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Work vs Labour
'Work is what we do by the hour. It begins and, if possible, we do it for money. Welding car bodies on an assembly line is work; washing dishes, computing taxes, walking the rounds in a psychiatric ward, picking asparagus — these are work. Labor, on the other hand, sets its own pace. We may get paid for it, but it’s harder to quantify… Writing a poem, raising a child, developing a new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention in all forms — these are labors.'
~Lewis Hyde 'The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World.'
Nearing Completion!
The Watching Europa project is almost complete.
These 13 Blu-ray disks represent the entire exhibition version of the presentation. Each individual disk contains a looping one hour sequence of four different high definition clips (and one with five) that will play together to form the final work.
The mastering elements alone - that is, the full final resolution edit outputs and their associated animation, audio and compressed files - have consumed over 4 terabytes of data. The building of the project probably chewed up at least that much again. When I started this project in 2008, that was an almost unimaginable amount of drive space, believe it or not. I'm guessing that in another four years time, it will, most likely, seem like chicken feed.
All that remains now is to master the Maquette Version with its 5.1 soundtrack, which I anticipate taking a month or so. And then it's on to finding ways to exhibit the darn thing. I suspect this might entail as much work as the creation of the piece itself. For the multiscreen version, that's not a trivial undertaking - first of all I need to aquire 13 Blu-ray players and 13 high definition screens, and then, a place to put it.
As always, stay tuned for developments.
Oh, and there will be launch of some kind. Working on that too.