Material #22: What 15 seconds can bring

Several new years ago I began making short videos I called minor disruptions. They would involve holding the camera still for 15 seconds (max) to capture what passes the frame during that segment of time. The first was of confetti and streamers left over from New Year’s Eve celebrations drifting in scurries in the wind across the ground in Times Square.

This week I was inspired to make another one:

It is soft seeds from an enormous Carolina Poplar tree in Socrates Sculpture Park, drifting through the sky above Vernon Boulevard and catching the early morning sun.

Keeping the frame still is perhaps a claim on attention, a note to draw sustenance and inspiration from material that the physical world presents us as we move through it, rather than the stream of algorithmically charged images fed through the screens in our hands - recognizing, of course, that it is through a screen in your hand that the poplar seeds have no doubt reached you.

*************************

Through 2024, It’s Material is sharing one use of the word “material” each week, on Tuesdays.