#3

GoPro! Yay for the possibility of a moving camera whilst working with myself. A lovely member of my community leant me a GoPro through our local Buy Nothing Facebook page. Such a generous gesture considering we didn’t know each other. The Go Pro camera has opened up a lot of creative possibilities for me. The movement of the camera allows me to frame both my moving experience and to bring the gaze of the viewer into my moving journey as a dancer. When watching back, I have the feeling that as the viewer I am located within the action.

My starting points for this week’s exploration were: getting to know the GoPro, and wanting to move, to dance and see where that leads me. I was quite drawn to the paddock as a site to work in – the open expansion of the paddock offers a varied range of textures and structures to respond to – different materials such as the grass, wood, wire, iron, the structures of the water tank and shed. I entered the paddock with the GoPro attached to my head and began moving in response to this site.

It was in the editing stage that the form of the video began to take shape – as is so often the case in my experience! I wanted to create the effect of starting with a sense of distance and then drawing the viewer closer and closer until they find themselves located within the dance, being taken on a moving journey through the landscape. The editing is fast with short clips, aiming to give an impression of being inside a dancer’s body, negotiating the ever changing relationships with the environment that present themselves when moving through a landscape.

Dianne’s written reflection captures exactly my experience of moving with the GoPro and then later in the editing stage of trying to recreate this experience for the viewer. I felt a sense of liberation and possibility with this exploration and excitement at thought of setting up a dynamic relationship with the viewer.