1998英国短片
Sharing an interest in synchronicity and chance encounters, film artist John Smith and sound artist Graeme Miller worked together on Lost Sound: a sonic reconstruction of their East London neighbourhood from cassette tapes they found discarded in the street. From sounds found hanging from trees like a mistletoe, from lampposts and awnings like the flotsam of an impossible high tide or blown by a breeze saturated with radio waves and mobile phone signals, Smith and Miller make a modern tangleweed of magnetic tape that sings its discarded memories. Bringing together characteristics of a sociological quest, a light-hearted form of situationism and a simple exercise in the art of the objet trouvé, the work explores the potential of chance. It creates an enthralling audio-visual cartography by building formal, narrative and musical connections between images and sounds that are linked by the random discovery of the tape samples. “A lyrical and poignant response to the urban environment, Lost Sound depicts the city as a disparate and fragmented series of personal histories. A sense of migration, loss and displacement seeps through upbeat soundtracks from sunnier climes.” (Helen Legg)
“The resulting video is a pure process piece — whatever music is playing on the soundtrack is that found on the fragment of tape that appears on the screen. The formality of the idea is undercut by the emotive power of the found music (and John stretching his own rules in the editing). John, who had always been suspicious of lush soundtracks, had found an excuse to use passion, albeit in a rigorous way. It was as if any emotion he wanted to feel (but was too embarrassed to deliberately express) could be discovered abandoned out on the street, emotion as a found object.” (Cornelia Parker)