Check out the entire piece at:
>>http://www.taylorstreetstudio.com/walkingman/walkingmanone.shtml
This particular piece stood out to me as I was clicking round on Rhizome.org. It is a short black and white documentary type film, split into nine different parts, with each part containing a triptych of three different camera views of the narrative. The span of the video begins with the subject, a white male, who is lead from a hotel to a bus stop in Portland, Oregon, and from there he makes his way through the city engaging deeply with all of his surroundings. The narrator of the video is a computerized voice that comments on his actions, as he does things like investigates a public fountain, observes a portable potty, and interacts with geese in a park, and allthewhile offers some perspective into the purpose of this piece.
"Perception requires a forgetfullness; a deletion of rush of stimuli not relevant to the immediate goal."
This piece makes a very bold statement about how we as people go through everyday life in relation to our surroundings. Especially in a city such as in this video, people are bombarded with so much stimuli on a day to day basis, that they have nearly become numb to the fine details of what makes up each and every aspect of the landscape. City noise and great populations are great distractions that we take in and spit right back out. But what if we take that noise away? The subject in this video is filmed without sound in most parts, leaving only the visual aspect. We see him not only as a pedestrian, but as a curious explorer who wants to know the ins and outs of everything around him. He is not a regular passserby, living the mundane life of every other person travelling through the streets hurrying to their destinations. He stops at bus stops, park fountains, and all kinds of places to see what is really there. He looks past the function and use of everyday objects to seeing them as negative space. This concept is of great interest to me as a photographer who often views objects in this same way.
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