Signal and noise

 

Work in progress | 2024

After a six-week break preparing and installing for the Through Line exhibition, I've now re-immersed myself in film-making - learning to edit as I edit for a forthcoming moving image work. I've decided to take an organic approach to editing - putting things together to see how they work rather than following a precise pre-arranged plan. 

It's a significant challenge, requiring days of intensive effort - and plenty of trial and error.  Especially error. I've had some amazing input from mentors including Liberty Smith and Luke Hagan, my peers at DOCLAB, as well as my collaborator Megan Calver. But in the end it's just me and the footage, and I have to find a way to make sense of it. 

We have a complex story to tell about the engineer Alec Harley Reeves and his invention of a ground-breaking radio navigation system that allowed World War II pilots to navigate by sound alone. Reeves took an unconventional approach to solving engineering problems, which included taking long walks and consulting with the spirit of Michael Faraday. 

Reeves spent his professional life in radio communications trying to extract signal from noise: he invented pulse code modulation, the foundation of digital communications. However, in his parallel but equally rigorous psychical investigations, he set out to generate random noise, in which signals from the more than human could - he was convinced - be found. 

Megan and I both have strong attachments to Purbeck, where Reeves worked during 1941. We've been looking for signals that might point at past activity there, even though the most of the physical remains of its WWII history are lost. 

Following our shoot in Purbeck in May, we have budget for one more bout of filming and then it will be be case of working with what we've got. It will move from being the film that I have in my head to being the film that we've actually made. I'm trying to be kind to myself and say as it's a first attempt, it will inevitably be a little bit creaky. But having the DYCP funding is a great privilege - and I want to make the best of it.