four words for four hands (apples.mountains.over.frozen.)

2006
ink on clear 16mm film stock
8 minutes, silent

in early 2005 i began a large body of work that dealt with a 12 page classical music score which i found in my grandmother’s garage when i was a child. i began to translate the score, with what little knowledge i have in terms of knowledge of reading music (i.e. every good boy does fine, etc. ), into new scores towards the making paintings, drawings and sculpture.

at some point while working with the score and making notations, i realized that the musical staff was just about the same size as 16 mm film stock, and so i began tracing all of the notes in the score onto clear film stock using one of 7 different colored pens for each corresponding note a- g. when i was finished the “drawing”, i took it to a film transfer house so i could the movement beyond what a projector could do, as i wanted the  projection speed to be consistent with the time length of the recorded version of the music that generated the film.

when i arrived to work on the transfer, the first question i was asked was if my film was a positive or negative – and since i did not use a camera, i asked them to run both – and having difficulty deciding which to go with, i decided to use both, acknowledging that the piece was originally performed by two pianists. thus, the film starts in positive, and shifts to negative halfway through.

the film is entirely silent… i’ve never actually heard the piece of music… and i see this film as visual music in its purest form.