I Said To My Soul, Be Still (A Tellurian Tidal Elegy) is a handmade 16mm cameraless film created from two found footage reels: a colour-film reel that was buried in my garden for a single revolution of the earth’s journey around the sun (365.24 days), and a black-and-white-film reel that was tied to pylons and immersed in the Derbarl Yerrigan/Swan River for a single lunar cycle (29.5 days). Whilst the films were in the natural environment, critters, soil, algae, and other vibrant matter, wove their way in, through and over the celluloid, altering the emulsion, and inadvertently becoming active, sensuous, collaborative agents in the filmmaking process. Once recovered from the environment, sections of transformed colour and black-and-white celluloid (29.5 X 24 frames) were then alternatingly spliced together until the film reached 365.24 seconds (365.24 X 24 frames).
The accompanying soundscape was recorded using an algorithmic synthesiser connected to a bio-data sonification device that detects electrical variations and biorhythms of plants. By attaching electrodes to various species of intertidal seagrass in the Derbarl Yerrgian/Swan River at sunrise and sunset on the day of the winter solstice (June 21st), the seagrasses’ biorhythms were converted into audio, and the seagrass was given space to sing their own elegy of transition and transformation.
