On The Farm

The Center for Land Use Interpretation in LA is exhibiting some video by Sam Easterson. I saw it a few days ago and loved it.

The videos are from cameras mounted on animals' heads, from the animal's point of view. It's a simple idea, but it's well done and is oddly fascinating. Baby chick, horse, goat, pig, sheep, whatever, I really felt like I was identifying with them. Rooting in the mud, running under cars, chewing grass.

One thing I found surprising, but really shouldn't be, is how the videos have definite subjects. The animals mostly aren't just looking in random directions; they look at the person walking by, the food they're eating, the animal's own shadow, the other animals standing next to them. And you can see the other animals looking back! It's really exactly like the CLUI site's description: The animals “guide us around their world; what they look at, what catches their attention, how they move through space, and how they relate to one another, on the farm.”

Easterson has been doing this for a while. Check out the tarantula video, or the alligator video, or the tumbleweed video. (All of these are very short samples, and in Quicktime format.)

Posted by jjwiseman at November 17, 2003 09:32 PM