Year of release: 2018
Original format: 16mm
Running time: 2 minutes 50 seconds
Screening format: 35mm comopt print, single channel DCP, QuickTime MOV or Blu-ray H.264
Directed, filmed and edited by Stuart Moore
Sound design: Stuart Moore
Producer: Kayla Parker
Production: Sundog Media
A Deep Time film commissioned by Mayes Creative for the Dark Skies: Bright Stars project, Cornwall
Distribution and sales: Sundog Media sundogmedia@gmail.com
Synopsis
A reflection on the changing and unchanging geology of a Dartmoor river.
Description
Filmed on location with 16mm clockwork Bolex camera, at Bantham on the coast of South Devon, Great Britain, Zinn is a creative exploration of the temporalities and affects of deep time, in which the film-maker responded intuitively to the location at low tide one summer afternoon. The 16mm clockwork Bolex camera became a sensory extension of his body, capturing on film his intuitive response to the embodied experience of the particular landscape of the estuarine beach as the tide came in, its sands shaped by cycles of sedimentation and erosion, grinding down the rocks of nearby Dartmoor over many millions of years. The sound design uses sonified data from the Large Hadron Collider to imagine the deep time processes taking place within the granite core of Dartmoor, with resonant bass undertones suggesting geological infrasound.
Production notes
‘Zinn’ is an old dialect word for tin - the mines on Dartmoor are abandoned and the tin port on the Avon estuary is long forgotten. Zinn thinks about human, geological and film time. We remember the beach from our past visits and can return, but what we see is always different. The estuary is constant, but changing - its sand patterns caused by the waves, tides, winds and the flow of the river as it reaches the sea from its source high on the granite mass of the moor.
Comments
"Either you get the gritty, grainy realness of film or you don’t—until, that is, you see that British filmmaker Stuart Moore’s exquisite shots of undulating riverbeds in Zinn have a texture and depth that transcends simply capturing a moment. It’s the difference between, say, an etching and a snapshot." (Michael Fox 'Now Playing! Light Field Trips Out on Celluloid at The Lab' 9 March 2020, KQED).
Exhibition
2020
Visions in the Nunnery 2020 showcase of moving image, digital and performance art, in programme 3 curated by Benedict Drew: "an ethereal exploration into fantasy and fiction, with artists drawing on music, 16mm film, poetry, ritual and nature to make sense of our current moment in time … a journey through multi-layered and sensory interpretations of our world" (programme notes); Visions 2020 was selected by Tessa Garland, Sophie Hill and Kamila Kuc, together with the lead artists. London, UK (programme 3: 17 November to 13 December 2020).
The UMW Media Wall moving image exhibition space, Hurley Convergence Center, University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, USA. Located in the atrium of the Hurley Convergence Center at the University of Mary Washington, the wall is over two stories tall and is comprised of 43 separate Laser Phosphor Display tiles (24-hour continuous loop, September to November 2020).
Light Field 2020 programme 4, curated by Trisha Low; The Lab, San Francisco, USA (14 March 2020).
2019
Festival 1666: Festival Internacional de Cinema 16mm, Competiva 1: Futuro do Passado programme; São Paulo, Brazil (22 and 28 November 2019)
Lizard Beacons Exhibition, Cohort Hotel, St Ives, Cornwall (19 and 20 September 2019).
The Meteor film pod on tour around Cornwall: Zinn and the other commissioned short films screened in the portable film environment sculpture at the Secondary Schools STEM fair, the Royal Cornwall Showground (supported by Cornwall Council and Feast); Pensans and Nancealverne Schools, Penzance (supported by local Cornwall Councillor Tim Dwelly's Community Chest Fund); Mullion School; and Lizard Point YHA (throughout March 2019).
2018
100ft of Deep Time film screening for Arts Research introduced by artist and cultural producer, Dr Joanna Mayes; with commissioned artists, Karen Abadie, Rachael Allain, and Stuart Moore, who share their approach to the theme and discuss moving image as practice research; University of Plymouth (12 December 2018)
100ft of Deep Time, Meteor film pod installation, Cornwall Film Festival, Falmouth Moor (10 November 2018)
Plymouth Art Weekender Scott Building, Plymouth (video installation, 28 to 30 September 2018)
