Look… the grass is singing / Sofie McClure

Look… the grass is singing is a self-reflexive investigation into the relationship between the film director, the camera, and the viewer. The film playfully investigates the position of the director through my delivery of choral instructions to a field of grass. At the beginning of the video work, the viewer is invited to see the movements and sounds of the grass as responding to my commands. However, as the camera shutter opens and closes, the viewer’s capacity to ‘see’ becomes increasingly obstructed, the video image resembling an eye half closed. Immersing the camera deep within the grass and allowing the sound of the grass to guide the camera’s movements, the work seeks to destabilise the position of the director as someone commanding the visual field. As my choral instructions dissolve into broken vowels and the video image disintegrates, the grass is finally heard. Through this work, I mediate on how my environment is always leading the camera ‘astray’, redirecting my own gaze and in turn, the direction of my filmmaking practise.