Diptych South

FRM (Emma Febvre-Richards and Dean Merlino)

Diptych South is an audiovisual project that explores the physiological effects of the rhythms of colour and music in relation to memory and place.  It questions the nature of our memory and connection to place by playing with repetition and difference.

The two video pieces for the work are almost identical and are inspired by Febvre-Richards’ regular ‘journeying’ in the New Zealand forest. The repetition of such journeys – the memories and anticipations, the expectation of familiar sensorial experiences – provides rich inspiration for mark making on paper. There is a potentially static nature to this representation, which may convey a momentary sense of place but cannot capture the experiential journey to and through the forest.  This problem is ameliorated by the reworking into video form.  It is here that the temporal interplay between past as memory plays with the present as experience and the future as anticipation.  However, not every experience is identical.  To explore the nature of the difference of these temporal experiences, Merlino has provided two contrasting sound pieces that are not juxtaposed with the video work, but rather attempt to show how the experiential sameness of the video actually inspires difference and uniqueness.  It is the sameness of our sense of place that inspires a variety of affective responses, thus dispelling the idea that our experiences, when tinged with memory and anticipation, must always remain the same. 

Full length video 4:39 minutes (sample 00:51-01:15)

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