovie might not be new enough to work in HD. I hate imovie. I'm also a bit annoyed that this is my 5th day of blog entries but I haven't found an Internet connection capable of uploading them or any images before I finish this residency. It's so slow. Maybe no one will ever read this. Curious. So no video editing tonight, I might be going into town to play cards. The game is called Yuka, I think, which I thought was either a root vegetable or somewhere it Mexico, my chances of winning aren’t looking good.