The Roomba is patient.

Absently he looked at his feet. Scuffmarks were on his shoes. Did he know they were already there? He doesn’t remember taking note of them before.

(A blade of grass wavers in the strong breeze. A beam of sunlight sidles up to it.)

Like a passing wave: a memory. She is running towards her mother. She buries her head in the billowing cotton skirt. Tears flow… She wonders if the memory is real. Maybe it was something she saw on TV, or in a movie. Maybe she invented it.

(The Roomba is patient. At precisely 10:05 AM it comes to life, as it does every weekday. It goes to work sucking the life out of the carpet. At 10:35 AM it goes back to its charger, and waits. Patience)

She turns her head to shy away from the bright sunlight and is confronted by a hot pink silhouette of a dancing figure. The poster is plastered to the stone wall, and takes on the wall’s contours.


(It is a Sunday afternoon on Rathdowne St. The street is deserted. The leaves are starting to turn.)


The child stands motionless in the hallway. Impatiently waiting for summer to end…. He keeps saying to himself “any moment now…any moment.”

(The paint on the little red compact begins to bubble, crack and flake. Birds defecate on its bonnet)

go to it

Left alone to her own devises she gives up the moment. She hesitates. She creeps forward by sideways steps.

(Empty hall: the dust stirs in slow motion)

He hands her his cap. He says… “go to it”
It’s at this moment she despises him the most.

(A windowsill. Paint flaking. Knotted grain)


A parental moment.
Flutter of alarm…
All the while, the little girl goes “weeeeee!”

(Sink of dishes. Buzzing flies. A spoon, precariously balanced, finally drops. Dripping honey).


He leaves a twenty-cent piece on the arm of his lounge chair.
He then pushes himself back, settles, and stairs at it absently for the next 15 mins.

(a television flickering in a deserted room. On the wall a framed picture of a man in plastic trunks holding a fish).


The young man turns to his companion and says:
“The afternoon is folding. I can feel it fold”
The woman sitting next to him realizes that the disease has progressed rapidly

(The pages of a newspaper curl and blacken individually: The embers take turns dancing above the flames. Then, slowly float away).


She looked up just in time to see the rusty old sign be pushed over by the wind. She was glad to have witnessed it. She found it reassuring that this could happen.

(A chequered red and white handkerchief half buried in the earth: weather worn and frayed.)

two ideas

Pae on Vimeo

I have two ideas to work with this week. The first is inspired by remyyy's clip above. Something about it triggered an idea about colour, space and time. As usual, the idea is only half formed.
The second idea is a kind of variation of last weeks effort.
Which one to choose?
Maybe the music will give me a clue.

ep 16

Conditions ep 16 on Vimeo

Too much coffee.

working on the day

Been working on getting my conditions project all collected up for the "I promise 2 be U" site and its turned out to be a worthwhile project just for its own sake. Thus I'm now putting the finishing touches to a DVD of Conditions...
It feels good to put all of this into one place.
One of the things I realized while working on this project was just much I liked the original approach I had to composition when the project started: i.e. working with sound and noise in a more organic and abstract way. I think that somewhere on the way I got into the crowd pleasing (or at least second guessing what I thought was crowd pleasing).

Meanwhile Ep 16 is moving forward.

p.s. If anyone is interested in a copy of the DVD, then let me know.

new and old projects

I've got a number of things on my plate this morning.
The first is a boring reediting project.
I've been invited to submit my conditions eps to a collection site: http://ipromise2beyou.com/index.php
I'm flattered to be asked, but its still a bit of a pain to revisit old works and get them into substantial shape.
Once something is in the can...

The other project is more interesting to me. It utilizes the concept of a Rubik's cube. space within space.
The project is possibly one of the most complicated I've ever done, and because of that complexity it might end up and multiple parts...

Ep 15

Work is work.
the texture for the background of this work is provided by an old book cover...





Conditions ep 15 on Vimeo