Video Creation with Nonhuman Actors

This project was created for MDIA300/VAST320 - Media, Sound, Ecology under professor Julie Andreyev. The intention was to expand student's awareness of non-human actors and explore methods of interspecies creativity through indeterminacy combined with passive video recording techniques. Students first prepared themselves with a full-body awareness exercise to heighten their senses, and slow down their observational pace. Students were asked to find "micro-locations" around their chosen site (the majority as part of a workshop at Wreck Beach, Vancouver), and used a still, passive camera to record each scene. After recording, students cross-referenced these recordings with their observational notes, and analyzed the clips for non-human agency. For example— the actions of a katydid, the tide-revealed seaweed gripping its holdfast, the movement of light on a spiderweb as celestial bodies shift. These events formed the basis of the editing choices and were brought together into a final piece, as students noticed a simple narrative unfolding co-created by the nonhuman actors in front of their camera.