Silent Film Sundays #1

With increasing ecological concerns surrounding climate change and environmental degradation, how do seemingly ‘given’ environmental conditions begin to foreground themselves within our extremely personalized narratives? How do we come to terms with the increasing prominence of forces once taken for granted?

The Centre for Image and Spatial Politics: NSW screening 1 of 4 looks at foregrounding as both a filmic strategy and contingent reality through the pairing of silent film with data visualization software:

­The Wind (1928), by Victor Sjöström, offers an interesting angle on the notion of foregrounding. Acting as a vicious refrain, the winds of West Texas make themselves known through the visions, crises and personal woes of an impoverished young woman named Letty (Lillian Gish). Complicit in the murder and burial of a suitor, Letty finds herself helpless in the presence of the winds as they unearth and relocate the body.

­Earth, by Cameron Beccario, is a visualization software of global weather conditions that utilizes GEOS­5 data provided by the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) at NASA. The motion of air, ocean, chemicals, particulates, temperature, humidity, and cloud water are forecast by continually updated data sets. Massive accumulations of real time information are revealed through a series of geomorphic flows.

How can the innocence or guilt of persons and parties be determined by the unpredictable complexities of turbulent environments?
How do we craft a narrative out of the gradual unfolding and indifferent paces of climate change?

This event is free and open to the public. Sounds by Joshua David Lynch.​