Nicholas Swanton
2021Six Variations on the Same Theme
Nicholas Swanton
The experimental film traditions of reprocessing and hand-processing, rephotography, and optical printing are all achieved through overtly digital means; the chemical and alchemical is made artificial through apparent pixels, computer-cobbled graphics, and the incorporation of analog video signals. Even the act of joining two filmic images is accomplished through digital means, creating a methodology of uncanniness.
Six Variations on the Same Theme
Six Variations on the Same Theme: Third Variation
Nicholas Swanton
Six Variations presents six silent short films, each with their own unique visual motif that abstracts, interferes with, and obfuscates an archival reel of Kodachrome home movies. The third variation digitally joins the home movies that unite all six films, presented in black & white, with analog video.
Six Variations on the Same Theme: Third Variation
Six Variations on the Same Theme: First Variation
Nicholas Swanton
Six Variations presents six silent short films, each with their own unique visual motif that abstracts, interferes with, and obfuscates an archival reel of Kodachrome home movies. The first variation digitally joins two film strips, the home movies that unite all six films, and a hand-processed strip of black film.
Six Variations on the Same Theme: First Variation
Six Variations on the Same Theme: Fourth Variation
Nicholas Swanton
Six Variations presents six silent short films, each with their own unique visual motif that abstracts, interferes with, and obfuscates an archival reel of Kodachrome home movies. The fourth variation presents the home movies that unite all six films overlaid on top of itself, creating new, dynamic images and colors.
Six Variations on the Same Theme: Fourth Variation
Six Variations on the Same Theme: Second Variation
Nicholas Swanton
Six Variations presents six silent short films, each with their own unique visual motif that abstracts, interferes with, and obfuscates an archival reel of Kodachrome home movies. The second variation joins the home movies that unite all six films with an ever-changing mass of digital color: black, white, and rust engulf and swarm the screen, discoloring and hiding the original footage.
Six Variations on the Same Theme: Second Variation
Six Variations on the Same Theme: Fifth Variation
Nicholas Swanton
Six Variations presents six silent short films, each with their own unique visual motif that abstracts, interferes with, and obfuscates an archival reel of Kodachrome home movies. The fifth variation presents the home movies that unite all six films rephotographed on analog video, then heavily processed through a video synthesizer.
Six Variations on the Same Theme: Fifth Variation
Presence Without Presence
Nicholas Swanton
"A study of place and presence through degrees of winter. The natural and artificial world commingle, and continued exposure strips the seemingly insignificant of prescribed meaninglessness. Emptiness fades, a natural presence emerges, ebb and flow holds sway over the moving image and shakes loose roles of setting or background.”
Presence Without Presence
Six Variations on the Same Theme: Sixth Variation
Nicholas Swanton
Six Variations presents six silent short films, each with their own unique visual motif that abstracts, interferes with, and obfuscates an archival reel of Kodachrome home movies. The sixth and final variation presents the end of the home movies that unites all six films, a series of zooms, stripped down to muddy browns and black, with a subdued digital video presence.
Six Variations on the Same Theme: Sixth Variation
