Page 71 - Studio International - November December 1975

William Raban 2'45" (first performed 1973)
serving as an irreducibly reflexive technique. Thus we floating dock is seen in the middle of a small lake. As the
see the process of image-making and image-perception image on one film strip zooms in on the dock, the other
become the sole motivating factor of these expanded zooms out. One of the projectors is stationary and the
cinema events. other is held by Dye. He attempts to keep one image on
** top of another, and at the same time keep the
It is precisely this thrust of exploring the processes of superimposed docks equal in size. This means that as he
perception through an analysis of the processes of the walks up and down the gangway the total screen size
medium that produces the most pertinent work in the grows and shrinks to keep the dock static. The cameras
expanding cinema. Those elements of the cinematic then reverse their zooms, and Dye reverses his motion to
experience on which analytic emphasis has been placed retain the relative stasis of the central image. The
are : the nature of the screen surface, the total space of the spectator immediately becomes aware of the plastic
theatre (especially space not normally utilized), the nature of the total screen and of any images within it, and
projection equipment and projection beam, and the also of the role of the projector in determining the
changing role of the audience precipitated by this illusion of space and scale. And the accentuated role of
changing environment. An important piece in the active projectors alludes to the original role of the
establishing the role of the projector and beam is camera in determining those images. These tactics
Annabel Nicolson's Reel Time (1972). Nicolson inform all of Dye's film work : 'From being the unseen
sits at a sewing machine in the midst of the audience and
a long loop (roughly twenty-five feet) of film of the same
image (ie Nicolson at the sewing machine) is passed
through a projector and then through the sewing
machine operated by Nicolson before returning to the
projector, so that the holes punched in the film by the
sewing needle (mimicking, at first, sprocket holes)
eventually destroy it. Additionally, there is a second
projector in the theatre which uses no film but is set at an
acute angle to the first projector and then beamed past
Nicolson so that her shadow — mimicking not only
Nicolson actually sewing the film but also the filmed
image on the screen — forms a complementary image on
the adjacent wall.
The films of David Dye are also uncompromisingly
committed to elaborating the relationship of screen space
and image to projection procedure. Overlap, a twin-screen
film in super-8mm, illustrates how Dye interrelates these
concerns. The image in both screens is similar : a Annabel Nicolson Reel Time 1972
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