Guy Sherwin

There is something exhilarating about observing an artistic star that shines at the edge of the cosmos, and steadfastly refuses to move to the centre, that even seems to vanish beyond the periphery as time and fashion move on, only for it to become visible again”. Tim Cawkwell.

Sherwin’s 1975 performance 'Paper Landscape' is a live interaction with his on-screen presence, filmed on super 8mm in Epping, London. Forty years later he has re-worked the idea for digital video and sound – recorded in the rice fields of Itoshima, Japan.

Made during an artist residency in the rural Nijomasue district of Fukuoka, south Japan. The film features the public information system used to alert residents of earthquakes and other possible dangers

Guy Sherwin's SHORT FILM SERIES was made between 1976 and 2014. Eventually he issued 34 films. Some are single studies of light, focused on the reflections in an eye shot in close-up. Others are domestic, as in the PORTRAIT WITH PARENTS or BREATHING .... Many deal with two rates of time measurement, as in CLOCK AND CANDLE, or construct visual paradoxes, as in the shuddering stasis of METRONOME - an illusion caused by the clash between the spring-wound mechanisms of the Bolex camera and of the metronome itself. In BARN DOOR the semi-strobe effect of light pulsations flattens the distant landscape. ... Interestingly, Sherwin has recently returned to the series after almost twenty years, with studies of animals and insects which in part recall the fascination with the 'invisible' side of nature felt by the surrealists, and seen in the scientific writing of Roger Caillois and the films of Jean Painleve during the 1930s.

Tres fuentes de luz; una ventana abierta, una bombilla, la nebulización directa de la película causada por la luz que entra por un lado de la cámara mientras la película avanza.

Un doble retrato de mí mismo con mi hijo Kai, de 5 años.

La luz del sol, a través de los árboles, parpadea en las teclas del piano mientras Lynn está tocando.

Yi Wei es el nombre que me puso mi socia china Lynn. La película se hizo en un solo plano con la cámara en posición vertical y Lynn en horizontal.

Mi hija más pequeña, Mei, unos días después de que le hubiera ayudado a nacer (la matrona llegó demasiado tarde).

An expanded film performance by Guy Sherwin using a transparent screen and white paint

An expanded film performance by Guy Sherwin using a transparent screen and white paint

Optical sound film by Guy Sherwin

Film by Guy Sherwin

Optical sound film by Guy Sherwin

Optical sound film by Guy Sherwin

A performance work for multiple projectors in which the starting point is my sound & image experiments of the 70s. The film and sound material was prepared in one simple action by bleaching away the side of a length of black leader, leaving a clear strip running along its length. The film has two sets of perforations and is twisted into a loop, known as a Mobius Loop. On projection, the strip of projected light switches from side to side, followed by a change in tone of the sprocket holes. Three 16mm projectors lie on their sides, and the loops are projected onto the screen as stacked blocks of light, gradually coloured by gels. The performance also makes use of the sound tone controls of the three projectors. First performed at Star & Shadow Cinema, Newcastle 2007 with sound mix by Lynn Loo. G.S.

“Black film stock is repeatedly cut and rejoined. The cuts are made with the angled blade of a splicer normally used for joining sound film. At each cut we see an angled flash of light followed by a thud of sound. The film combines rhythmic intervals from one cut per second to twenty-four cuts per second, spread across 6 projectors”.

9 mins b/w Silent 16 mm for 3x16 mm projectors, or 2x16mm projectors, overlapping; can be shown as a performance or installation. Similar views of the same urban scene combined in projection.

I had rooms at the front and back of the house and I recorded sunlight passing through them in the course of the day, as well as across the buildings seen from the windows. Sometimes I would set the time-lapse camera running and go off to work, leaving it to record the sunlight in the empty rooms. Another room in the flat was used for rehearsal by the saxophone player Alan Wilkinson. The soundtrack comes from recordings I made while walking from room to room as he was playing. This is mixed with a variety of music from the street, reflecting the multi-ethnicity of the location - Greek music, reggae, country & western. G.S. (LUXONLINE)

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 performance for two projectionists using two 16mm projectors with freeze-frame. This performance version further animates the newspaper text by using intermittent projection, pausing and re-starting the film on its way through the projector. The pauses allow us to read chance fragments of the newspaper. In performing the work two identical prints are shown superimposed with a slight difference in image size, which varies throughout the performance. The projectionists attempt to bring the two films into synchronisation with each other by alternately freezing and running the films. During these brief periods of synchronisation something unexpected happens as a result of the slight misregistration of the two identical images and of their accompanying sounds.

This is a live projection event for two 16mm projectors and two loudspeakers. The material in Cycles (1972/77) is recycled for two screens and two soundtracks, with one screen set inside another, giving rise to a surprising induced colours and rhythmic patterns.

Bachs Prelude No. 24 in B-minor from Das wohltemporierte Klavier, performed by various pianists, is juxtaposed with pictures of a moving train.

Situada en Middlesex, Filter Beds, el parque abandonado cubierto de vegetación en el este de Londres. Los juncos y las hierbas, por encima de los cables, los árboles y los pájaros, los cuales emergen o se disuelven prestando atención a los cambios de un plano a otro.

Un pájaro en un árbol balanceado entre la quietud y el vuelo. El viento en los árboles llena de vida la imagen.

An ongoing set of films of inconsequential animal movements which are hand-printed in a variety of ways, using changes of light, geometry, time. These processes reveal what might be hidden in the frames and photographic depths of the material, as well as constructing a way of looking in relation to their subject.

Un árbol al viento con las nubes pasando rápidamente encima. Fui oscureciendo gradualmente la imagen con filtros mientras pasaba por la impresora.

La imagen de los cables del telégrafo y de las nubes pasando se superpone a la misma imagen girada 180 grados. El momento central de la película es simétrico. Se imprimió la película dos veces, cada una desde cada final de la película, dando lugar a una de las tres películas palíndromo de las Series.

Otra película palíndromo. La imagen de un árbol y su reflejo impresa dos veces, superpuestas, la primera vez al derecho (movimiento hacia delante, se va atenuando) y la segunda vez bocabajo (movimiento hacia atrás, va apareciendo). Una pequeña focha, vista en los dos finales de la película, parece estar las dos veces bocarriba, sorprendentemente.

Fochas jóvenes buceando y asomándose, superpuestas con fochas juveniles buceando y asomándose vistas del revés y marcha atrás. Un palíndromo visual.

Un gato durmiendo al sol en el ondulado techo de plástico de la casita del jardín. Filmada en intervalos temporales.

Mosquitos mientras pululaban por un árbol cuando filmaba el cielo. Posteriormente retocado en la impresora óptica y mezclado con el grano de la película.

"Un estudio sobre el tiempo, la memoria y la realidad que tiene lugar en el patio trasero de la casa donde mi hija se crió". Guy Sherwin.

Street-life at a busy intersection beneath a freeway in San Francisco. An urban landscape film with an underlying formal structure.

Mile End Purgatorio is Guy Sherwin and Martin Doyle’s one minute hymn to the London road via its shop signs. A heady rapid-fire brew of Dante, Shakespeare, the Bible and William Blake, its visual text is storefront correlated, its theme the crisis on the journey, its rhythms all of daily life, and celebratory in its observations of the seemingly known.

Reflejos sobre peceras en las ventanas de restaurantes en Chinatown, San Francisco. Sonidos de sirenas y olas rompientes.

Una meditación sobre la infancia y el lenguaje, inspirado en la obra del psicólogo suizo Jean Piaget y la experiencia de Sherwin del desarrollo de su propia hija.

Made while on a visit to Connemara in Ireland, the film is partly a response to the sense of time that the landscape evoked.

Fuertes ráfagas de viento sobre el agua, a las que nos referíamos en mi infancia velera como «patas de gato». Justo fuera del encuadre hay un embarcadero y una pared que refleja el viento de forma impredecible. Quizá esta película gana en su versión digital, pues el grano y el píxel interactúan con la superficie del agua, que cambia en todo momento.

Optical sound film by Guy Sherwin

Made using a super 8 sound camera. The microphone is attached to a stick protruding from the camera, and kept just out of sight. This image-and-sound-gathering device is used to 'play' the open strings of a piano.

The sound of lights passing through a darkened landscape seen from a moving train.

La cuestión de si se debe exponer la película a la luz exterior o interior se resuelve tomando dos fotogramas alternativamente en cada exposición. Estos dos extremos de la apertura quedan gradualmente disminuidos a una posición central plana como parte de una secuencia que se repite por oleadas. Es otra película filmada en intervalos de tiempo así como una forma de película flicker.

El estómago en avanzado estado de gestación de Anna. Abro y cierro el objetivo al ritmo de su respiración. Se ve el tendedero de nuestro vecino por la ventana.

A medida que el tren sale de la estación empiezo a dar cuerda a la película, pero antes de que acabe invierto el movimiento y giro hacia atrás la manivela hasta el principio. El resultado es una doble exposición en la que la vista a través de la ventana pasa por direcciones opuestas, un reloj se mueve simultáneamente hacia delante y atrás y un cigarrillo encendido se hace más largo y más corto.

El paso de la luz del sol al atardecer por una pieza de metal a lo largo de una hora, aproximadamente, grabado en intervalos temporales a un ritmo de un fotograma por segundo, más o menos. El peso del brazo del metrónomo se ajusta periódicamente durante la filmación y esto da lugar a una serie de variaciones en las fases de los dos mecanismos de cuerda, uno el de la cámara, otro el del metrónomo. La ilusión inicial de movimiento en tiempo real cambia a otra de inquieta inmovilidad.

La cámara está alineada con el sol de manera que la luz, pasando por las hojas, entra en el visor y empaña periódicamente la imagen mientras se están grabando las hojas movidas por el viento.

Mi primera hija, Maya, con pocos días de vida. Me pregunto qué podrá ver por sus ojos recién descubiertos.

Yendo en bici en círculos sobre un charco de agua. El rastro húmedo se seca al sol como las sombras de los arcos a su alrededor.

Un grifo que gotea lentamente perturba el reflejo de las nubes visto a través de la ventana.

Hecha ajustando la abertura de la cámara junto con el brillo de una simple bombilla. Cuando la luz se atenúa y la abertura se abre, vemos el iris del ojo abriéndose también.

"One of a series of films that investigates qualities of sound that can be generated directly from the image track. The images that you see are simultaneously scanned by the optical sound reader in the projector, which converts the into sound. This particular film makes use of the aural effect of visual perspective; the steeper the perspective on the railings, the closer the intervals of black and white, and the higher the frequency of sound. I also wanted to find out what freeze frames and visual strobe would 'sound' like. Visual strobe is created both in the camera (camera shutter v. railings) and in the printer (printer shutter v. slipping frames)." -G.S.

One of a series of films that uses soundtracks generated directly from their own imagery. I shot the images of a staircase specifically for the range of sounds they would produce. I used a fixed lens to film from a fixed position at the bottom of the stairs. Tilting the camera up increases the number of steps that are included in the frame. The more steps that are included the higher the pitch of sound. A simple procedure gave rise to a musical scale (in eleven steps which is based on the laws of visual perspective. A range of volume is introduced by varying the exposure. The darker the image the louder the sound (it can be the other way round, but Musical Stairs uses a soundtrack made from the negative of the image.) The fact that the staircase is neither a synthetic image, nor a particularly clean one (there happened to be leaves on the stairs when I shot the film) means that the sound is not pure, but dense with strange harmonics. – G.S.

Railway tracks seen from a speeding train are converted into optical sounds.

Una mirada fija a cámara mientras una luz se enciende y se apaga periódicamente, causando una reacción en el modelo, y en el espectador también.

Una vela se consume en un periodo de unas pocas horas mientras la sombra del reloj sube gradualmente por la pared, oscureciendo una fotografía. La exposición de cada fotograma era más o menos de medio segundo.

Un lugar donde hacen demoliciones cerca de Kings Cross, en Londres. Sólo las columnas de hierro se mantienen en pie. La cámara se mueve en una serie de movimientos panorámicos de una columna a otra.

Intentando mantener mi posición en el río mientras Anna gira la manivela de la película en la cámara.

A nuestro gato le gusta sentarse encima de la televisión porque está caliente. Su cola tapa la pantalla.

Filmada desde un tren aproximándose a la estación New Street de Birmingham. Un pequeño zoom aparece lentamente hacia la chimenea mientras se aleja. El paisaje parece girar alrededor de la chimenea.

A live film performance by Guy Sherwin.

Guy Sherwin bloquea, alternando con su mano como si fuera un obturador, sus ojos y su cámara frente a un espejo.

En esta película se me ve dando cuerda a la película a mano a velocidades irregulares mientras filmo las manecillas de un reloj. Más adelante, en la película, las giro hacia delante dos veces y luego una hacia atrás hasta que la película acaba, dando lugar a una superposición en tres partes.

Un camino por los árboles lleva a Richmond Park. La cámara filma alternativamente el camino que se abre delante de mí y el camino que está a mi espalda, hasta llegar al claro del parque.

Hecha con una impresora óptica, que permite congelar fotogramas individuales y alterar la ratio de los fotogramas del material original. Filmé una línea de árboles en una zona de cultivo en Suffolk. Cada árbol se grabó con luz de mañana y de tarde, visto desde el este y desde el oeste, dando lugar a cuatro imágenes bastante diferentes del árbol.

Hecha en la cooperativa de cineastas de Londres, en Fitzroy Road, Camden Town. La imagen de la ventana se descolora gradualmente hacia blanco.

Guy Sherwin bloquea, alternando con su mano como si fuera un obturador, sus ojos y su cámara frente a un espejo.

Fue la primera película de las Series. Mis padres me visitaron y yo hice este retrato de los tres, en el que aparezco reflejado en el espejo, enrollando la película a mano. La cámara está colocada en un trípode de madera que se mueve suavemente al girar la manija

A film made without a camera in which both image and sound are the result of the same chemical process. Raw film was spooled onto a spiral and partially submerged in developer, so that only half the film is developed, leaving the trace of a time spiral in the image and (optical) sound. The film can be projected in either direction. Outwards, from the centre of the spiral, we hear a decelerating sound like someone regaining their breath. G.S.

Optical sound by Guy Sherwin

A found-footage film made entirely from Academy leader, which is normally used to cue the start of films. The film was hand-printed on a home-made contact printer. It was rolled back and re-printed several times over, to create a complex layering of both image and sound.

A film made without a camera: A newspaper glued onto clear film is projected as audio-visual typography. "For NEWSPRINT I glued a newspaper onto clear 16mm film then punched out the sprocket holes to enable the film to run through the projector. Using a strong light I printed ‘newspaper-film’ to copy it onto another strip of film. This shows up the letters and words clearly, which can also be heard as they pass over the sound-head in the projector. Newsprint #2 is a live projection event for two 16mm projectors and two loudspeakers [...] Two identical prints are shown superimposed onto the same screen." -GS.

One of my first 16mm films, made without a camera as an experiment in how to visualize rhythm. It equates four simple shapes with four simple sounds, made by punching shapes into black film and scratching into the film's optical sound track. The film uses a bar structure similar to a music score. Each bar lasts one second (24 frames of film) and is divided into 2, 3, 4 or 6 aural and visual beats per second (bps). These are used in alternating patterns such as: 2/3, 3/4, 3/4/6, 2/3/6 In each section of the film an arbitrary relationship is established between image, sound and beats per second, for example: circle = 12 scratches per frame (high pitch sound) at 6 bps rhombus = 6 scratches per frame (mid pitch sound) at 4 bps triangle = 3 scratches per frame (low pitch sound) at 3 bps rectangle = 1 scratch per frame (percussive sound) at 6 bps A print of the film was hand-painted in 2006 G.S.

A hand-made film of a circular form that fluctuates in rhythms of light and sound.Cycles 1 is made by sticking paper dots onto the surface of the film and to its (optical) sound track. On projection these separate instants are converted simultaneously into picture and sound.The gaps between the dots gradually decrease until a fusion of the material occurs; the separate image-moments coalesce into a pulsating ball of light; simultaneously we hear rhythmic sounds fusing into a continuous rising drone.These transformations are taking place in our perceptual systems, for if we examine the physical strip of film, no such change is seen. Apparently we register time through our optical and our aural senses in very different ways, one chemical, the other mechanical.

Optical sound film by Guy Sherwin