Sandringham Line, comprises a short video of a man sitting on a Melbourne train. He is tightly composed within the lens of the camera, the shutter speed of the miniDV camera is reduced, and he is recorded in a mock slow motion as he reads a newspaper hidden outside the video frame. The time abstraction created by the slower shutter speed allowed gestures to be protracted artificially. Besides capturing the muffled sounds of the train conductor, the video camera witnesses the man responding to what he is reading: he grimaces at one point. A moment later, clearly interrupted by an unknown person, his demeanor is cautious. Focused no longer on the paper his eyes peek over the paper at the figure. With moments of extended glance his eyes widen and dilate, and his mouth is frozen slightly open. The train gives a few slight jerks and he folds the paper as he steps out of the frame of recording. Left with only an empty seat, the image fades to black.
When I returned to the studio with this footage, intending to apply the DRUS technique, it was apparent that if any meaning was to be read of this footage it would come from the narrative expressed by the anonymous commuter’s face and DRUS’s fragmentation of the imagery. This prompted a number of questions. Why did the expression on the faces of people on Sandringham Line create more of a narrative than those on the Chuo Line? Was there a feeling of Anticipation associated with the experience of being on the Sandringham Line? What level of abstraction was contained in this imagery? Was it similar to the footage shot on the Chuo Line? It became clear that my interest in generating imagery was not to simply turn the camera on and document people as they were. Rather my interest lay in the interpretations of my different cultural experiences.