toward
sublimity
Bill Thompson
“For
those personages, presenting themselves to us and inflaming
our ardour and as it were illumining our path, will
carry our minds in a mysterious way to the high standards
of sublimity which are imaged within us.” Longinus,
On the Sublime (tr. W. Rhys Roberts)
This work is a multiple speaker audio/visual installation
that explores the sounds and images of an offshore oil
rig. Originally I intended to present these sound and
images in an almost cubist fashion in which they would
occur in simultaneous, ever-shifting perspectives.
I
was unable, however, to secure access to a rig even
though I surmounted the obstacles of helicopter training
and transport. Fortunately Jake Molloy was able to give
me a few short video clips taken by an offshore worker
from which I was able to build the installation.
In
acquiring these samples I decided to take the opposite
approach to my cubist idea and base the piece on one
short segment of audio/video. Instead of disparate sounds
and images occurring over one another in various combinations
and perspectives, rather one moment is dilated and layered
across itself at various rates and degrees of focus.
Perhaps
in this way the work looks toward sublimity not as an
overwhelming experience of massive machinery in the
vastness of the North Sea, but rather sub species aeternitatis,
from within the timelessness of an intensely lived moment.
