About 7am: The First Quarter - Compressed

Research Background About 7am: The First Quarter is an experimental video work that creatively interrogates the new materialism described by Ian Bogost through the use of Wolfgang Ernst's media archeology. It continues a tradition of experimental video work that utilises list making rather than narrative as a structural concern (best exemplified by Bettina Frankham's recent PhD research at UTS). Research Significance It is a video project where the same shot has been taken from the same location, at more or less the same time, every day for three months, creating what I describe as a video ontograph. This simple repetition of recording is to surrender the media anthropocentrism of filming the dawn to the indifferent procedural 'sampling' that is the hallmark of technical recording media. By making myself, my body, my morning, subject to a regulated sampling temporality I am inverting the assumed hierarchy between me as film maker and my video camera as mere device that samples the world visually and sonically at strictly regulated rates (30 frames and 44,100 times per second, respectively). In this project I subject myself to a sampling regime, rather than the other way round. The film has been selected as part of the Mobile Innovation Network Aotearoa Screenings (Wellington, Auckland, Melbourne) Research Contribution The research problem investigated through this work is to produce a conceptual creative work that makes concrete Bogost's ontographic methodology, while also critically reflecting upon the role of technical media as sampling engines. The work is non-narrative non-fiction that continues my recent research into serial, personal forms of videographic experience and documentation. This research, through such creative artefacts, interrogates contemporary documentary, as well as applying recent media theory to online video. It is both an original method and form in relation to documentary and creative non-fiction.