Using the principles of collage, Blind Man’s Eye combines camera recorded plates of a physical model combined with digitally generated 3d and 2d animated elements. The physical model was a collage of found, collected and retrieved everyday objects, books, paint, plaster, flowers and toys arranged in the form of a city. This model was filmed by HD camera using a computerized rostrum camera with a snorkel lens. These plates were then tracked in 3d and 2d space, so that 3d and 2d additions would appear seamless with the source footage. The final effect is a three dimensional collage. In addition, there are entirely digital 3d animated scenes. The film is finished to 35 mm film.

The Blind Man’s Eye concepts were catalyzed by a series of solo-fiddle lullabies called ‘On the Dream Road’, made by the Canadian fiddler/composer Oliver Schroer from the early 1990’s. All the sounds were created on a fiddle, and include, plucking, retuning, tapping and analog looping. One of these tracks forms the audio spine of the film. We then layered into/onto and under this thematic melody variations on this central theme improvised and played by Oliver Schroer, together with found and created sounds. The final soundscape is an aural equivalent of the visuals – a dense and evocative collage soundscape. Improvisation is fundamental to the process of making Blind Man’s Eye. We went down a road where we didn’t know exactly where it would lead. This improvisational process was enabled by the completely digital pipeline. For example, throughout the creation timeline, we could double back or jump forward. Some of the conceptual gestures or test animations ended being in the finished film. Where it served the interests of the film, accidents, errors and miscommunication were embraced. We could adjust the cut right up to the end.

The primary metaphor and over-riding impulse for the film is collage. The majority of the film takes place in the dimensional collage landscape of ‘the memory city’. What attracts me to collage as an approach are collage’s inherent notions of resonance and dissonance. It fascinates me that one can take a number of things that are not particularily compelling in and of themselves – and which already have their associated partial narratives however banal - but placed beside, on top of or underneath other forms its possible to produce friction or harmony. Sometimes both. And this can work in terms of shape, texture, colour, pattern, material as well as more abstract notions like ‘fragment’ or ‘completion’. I’m curious how our minds eye can jump around these fragments arranged as collages and make all sorts of associations and connections, and begin to construct narratives. Of course, once one starts animating the elements of the collage and then you also have the camera point-of-view changing, one can achieve fantastically rich and deep and evocative shots. In a way moving dimensional collage enables expanding waves of legibility or meaning - shifting veils of perfection and coherence.

One of my intentions was very ambitious: that is to redirect the focus of the state-of-the-art digital imaging techniques away from a rigid and literal duplication of retinal realism. I didn’t want to go ‘into realism’ and I didn’t want the digital techniques to get in the way. Instead I wanted to achieve a more speculative and surreal landscape – a landscape characterized by
seemingly incongruous juxtapositions, phantasmagoric shadows and half remembered memories. There is no gravity or weight or up or linear time. I see the digital toolset as one of many - drawing, writing, building, sculpting, photographing and playing are all excellent investigative means.

Another intention of the film is that I wanted to 'hold contradiction' - that is, I wanted the audience to remain in a liminal state of both knowing/not knowing throughout. I enjoy the fact that there are contradictory readings of the film. Some of the contradictions I was exploring are obvious some not so: light and shadow, conscious and unconscious, knowing (gnosis) and not knowing, sacred and profane, temporal and eternal, past and future, immediacy and eternity, seeking and waiting, seeing and being blind. Running to stand still.

Another notion that I was exploring concerns memory – I have coined the phrase ‘nostalgia for the future’ to describe this strange Janus-like condition we are in, where things are old before they are born, where what is old is repackaged and deemed to be new. This homesickness for what is to become is perhaps natural in our time and for our generation – many of us have been moving/reconfiguring every few years for most of our lives.

Another of my intentions was to make a film that was not 'disposable' or ‘perishable’, but to make a film with a ‘long shelf life’. Part of this intent was to not 'spoon feed' the audience. I have always enjoyed films that ask questions, make me ruminate, challenge me as a viewer - it is only upon repeat viewing that the mysteries are partially revealed. In our age of instant gratification, where the fluorescent gaze of modern life can be scorching, this is an old fashioned even romantic idea. I am aware and accept that this integrity faces considerable challenges, as many people may not have the time, interest or attention span to view let alone make sense of a film like Blind Mans Eye. I have always imagined that the film will only be viewed by a few hundred people during its existence/lifetime, so for the few people that do manage to sit down for it, i hope it will be rewarding.

Another facet of the film that we were exploring is Time - playing with time. Our conventions of merely human Time, as opposed to Godly or Heavenly time, are tied to the invention of perspective. Time is defined in relation to space – so in fact the dimensional collage world that we have created has moments of collapsed or stretched space. Its my belief that what we call ‘time’ is not linear. If we were to graph it, it might be better represented as a spiral. But I feel that even that is too restrictive. I have experienced folds of time and space. So our graph of time might have some spirals touching or overlapping. Of course, film has temporal conventions that we were also exploring. On a basic level, an edit is a cut in space and time, and film plays out as a sequence of images. Convention is that there are beginning, middles and ends to films. In Blind Man’s Eye, the end is a beginning. In a couple of shots in Blind Man’s Eye for example, we follow a smooth camera move over a juxtaposition of different three dimensional spatial conditions – over top, Crow flies into frame, leaves frame and then a few frames later re-enters the frame from another place. This is perhaps akin to medieval depictions of Christ, where his figure is repeated within a single frame in multiple scales and locations.

Regarding the spitting - yes it does make some people a bit uncomfortable when seeing it. This is intended. Is The Blind Man spitting on his memories? Well yes and no. One of the threads or backstory to the character is that this old man is a wise old man, he has learned a lot in his rich and varied life. He’s comfortable in his skin, he knows what works for him. He knows he
‘needs to let go’. The spit is a catalyst. Mixing some of his internal essence in with his memories - it could have been sperm or blood - these primal gestures make sense on a raw and intuitive level. The spit might be interpreted as a kind of sacrifice or scream or literally soul food. The spit initiates a completion of a circle, is the catalyst for the possible resolution of his memories. I offer this gesture up gently, genuinely, with a sense of respect and a sense of the sacred. Like I said, blood or sperm might have been suitable, but logistically they are even harder to present to an audience in a six minute film and these more shocking actions might
dominate the overall impression of the film. The spit is one of the big mysteries of the film. Like the film itself, I like that 'the spit' is not completely prescriptive and is open to interpretation.

There are three main characters in the film – the Blind Man, Crow, and the Memory City.

Blind Man might be regarded as a typical older man who happens to be blind, a 'grandpa' enjoying the last of his years at a leisurely pace. Or we might regard Blind Man as an everyman, a kind of solo Beckett figure, waiting and playing out his days within a deluge of nonsensical visual ramblings. On another level, Blind Man is an eternal figure - alchemical, shamanistic, transformative, and paradoxically, 'all seeing'. I see him to be very much a part of his context - 'his spot'. Tinged with nostalgia, ‘his seat' is not unlike many others in many european city's. I like the idea that if we were to fast forward or back a hundred years, even to different benches by different rivers under different trees in different cities, Blind Man would still be in 'his place' in the dappled sunlight, below the tree by the river.

Crow is Blind Man's shamanic animal emissary, an apportunistic gatherer in the city of memories. Crow is a shapeshifter, never quite tangible, able to move through the veils of memory with ease. Crow is elusive, a trickster. Is he the creator of the world he inhabits? And Crow is our guide, leading the way down and into a place of mystery and surprise.

The memory city is the realm of the shadow - mysterious, continually only partially unfolding before our eyes. The city of memories is at once confusing and familiar. The central metaphor for this realm is collage - a spatial collage, where the laws of linear space and time collapse and fold in upon themselves, and surfaces are seemingly in a state of flux (perhaps not unlike one's memories). The city is intentionally dark and rich and evocative, a place of the soul, which doesn't like to be exposed to the fluorescent gaze of the uninitiated. Like a dream, the film is presenting all sorts of familiar imagery in an unfamiliar way. The city is further populated by other creatures of the unconscious - themselves completely incomplete and fragmentary.

I hope the film gently poses many questions: Is blind man a 'real' character? Or is he an eternal figure? Has he died? Is he waiting for something or seeking something? Is he the keeper of the memories? Do his memories sustain him or oppress him? At the end of the film, blind man is returning to his seat implying that the cycle of evaluating ones memories is starting over. Is the film starting over? Has he forgotton something? And what about crow- What is the crow? Is crow a personification of Death? Or is Crow a creator/catalyst, a kind of shamanic trickster?