BATHYSPHERE, short film and multi-channel video installation, 2007

INSTALLATION
5 x hollow glass spheres, 5 x video projectors, 5 x DVD players on continuous loop

FILM
Based on the prose-poem Bathysphere by Andrew McDonnell
Sound: Tom Simmons
Director of Photography: Emma Dalesman
Screening formats: Digibeta PAL, Beta SP, DVD
Ratio: 16:9
Running time 00:05:32

PLAY EXCERPT (00:01:40)

© ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART 2007

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Ghostly light projections captured within delicate glass bubbles
Describing a strange, subconscious world where our memories and daydreams lie.
Real, unreal.
Imagined, re-imagined, distorted.
Telling tales of our selves and our lives; a different tale each time.
This world is an underwater place- dark, unknown and exquisite
A place where past and present collide.

I was looking for ways to represent images of memory- to capture something of the elusive, magical and mercurial nature of my daydreams. My friend Andrew wrote a prose poem about a Bathysphere (an old fashioned deep-sea diving vessel), which made me think of spheres, bubbles, watery places and how images could be distorted by the curve of a glass porthole.

Michaela Nettell, June 2007