First Art Encounter: Traces of the Wild

Last Thursday, September 25^th, I went and saw Traces of the Wild: the Films of Robert Schaller. I found that the films we screened on class on Monday, such as Mothlight, The Bear Garden, and What the Water Said, served as an introduction to Robert Schaller’s work. Unlike those works, I was able to see Schaller working with multiple projections. Since I was seated a few rows behind the projectors and off to the right I was able to see the screen fully and also see what was going on ‘behind the scenes’. I found his first screened work with multiple projections as a sensory overload introduction. There was so much to take in, so rapidly, that by the end of the piece I was sitting there bug-eyed. It was triple-projected in black and white, and he said that he uses dance as a part of his techniques. I could see where he was coming from after seeing the first piece because there was so much timing involved in starting them so they displayed the way he intended that he was displaying a lot of choreography behind the projectors. The second piece he screened was my personal favorite from the night, I believe it was called “The Life of a Tree”. It was in color and it was projected from ‘the traditional location’. It was also very fast, but there was something calming about the tree that was usually found in the frame. I found I was able to identify one of Schaller’s filming techniques after seeing the first two screenings. He enjoyed a lot of movement in the frame, and also found ways to layer his images. I found that The Life of a Tree and Mothlight had a lot in common. Where Schaller actually filmed the images instead of laying them onto the filmstrip, they both had the rapid motion that reoccurred stylistically this week. They also found ways to use natural things in unique ways within their films. Schaller used homemade emulsions, and Brakhage laid things he found on the ground and taped them onto the filmstrip. Schaller’s third screening was double projected that conveyed a new perspective on how you see someone walking in their environment. Unlike the first screening which was displayed horizontally, the double-projected piece was displayed vertically. I think I would have preferred to see this one horizontally as if you were looking through two different eyes, but I really enjoyed the dark blue tone on top with light orange on the bottom. The fourth screening was from 2002 called As a Bee. It was another fast-paced piece that had streams of light, with flashes of nature and flowers. I found this one to be equally similar to Mothlight as The Life of a Tree was because the perspectives of As a Bee and Mothlight seemed to be from the perspective of flying insects. I really enjoyed Robert Schaller’s style, imagery, and techniques. In screening his work, it also offers admiration for all the time and effort that goes into making a film.