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Photo by Rocco S. Cetera
Oculus
World Trade Center
Financial District, Lower Manhattan
New York City
March 3, 2016
This is the oculus of the building that used to be the therms of Diocletianus. Nowadays it's a church.
In this video, I was exploring the idea of the window and the voyeuristic qualities that living in an urban environment brings into everyday life. I took this idea from my original project that was evocative of the theme of surveillance and turned the camera inside this time and focused on the small ‘window’ that exists in my front door. I realized that there are so many occasions where these windows exist, like hidden surveillance cameras, or in the case I discovered the peephole in my door. This occurred to me when neighbours were having a party, where people were lingering in the halls and having loud conversations outside of my door, I found it interesting that they were unaware that all the other suites on the floor were hearing their conversations. After this realization, I began to collect some footage to use in my video project. I used my cellphone camera in the process which I feel is an important element in this kind of work dealing with surveillance as so much technology is used to monitor and control the way we live our lives.
I used Adobe Premier Pro in the editing process of this video, in which I have experimented a great deal with techniques over the course of the project and I have taken a completely different approach in this project than in my other edited videos. I cut sections from different sections of the footage to create a sense of discontinuity along with fragmenting the video clips by cutting to black very quickly and then beginning new video. I have distorted the video using lens distortion editing to create a feeling of being too close to the door and I have done a fair bit of editing to the sounds to create a sound track for the video that uses sound fragments from the same clips used in the project, which ends up sounding almost like digital music.
I feel that as much as the film looks out into the hall, it also has a kind of claustrophobic impact on the viewer, creating space behind the lens in the door frame where someone could be trapped. I feel that in the editing process I have been able to decompose temporarily that assists the idea if creating an impossible situation.
Project // Oculus
Design Architect // SJB
Executive Architect & Interior Designer // @richards_stanisich
Location // Surry Hills
Photography // Martin Seigner
Product // Bowral Bricks Bowral300 in Bowral Blue