Tom, Tom the Piper’s Son

In “Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son,” I rephotographed a 1905 short film. I wanted to show the actual present of the film, just to begin to indicate its energy. A train of images passes, like enough and different enough to imply to the mind that its eyes are seeing an arm lift, or a door close; I wanted to “bring to the surface” that multi-rhythmic collision contesting of dark and light two-dimensional force-areas struggling edge for identity of shape…to get into the amoebic grain pattern itself – a chemical dispersion pattern unique to each frame, each cold still… stirred to life by a successive 16-24 fps patterning on our retinas, the teeming energies elicited (the grains! the grains!) then collaborating, unknowingly and ironically, to form the always-poignant-because-always-past illusion. (KJ)