Turbulence.org presents recent work by one of my favorite new media artists. David Crawford’s new Stop Motion Studies - Series 2 (SMS) let us zoom in on microscopic time sequences recorded by the artist in London England between October 12 and October 15, 2002. Crawford seems to do to pictures to pictures what Phillip Glass would do to sound. As the 20 sequences taken in points of human travel through physical and information space expand our perception of time, we can look at subtleties in human expression that would have otherwise only been visible to our still surviving subconscious instincts. Crawford manages to translate non verbal communication into very aware poetic strings of information without the use of words. The camera in the sequences is a quiet observer, part of the hardware of the environment. The “observed” become the software of the short video sequences. All actors are strangers, reacting to being photographed by a stranger. Their reactions repeated over and over by the intelligently edited micro-sequences slowly turn them into familiar acquaintances as we become more and more familiar with their individual body language. The distance between the observer and the observed is slowly reduced through the intensity of observation. By focusing on subtle non verbal expression Crawford reminds us the 90% of human communication which has been “optimized away” by the very media he uses for his work.
Another very intelligent piece by David Crawford.

See also:July 10, 2002