Lynn Loo

Conversations explores the colors of the landscape through the palette of digital color, and is a reconnection with my past narrative films. A mix of home videos, captured sounds, and unpublished films are assembled here to make a digital mural. As the date suggests, I have no plan yet to end the work.

A video documentation of a live performance at LUX in London, 2017. In 2003, I saw Drawings for Expanding Permutation (1969) by the UK artist Mary Martin at a gallery in London. Paul Martin, Mary Martin’s son, kindly gave me a book with pictures of her drawings that I constantly refer to for my Washi Series. This is a set of films and performances, made in response to Martin’s work, that uses the patterned colors of adhesive Japanese washi tape applied directly to clear 16mm film. These patterns are also responsible for the optical soundtracks of the films. In Washi MM three 16mm projectors are used as live instruments of performance to explore rhythmic patterns of color and sound created by the overlays of washi tape.

"Changes in the autumn colors in my garden were filmed on a day of gentle breezes. I captured close-ups of the dramatic reds, oranges, and greens of the foliage with their shadows moving in this environment of light wind. The original piece is presented as a two-projector performance, one showing negative film and the other a positive print of the same film. The two images are superimposed. Working with filters and hands as masks, I perform a color play between the two worlds of positive and negative color." –L.L.

The original work End Rolls is a performance for three 16mm projectors. A color negative film was exposed directly to different sources of light (candlelight, stove, fire) with the intention of creating fluctuations of color throughout the reel. Three copies were made, each printed at a different level of light. In the performance, sounds are extracted through the lens of each projector using light-sensor microphones. Since mechanical film projectors don’t run entirely in sync, the three films play together in a dance—echoes of movements and sounds—to which I make further changes in performance by working with the projector controls. End Rolls #2 is a digital adaptation, for two fixed screens, that was made for a program at Arnolfini, Bristol.

Letters are printed onto raw film, and their shapes make sounds as they passed the projectors optical sound heads. Letters "O" and "E" are initially printed on transparency papers, which is later brought into a dark room. Strips of unexposed film are laid under the transparency and exposed to light, thus optically printed the letters onto the film.

A film collaboration using six projectors that evolved from Lynn Loo's film o and Guy Sherwin's printer installation bdpq. The images were produced by printing letterforms directly onto raw 16mm film, and their shapes make sounds as they pass through the projectors' optical sound heads. These optical sounds may at times resemble the uttered sound of the letterforms. The work is sometimes performed as a live interaction with musicians.

A SOLDIER ON LEAVE TRAVELING HOME

One late night, just me with a camcorder, a tripod and my imagination of the moon. - LL

Without dialogue, images and sounds come together with the intention of making a personal essay.