Some thoughts on Resistance Bands

I’ve been working on some new video clips, thinking about the idea of never being able to repeat the same physical movement twice, . It struck me that a big difference between the physical and digital worlds is that movement in the physical world cannot be looped perfectly, while digital movement can – seamlessly. In a sort of related way I have been working in my studio with resistance bands, coloured lengths of elastic tubing used for aerobic exercise (and also for catapults).  I chose it as I wanted to make objects move in an ‘inertial’ way (something I seemed obsessed with when I worked as a digital animator and programmer). I had great lethal fun tying up lumps of concrete and allowing them to bob lightly up and down in the studio. I filmed some of these but they were unsatisfying (they just give you a sense of the expenditure of energy, not of creative renewal). On a bit of a whim I started downloading Youtube films of people working out with these resistance bands, up to now mostly women in exotic locations. They are strange bits of footage and have, unsurprisingly, the rhythm of a gym session – 2 ‘reps’ of 10 stretches. I’ve been splicing out individual stretches and trying to get them to loop perfectly, which is really hard. On a couple of occasions I have come really, really close, but while arms hip and legs might sync up, ponytails, clouds or the ripples on the surface of a pool will always give the game away.  These tiny, disruptive details become the focus. There are two chapters of the Crocker book that sound like they might relate somehow – Medium as means and Obstacle and Man Falls Down: Unanswerable Situations. I will have a look at them – Alexander R Galloway’s Interface Effect is also dying to be read….and I need to start plugging away at Matter and Memory. I should get up earlier….