Speech Marks

Speech Marks was shot entirely on a mobile phone, and edited digitally. The limits of the phone as a video camera are challenging; the image is low quality and small in size, and there is a maximum length of 9 seconds per shot (on my phone at least). To use these limitations creatively the piece builds up a collage of moving images, a series of marks that build a fragmented picture in space and time.
The scenes are a collection of moments drawn from life; an art opening, a day in the garden, a meeting at work. Using the phone in this way to transmit pictures instead of speech harks back to the early days of television, when low quality images were sent by phone lines in the 1920s, by the Scottish TV pioneer John Logie Baird. These primitive stuttering images and lo fi sounds celebrate the everyday. – SH