Gloam from We Are The Forest on Vimeo.
The single figure among the trees in this mythical forest - why are mythical forests always dark? - is attracted to an unusual event that it wants to investigate. It's curious.
Ultra-short and visually pared down, this two minute film nonetheless has a lovely ending when the horned-figure's curiosity is satisfied.
Watch.
I've been thinking about the idea of simplicity since hearing "1-bit composer" Tristan Perich describe his ongoing attraction to "simple things" at IdeaFestival 2012.
What I think is that discovery today is often about less rather than new. It's about paring away - eliminating noise to hear the signal, finding the swath of truth among statistical outliers, realizing what that independent variable might be saying about an experimental result. The Tristan Perich's of the world are needed, perhaps more than ever, because the information, the noise, the talk, the adverts - they're inescapable. There's far too much of it, and Perich, not to mention creatives like Baratunde, have full time gigs taking a machete to the entire tangle. They offer a way forward.
Listen to the poets Robin Robertson and Stanley Kunitz, who have always been able to fashion entire epics from meter and line, or gaze at the centuries-old gardens of Ryōan-ji and Daisen-in (I'd love to do this in person!). It's the in-between that takes you unaware and invites you in as co-creator.
Like Perich's music, "Gloam," though minimalistic, packs an emotional wallop. Like Perich's music, the effect is buzzing and primitive. Like Perich's music, its that eremitic quality, not what you see and hear, that is so satisfying and suggestive. The invitation? That's the bonus.
Wayne