Works on VIDEO
Angels Overpass by Alfred Hernandez
A visual piece that poetically juxtaposes images of man-made architecture with the architecture of nature. Like angels, we sometimes see ourselves as part of the natural world while also being beyond it. Can it be that the natural world is the heaven we seek? By creating our own world through technology are we drifting from something important and essential to us? These are questions and ideas that had guided the spirit of this video.
This short video is part of a video installation piece where the idea was to have various layers of images that show the architecture of nature and of man. I started focusing mostly on the architecture of freeway overpasses as they pull the eye upward when approached. The video screen would contain these images as light, and shadow might fall upon the screen and interact with my images. With this in mind I started capturing images that had the property of the double image - meaning, an object and its shadow or the shadow of a tree over a sidewalk or the leaves under a puddle of water whose surface reflects the trees against the sky.
As I was working with the overlaying of images or superimpositions, I started to seek out images where there were already these various layers of object surface, shadows and reflections. Looking out a window of a car at a freeway overpass while light and shadow dance on the surface of the glass for example or the bokeh that focuses the leaves of the redwood tree onto drapes as the leaves move in the wind.
Sometimes the best in artmaking comes from accidents and randomness. There is an excitement for an artist when something unexpected steers the artwork in a direction and there is a good compelling image. Layering video images over each other allowed for many of these accidents. The geese over the image of the freeway, for example. Two images recorded several years apart, and I lay them over each other and now both images come together in a surprising way where it looks like the geese are giant dinosaurs walking across the freeway. I suppose it's similar to what one can do with words in poetry. Two distinct and perhaps disparate words come together to form a new meaning.
Much of my work is about this contrast or comparison between nature and "the world of man" or the human technological world. I wanted to create a soundtrack for this video that would also reflect this. After trying out various possibilities for music I decided on choral music that might come in and out in the background almost like the wind. I decided to employ Ai for this and prompted the Ai generator to produce the choral music. The music that came forth was mostly unusable but there were a few moments in the music that I liked, and I also liked the quality of the synthetic, electronic almost Walter Carlos (of Switched on Bach) sounding.
What's great about making films that use shots of nature is that you have to go out to nature or find it around you. Much of the images in nature that I captured were on the Steven's Creek Trail in the Cupertino, California foothills. Some of the bird sounds were also collected there.
The title, Angels Overpass can be taken several ways. Is this overpass called Angels Overpass? Are there angels passing over the landscape, as in, angels pass over? I suppose the choral music sort of brought up the idea of angels. Are the geese and the bumble bees the angels? Are we the angles hovering over the natural landscape in our machines?