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Dwayne Martineau is a visual artist, musician and composer. Two preoccupations dominate his work— the physicality of light, and experimental landscape photography. His work starts from an intimate  interaction with nature and a reverence for the complex and sometimes  frightening natural world around us that few stop to marvel at. Using  optics, mirrors and multiple exposures, Martineau introduces  distortions, symmetries, and animism into exhaustive studies of forests  and trees. His goal, as he describes it, is to "give us a chance to see  nature through a different lens, and understand that it’s got its own  thing going on." Dwayne is a member of the Frog Lake First Nation, descended from early French and Scottish settlers, Plains Cree, and Métis.

aAron Munson is a Canadian filmmaker, cinematographer and multimedia artist. His work has taken him from his personal studio to war zones, high-Arctic weather stations, reindeer nomad camps in Siberia, and the Arabian Desert. aAron's projects tackle extreme human experiences, both far from and close to home, utilizing film, video, photography and sound to create visual explorations relating to mental illness, memory, and the nature of consciousness.

Transcript

Michelle: I’ll hand it over to aAron to take it away. 

aAron: Hey. Thanks, Michelle. Yeah… thanks for hosting this. And, yeah, my name is aAron Munson. I'm a visual artist, filmmaker, cinematographer - I wear a few hats. But yes, a pleasure to be asked to kind of give a response to Dwayne's work and kind of get to know what he's working on a bit, like- Become a bit more familiar with that and write a response to it, which was was interesting to just kind of think about it in a bit more detail.  But anyways, this'll be pretty informal. But I just want to start off with a few questions. And then if anybody wants to jump in, please do. 

But reading through Dwayne's description of the work, I think there's a few things that really stood out to me. One was like… He describes exploring the liminal zone of his own indigenous-settler identity. And I really like… within the work I see, like you really get a sense of that liminal zone where you're kind of like neither… It's like the spaces in between. It's not- It's creating this kind of space that's outside of the familiar, and is kind of on the cusp of becoming something or passing from something else. So yeah Dwayne, if you wanted to expand upon like, that liminal zone, like what that means to you in your own life and within your work, I think that's a good starting point. 

Dwayne: Yeah, thanks. That's a good question. And yeah, thanks Latitude 53 for setting up the Art From Here thing and this talk, and thanks to aAron for agreeing to do this. I asked aAron to participate because his stuff is super cool and I like seeing all the stuff that he works on, because he goes crazy places and makes really cool stuff. So it was nice to see his take on all of this.

So yeah, the liminal zone. I guess like for me, like I guess- You know what we're talking about is that sort of, you know… you have like you have day, you have night, there's this sort of liminal zone, the crepuscular zone of dusk and dawn. You have, you know, black and white. It's the shades of gray in that little strip in between. And I guess for me, that's like… I'm finding that's kind of been sort of everything in the work that I've been doing. 

So a bit about my background, like my grandmother was Cree. She married a sort of like Cree-Metis guy off-reserve, lost her status. And then we got it back after Bill - what was it, C-85? - and about ten, twelve years of paperwork and got her status back on my mom's side. It's basically very early French settlers to Canada, they have their side tracked back to I think like… it's something ridiculous like Canadians number seven and eight like in the books or something like that, like in the 1600s. And both of the sides are very important to me and pretty equal in my life and in my mind. And I sort of feel like a bit of an outsider in both of those worlds. I feel like I don't totally belong in like… in a settler reality, but also feel like an outsider when, you know, when we go to powwows and things like that, I feel like an outsider there. 

So in the one work that I guess speaks really strongly to that is the video for a project that's an ongoing thing called- Roughly just called “The Wheel”, which is sort of like a… It's not a medicine wheel, it's basically an illusion of a medicine wheel. It's like a illusory version of this sacred space, the sacred geometry, where when you're inside it, it exists. And as soon as you step outside it, it's just- It's gone, it vanishes. It's almost like, if you've been to the Badlands, when you’re in the Badlands, it just feels like everything. And the second you drive away and look in the rearview mirror, they're just gone. It's like they've just vanished from memory the second you step outside of that. 

So I'm just looking at some stuff that I had written about “The Wheel”. So I was saying that, yeah, inside the circle, the geometry of those ancient places is evoked, and the second you step outside of that circle, it's kind of like the meaning of it vanishes. And I sort of feel that I guess in my own life, and that is sort of the area that I'm really interested in, is these areas that feel sort of like familiar yet strange, familiar yet surreal places where time feels sort of non-linear, where things feel sort of subjective and in flux. I always sort of describe myself as like a half urban, half breed. Like, I live in the city. I love city life, but my heart is sort of in the woods next to a lake, you know, in the trees. You know, when I go- I like to go to, you know, outdoor music festivals and things like that. And when I go there, the first thing I usually do is head away from everybody and just head for the trees, head for the river. So I feel like, yeah, I sort of just exist in that liminal zone, where it feels like I'm an outsider kind of observing all of these cultures. Like, I don't feel totally at home in the city. I don't feel totally at home in settler culture. I don't feel totally at home in indigenous culture. Totally at home, you know, in the true boonies and the true bush. I feel like I sort of live at just… sort of like a point in the middle of this Venn diagram of all these things without really inhabiting any one of those things.

And without jumping around too much, the work that just came down from the Art Gallery of Alberta that's on the- Also shown on the Art From Here site. So what that was, was a… Like a circle of these giant backlit film prints. So the way they were made was with these large format film negatives that I stacked and then re-photographed and then printed very large on film, and they hung in a circle and there was a soundscape. And the feeling that I was trying to evoke was, I guess, again, that sort of liminal space of something. Feeling sort of warm, inviting, familiar, but also kind of strange and alien and threatening at the same time. So the idea behind that show is that you would walk into the middle of the space, sort of realize that you're surrounded, and look up and start seeing these faces and images kind of emerge in the images, and get the sense that they're all kind of staring down at you with some intent. Like they were there, busy with their own thing, before you showed up. And they kind of caught you in the middle of their space, and are looking at you judgingly, which is why it was called “Strange Jury”, because it was supposed to tell the story of this jury trial in the woods. And the thing that was on trial was basically just your right to be there. Like what is the purpose of you being there? Is it wrong to just walk into the middle of this clearing among these giant sentinels of the forest that are living these like… thick, meaningful lives, full of intention, and just walk out there to take a peek, you know?

So, yeah, I guess when you bring that up, a lot of these works sort of exist kind of in that liminal zone between sort of strange but familiar, sort of inside but outside, sort of “of” these places, but also slightly afraid of these places at the same time. That's rambling and I don't know if any of that makes sense.

aAron: (affirmative hum)

And like, as far as like, what you're trying to achieve with creating that kind of… That space for people to enter, like is it… Like what do you think the opportunity is in those spaces for people? Like, as far as like, shift some perspective or…?

Dwayne: I think that's basically it, is the shift of perspective. The thing that I'm usually trying to get at is a sense that if you… Often like shifting literal perspective - like your height here, your speed, the scale of what you're looking at - that you sort of get this idea that, you know, nature’s got its own thing going on that sort of exists outside, whether you're observing it or not. You know, like under the slabs of concrete of my sidewalk, there might be the most dramatic stories that have ever unfolded on the planet happening right now. But I'll never know. I'll never see it because I just, you know… I walk over it every day and I'm not, you know, peeling back the slabs and watching the insects battle out over generations and generations. But those things are happening. And we don't see those until we, you know, like shift gear, shift our perspective. 

You know, I remember showing- Posting an image years and years ago on Facebook - when I still went on Facebook. Everybody quit Facebook, it’s terrible. A buddy of mine posted a comment saying something like, “How is this from the Mill Creek? I bike through the Mill Creek every day. I don't I don't see anything like this!” And I just thought, “Well, the answer is in your question.” You're biking through the creek. You're observing it at this speed and this scale that allows you to see certain things about it. What I was doing was going down there with my dog, and just spending hours staring at a mud puddle or something like that, or watching ants ranching aphids on the underside of a leaf or something like that. And you don't discover those things until you, you know, get off the bike, get down in the dirt and just sit, turn your brain off, and just kind of let the things that are happening around you start speaking to you and start noticing them. 

Because I know there's, you know, like there's a lot going on in our heads all the time. Like anxiety and stress and time constraints, things like that. And it's very easy to not be, you know, present or observant. But as soon as you really do take the time to like, intentionally shift your perspective - whether it's just slowing down or looking at big picture things or looking at very small picture things - in my experience, what it's done for me is sort of reorients where I sit in the scheme of things. Like you sort of start to see you know, “Oh, maybe it's not a me centric world.” Maybe when I go outside and… I don't know, like, dump a pot of hot coffee on the ground or something, that has consequences. There are, you know… Everything I do has consequences, and my actions have reactions. I find it’s sort of just given me like a holistic point of view more, in just sort of trying to seek out the connection- The connective tissue between things that you normally don't notice. But that's basically my goal is sort of, you know, getting somebody's attention long enough to shift their focus and hopefully have them walk out of a space thinking about things, like, slightly differently. 

My ultimate goal, essentially - which I'd like to eventually do with things like public art installations - is just, you know, blow some ten year old kids' mind and have them turn weird enough to become an artist, or become a critical thinker, or become a scientist, when otherwise they might not have been. That's sort of my ultimate goal, is just to make more weirdos in the world. 

aAron: I think that was like the point of creating spaces like that, say with the surreal movement, within art is to create these spaces that our brains can't filter, like, immediately, and judge immediately, and wrap… like, put it in a box immediately. Something where it takes us off guard and, and there's… If it's just even for a moment of just seeing something in kind of like… An unfiltered kind of state - if for lack of a better word. But something where… You're kind of seeing it for what it is, rather than like entering with an assumption based on like your brain's ability to recognize the familiar and say, “Oh, that's that.” And we just like… All the details that we ignore because like, our brains are designed to do this to like recognize the patterns. And then just… It's kind of streamlining the experiential process of just like, “Oh, I don't need to pay attention to that because I already know what that is”, and, “I already know what that means”. And yeah. 

Dwayne: Yeah, exactly.

aAron: Kind of just shake us out of that a bit, and remind us that there's… There are those details, and there are other perspectives that, if we would just take the time to position ourselves differently… So. 

Dwayne: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I think that's… that is kind of the perspective that I'm trying to, like, crack open a little bit is that perspective. Like you say, we've evolved to be like these pattern recognition machines. But when the novelty wears off of something like, you know, you see your backyard. “Wow! That backyard's amazing!” The fifth, fiftieth, five hundredth time you see your backyard, you know, I walk out and I just go, “Ugh… I’ve got to mow the lawn again,” and “Ugh, look at those weeds”, and, “The magpies, they're crapping all over the place!” You know, you turn off the novelty, the wonder of it vanishes. 

But like I do… Sometimes I talk to photo kids and I've done, you know, like some charity sort of like introductory photo classes and things like that. And one of the exercises I’ll always try and get people to do is: go into your backyard, go into a familiar space, sit down and just spend… spend 30 minutes with like, a two foot by two foot square of your backyard, and just see what you can find. Like, start paying attention, and start watching like those battles and those stories and all that crazy stuff that's happening. And it just- It'll change the way that I think you kind of look at everything.

The thing that did that for me years ago was when I saw the movie Micro Cosmos, which was this sort of like… one of these sort of nature documentaries where they sort of developed really like small, macro cameras, and got in (uses hands to convey “up close”). And there was all this dramatic, beautiful footage of snails mating and things like that. And when you realize that all that stuff is going on under your feet, it's kind of impossible in my mind, anyway, to walk outside and not be thinking about that constantly.

aAron: Or just within your own body. 

Dwayne: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. 

But you were saying - when you were talking there - that it's like a bit of an emotional reaction. Like you sort of see something that makes some kind of emotional sense to you before it makes a logical sense. And yeah, I do think that's really interesting. That's kind of that… I think that's where that moment of creation lies. 

And I think you probably experience this as a cinematographer, photographer guy going to crazy places. Like you see something that just creates an emotional response, and it's almost like you can feel it in your feet. Like your feet drive you over to that spot and you start filming that thing. You might not even know why that is having like, an emotional impact on you. And you might have to think about it later and explain it logically. But in the moment it doesn't exist logically. It just exists as this sort of like piece of emotional communication that's like, bypassing all of this stuff, and just going right to our lizard brain. And I think that's… Yeah, I think that's part of that shifting of perspective is like, short circuiting the brain, rewiring it a little bit to sort of let you have those experiences and sit with them, and revel in them, and be okay with that. 

aAron: Yeah, yeah. That is one of the reasons I could… I've gone to some of the places that I have. And like, one of my last projects, Isaacson, like throwing myself into these like very unfamiliar environments, like, where you're just… You don't have time to think about it, because there's… Your brain doesn't know how to really make sense of the landscape in any way. So it's just… It's kind of… It's kind of raw cognition where you’re just taking it in, like all the information you can, because  you're trying to make sense of it and like, apply narrative to it in some way. But yeah. 

Dwayne: Was that the station up north?

aAron: Yeah. 

Dwayne: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When you're in a place like that, when you're in the Arctic Circle and it was probably minus forty or something up there and… Yeah, you don't really have the luxury of overthinking it in the moment, because a huge chunk of your brain is probably just occupied with survival and staying warm and keeping your equipment running. So you know, the stuff that you would be reacting to really would be that sort of, almost like precognition just like, “I’m connected with this. This makes sense to me in the moment. I don't really know why.” Like, get this image and let my brain talk about it later to itself and figure out what it means, what the narrative of this means.

aAron: Yeah, I was thinking, like, when you started your piece talking about… As hard, as difficult as it must have been to know that your piece was sitting like in the gallery that wasn't open for so long, I kind of love the idea of these images of trees just hanging alone, like, all day, every day. 

Dwayne: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

So, anyone watching who didn't know, so that exhibit at the AGA, “Strange Jury”, it was supposed to happen back in 2020. And then of course, the pandemic, and it got delayed. So I installed it right after Christmas, in January 2021, but that was right in the second or third or seventeenth wave, whichever one it was. So, of course everything was shut down. And then it sat there ‘til June, just sort of like... So that kind of made it ten times better, ultimately, in my mind, like the story of that show. Because the point of it is sort of like you're walking in, like stumbling into a clearing in the forest, interrupting this, you know, thing that was already going on before you got there. These trees, these sort of like tree demons, having a meeting, essentially. And yeah, in my mind, the fact that they actually got to sort of stand there, on their own, in the dark and uninterrupted by humans for almost six months, kind of adds to the narrative a bit and makes it a little bit more fun thinking about. Yeah. Now, when people are walking into that space and disturbing these images, that really is what's happening, because they had their own life there for six months just sort of evolving and… I would say gathering dust, but that wouldn't happen at the AGA. 

And the pieces, the way they were designed is a bit of a happy accident. But when an audience would walk in, the air currents that you create by walking in sort of caused the pieces to sort of subtly react and sway. And the lights bouncing off the back created this almost look like the surface of water behind the images that would start swaying. So when a person came into the space, it really did kind of activate it and force the pieces to react in a way that was sort of like half intentional, and sort of half happy accident. But I did kind of enjoy that idea that they lived there for half a year, and then people came in and started disturbing them and knocking them around and forcing them to react to the people in that space. So in the end, it was… I don't want to say it was a blessing because, you know, the pandemic stinks. But for the concept of the show, the solitude of the piece is… kind of made a strange sense. 

aAron: And since you wrote this, have you been working, continuing any of the experiments you've been kind of pursuing over the summer? 

Dwayne: Yeah, I have. I've been doing a lot of brief video experiments, just playing with some techniques.

It's all sort of leading toward ideally an eventual installation that would be… sort of the experience… It would be sort of like a video version of what I had at the AGA, but slightly different, where it's not really interacting with like, characters, so much as pieces of the land. So ideally, what I would have is sort of projectors on the floor, projectors on the walls. Each of those would just sort of be like a looping video, that might be like a mirrored piece, like the shallow forest piece that's on the Art From Here website, or something like the shallow water thing. So you would walk into the middle of the room, and I just sort of imagine pieces of the land just sort of breathing in and out in a sort of cyclical fashion. Just sort of breathing in and out to a tempo that would probably have a soundscape. And again, it's one of those things where, do I know what it means? No, not yet. But with that, it makes sort of like an emotional sense in my mind, and I know what I want it to feel like. And once the feeling of it is sort of locked in, then I think it can start making logical sense in my mind. But that's the thing I've been mostly working on. 

Also did a fun thing that I should mention with Latitude 53 for Blindman Brewing where… So I made a little short video that was just sort of this… kind of like, nostalgic summertime vibes thing with my dog Harriet. And the 1500 frames of the video will be printed across 1500 beer labels, like a special edition beer label. So it's a cool, cool project. It turned into like a bit of a challenge to film because I was doing like a pinhole video camera thing. And for that, because the hole is so small, you need the brightest light, you need the most light. And I was trying to film it during the smokiest days of the forest fire smoke. And there was so many days where I went out and it just was not bright enough. It just did not work. So it ended up being a bit of a battle against the forest fire, forest fires in B.C., and the weather that they were creating. Which again, the video was called “What I Did on my Summer Vacation”, and I mean, that was part of it. So again, it was kind of like the challenge of the piece sort of incorporates nicely into the narrative. Because there were places I was going to go that I couldn't go. I was going to go up to our family's lake lot, and I emailed the neighbours up there and they said the air was unbreathable. It was like Bladerunner skies. So I couldn't go there. And then when I was trying to do some like, pick up filming for it around my hometown, then the smoke rolled in, and there were just days in a row where it was like, “Yeah, that stuff doesn't work. Nope, nope, that doesn't work.” So it just became yeah, it just kind of became part of the look and part of the story of it. But that was a pretty cool project. I really like that concept. Would be fun to do something else like that. So, yeah, it's sort of like if you took a filmstrip and like, pulled it out, but every frame is on a different bottle in a different location. 

aAron: (affirmative hum) Yeah. 

Dwayne: And that's, that's mainly been it. And just working on some soundtrack music stuff as well. But that's all sort of related to these experimental videos, because I'm trying to marry the audio and music stuff and soundscape stuff that I've been working on with some of these videos, to sort of create- Rather than having like two streams of focus, trying to like merge them into one thing. And so I guess what I'm doing, I'm just in the process of figuring out what that one thing is. The sort of experimental video and sort of soundtrack-y, soundscape-y, musical experiments. 

aAron: (affirmative hum)

Dwayne: So, yeah, basically just in the process of figuring out what that is. People call it, you know, like, “F around and find out.” I think is the technical term for it? (laughs) That's basically been it up to this point. 

aAron: Yeah. I really like… I really love the imagery here, especially the… kind of what's coming out of this like, shallow forest type experiments that you're doing. I just… It feels like this kind of multiverse that's coming out of that, and these parallel realities that you kind of feel like you're stepping back and doing like… Yeah, in a sort of liminal space. But yeah, it feels like that life for the last 18 months, have been like this weird liminal space. Like I think for a lot of people, and -

Dwayne: Oh, absolutely. 

aAron: Like, just the things that we're witnessing, for our generation anyway. For the last few generations, like, this is new territory. Like there's been… Like human history is like up and down. There's been like this long list of challenges that humans have had to overcome. But like, this is like, for our generation and for the people that have been alive for the past few generations, this is unfamiliar territory.  Like in the changes that we're seeing or like… It's interesting what happens when as a society, we enter these unfamiliar spaces together, and the ways in which people try to make sense of it and create an explanation, or ignore it, like somehow put it like… pretend as if it's not happening, and that like… the realities that people will weave to, to like make themselves feel secure in what is clearly not like, a secure time in human existence. So, yeah. 

Dwayne: Yeah, absolutely. 

I think probably if I were like, were talking to a therapist, that would probably be like something that came up, which is that it probably is a way of responding to this very strange… Yeah, like liminal space of like, well, you know… I'm working, but also kind of not and, you know, “Oh, I can like go out on the weekends and see my friends. Oh, but it's the same six fully vaccinated friends that I see every weekend for the last year and a half.” So that's not really the same as socializing. And you know, it's like, I went out to one empty restaurant in the last year and a half last week. And yeah, it's like, “Oh, yeah, we're out, it's normal!” But it's, you know… But it's not. It's also not. We really are in this sort of like, liminal zone between the familiar and the totally strange. And I think, yeah, I think that's kind of what I've been exploring. 

Early on in the pandemic, the first thing, everyone had their sort of waves. The first wave that I had was obsessively bingeing submarine movies for some reason. And I was just thinking about that and thinking like, yeah, that is kind of this like strange sort of slice of reality where you have like… literally living in a bubble of air inside the water, the same way that, you know, like, I don't know… like a water strider would live or some of those insects that live on the underside of the surface tension of the water, who hold like surface tension air around their bodies. That's something like the shallow water video, that's sort of coming out of this exploration - that's like years and years old - of… like I really love those bugs that live on the water, like water striders and things like that, because that's the most liminal zone there is. They're living on the surface tension of water. Like hardly anybody gets to do that. And that's a weird world. But one thing that, from observing those guys, I got really interested in were standing waves. You find these little spots in shallow water where the waves just will like, sort of roll into this interference pattern that creates like a grid, and it'll just hold itself there. And it just like… It just holds like, you know… You could poke it with your fingers. And it seems so permanent, but all you have to do is, you know, like, poke your finger in there and it's gone. 

But yeah, I think sort of exploring these kind of like, transitional zones, these sort of worlds full of deep new perspectives but also full of uncertainty, bingeing submarine movies, is all sort of a way of kind of dealing with that like, liminal zone that we're all going through together right now. 

aAron: And I don't know, it's easy to see that through a pessimistic lens, because it can be scary. Like, there's security and familiarity, but at the same time, like, the opportunities for change happen in these… these zones, these times of uncertainty where there can be radical shifts in perspective as a society. And it's easy to be pessimistic about it and feel like it's all doom and gloom.

But at the same time, like if, if the history of the earth and of humans has shown us anything, it's that like, through challenges, there are opportunities to really have these radical shifts that happen where… these kind of paradigm shifts where things… There's like this (mock explosion noise) moment that things just-  you cannot see the same way anymore. Like there's this shift in perspective that's kind of forced upon us sometimes, in a way. And yeah, it's interesting what can come out of that. And it feels like we're in the midst of something like that. 

Dwayne: Yeah, totally.

I think in a lot of ways, the pandemic probably achieved what I've always sort of been - on a very small scale - trying to achieve with some of these like, installations and art experiences. Which is, yeah, offering a path toward, you know, a shift of perspective that might hopefully stick with somebody and change the way they go forward in their lives.

Yeah. I was really emboldened in the early days of the pandemic when people realized that compassion was a really great policy, and it seemed like nobody had ever heard of that before or thought about it. And it was like the only… All the systems were crumbling, and the only thing that worked and held things together was compassion. It was all so neat to see. 

So a lot of this stuff comes from the Mill Creek Ravine, just because it's, you know, next to my house. So I'm down there often. So a lot of this imagery comes from Mill Creek. But one thing I noticed early in the pandemic was like, the population of the creek changed wildly. So I used to go down there with my dog and my camera and I could creep around with like, a macro lens or whatever, for hours. And it was like I had the place to myself. And now, boy, it's packed, you know? So for me, when I'm down there now, I feel like I have to find other places to go, because when I'm down there now, it feels like my reaction is sort of like, “Hey, what's everybody doing in my creek?”, you know, like,  “This is my spot.” But the upside of that is, oh, everyone's realized that this has been here the whole time. And you know, you could have just been down here you know, poking around and discovering things and watching the landscape change; watching the erosion; watching trees fall; watching like you know, beaver dams grow up; seeing the birds come in and move out; you know, watching the ice form and freeze and then melt and heave all the trees and rip their skins off the willows. All of that stuff that you don't notice unless you're down there like time after time after time, seeing these like, cycles that happen, and all these crazy stories that are happening. So I'm kind of hoping that, like, one of the things that comes out of the pandemic is that more people are taking the time to go down there, and hopefully we'll start making those discoveries, and just stumbling upon all these sort of like crazy, interesting, beautiful stories that we otherwise tend to just drive across and ignore in our lives.

aAron: Like you said, all the details, like all the narratives that are happening simultaneously, like we recently could become so focused on like the human narrative and like our own personal little… And it becomes this, like, really claustrophobic, kind of like, feedback loop of like my narrative, my experience, and what I'm familiar with. But like when you take the time, you kind of just… You start to disappear when you like, enter those spaces and start to take notice of the details and the other things that are happening all around you that you maybe never took the time to notice. 

And I don't know, like… Personally, I'm most at peace when I'm not thinking about my life at all, and like, just staring at like a tree or just watching something unfold and noticing changes and things like… yeah. And those unfamiliar spaces do that. Like, the strange places do that when you don't have time to think. It just turns that narrative off and you're just like, in a state of observation, right?

Dwayne: Yeah, totally. I found it very relaxing. And it sort of connects you to like, different time scales. I find, you know, when you spend an hour staring at the sky or something, it's kind of like, you know… When you like, go stare at the ocean or something, you know, that illusion of pattern and that sort of like illusion of infinity, it just feels like you're connected not only to the planet, but to, like, time. Like, you can just sort of feel the, like, eons of time when you're, you know, watching the sky or watching the ocean, or watching like an 80 year old tree swaying around blowing seeds all over the place. Yeah, I find that's probably the most comforting thing is, like, shifting out of our perception of time and just trying to slow down and see it on a different scale. And that's what cameras are really good at. You can really play with time in a way that's unique.

Michelle, it's about 45 minutes in. Do we want to open it… Open it up? 

Michelle: Yeah. Maybe see if anyone has any questions that they want to ask.  

Dwayne: And it's fine if that person is also aAron.

Michelle: (laughs) Where's Harriet? 

Dwayne: I think she's in the porch. She's in her office. She’s probably waiting for her enemies to walk by so she can bark at them.

She sits in the porch, she has a little corner… She has a little corner chair in the porch, and that's where she would like to spend all her time. 

Michelle: I don't know if you saw, Dwayne, in the chat. I did share with everybody the Blindman video that you shot because we do have it uploaded to the Latitude site right now, so-

Dwayne: Oh, yes. Please check that out. 

Michelle: Get a sneak peek of that before it gets released. But it's a really beautiful video. 

Dwayne: Oh, thanks. Yeah, it was… Yeah, it was nice. Has a sort of a nice, like, endless summer, summertime vibe. So it'll feel bittersweet when you're watching it in early September. But let's listen to… Put on some Beach Boys and watch the video. Harriet is featured heavily in the- sorry. 

aAron: Oh, Harriet. We all love Harriet. Especially watching you bringing her meals.

Dwayne: Yeah, those are very popular. People really like to watch her do stuff. She is very… Yeah, she's a star. 

Michelle: I think Chelsea has a question. I don't know. Can you unmute yourself, Chelsea? Or do I have to unmute you? 

Chelsea: Oh, can you hear me now? 

Michelle: Yeah. 

Chelsea: Yeah, okay, cool. Hey, Dwayne, nice to see you. Thanks for the talk. 

Can you tell us a little bit about your struggle to envision your materials in public art? I'm curious for my own work, but I don't know. I guess I just wonder about artists who work in photography and as they try to imagine themselves making permanent public art works. Thanks! 

Dwayne: Yeah, thanks.

Yeah. I always think that my… Well, I guess I shouldn't say I always think. I think I've realized that my medium is more light than it is like, based in photography or video. I like, I just... I really like the physicality of lights. I like that you can bend it and color it and warp it. 

So I think that the experiences… Like I do have some like, public art concepts. If you look at the video - the proof of concept video of The Wheel on the Art From Here website - that's essentially a proof of concept of something that, ideally, will be about ten feet high and twenty feet long, that would be something that you would walk into. So that wouldn't be, like, showing images on a large scale, but essentially like… Again, getting back to that moment of creation, like creating the images by having a person walk through the installation that is essentially just, like, doing recursive reflections of light in real time.

So I think that's the thing that I'm mostly interested in, and sort of what I'm trying to move toward - by doing larger installations and, like, room based installations - is taking it away from being about like, about the image - like about the, you know, the JPEG, or the negative or whatever - and turning it into more of the experience. I think just focusing on that. So I think that's kind of where I'm trying to take things. 

I've done a lot of weird things like building camera obscura in rooms. The thing about those experiences is that the only way that you can communicate them to people or show them to people - unless they're with you - the only way you can do that is through photography and video. So a lot of the video that I've done - like the one for The Wheel - that's basically just like a record keeping, proof of concept video. I just tried to turn it into something with some music and soundscape. But basically, those are just sort of like, documentation of what the experience is like of being out in the woods and sticking your head into this big mirror box that totally warps reality and puts you into this, you know, different space.

So I think that's it, is that it's sort of more about the physicality of light and less about the image. But that's sort of been my challenge, in that I don't have a lot of experience with constructing large things. So it very much has to be a process of collaboration with people that know more about construction adhesives and finishes and things like that. The actual materials side of it, because I am very much in the, “I'm in my own head,” conceptual side of things. But  yeah, I think that's it. The physicality of light is kind of the thing that I'm mostly interested in, and the tool for me that captures that the best is lens-based stuff like video and camera. 

And what I'm always trying to do is like… I do a lot of, like, screwing around with these images and creating these weird things that look like - sort of these Photoshop creations - but these are all, like, real light straight out of the camera. The images for Strange Jury - the ones that were hanging at the Art Gallery of Alberta that have basically like demon faces, all these, like, characters that look sort of like judges and deers and monkeys - those are created with stacks of large format, four by five negatives. So, I know this is sort of meaningless on a computer screen, but they're about this big (holding up hands). Big, like, bellows accordion camera. So, had these negatives from that, that I sort of stacked and then used that to find symmetries within those images; and then backlit them; photographed the result; and then printed those photos big. So that was kind of a way of just playing with light and capturing the result. Because I was just, you know, sitting there moving these negatives around until, like, something hit me and something made sense. But the only way to share that with people - aside from walking around and you know, showing it to people, or hanging a thing that's four by five inches in a gallery - was to  - which I guess could be interesting - was to photograph them and make them big.

But yeah, I think it's just essentially using the physicality of light as a tool more than the cameras themselves.

That's my answer! (laughs)

Chelsea: Thank you! Great answer. 

Dwayne: Thanks.

Michelle: Does anyone else have anything? Any other questions?

aAron: I'm looking forward to watching this video (chuckles). 

Dwayne: Oh yeah, watch it with earbuds if you're on a stereo system, because there is some bass guitar that you can't hear without… On an iPhone. But do it however. 

aAron: So much is lost in translation. 

Dwayne: Yeah, yeah. I've actually started sort of creating things specifically for the, you know, the screen that's only this big.

aAron: Yeah.

Dwayne: Because that's how people see stuff. So I find sometimes you have to kind of think about that. It's weird. It's weird! It’s weird trying to make an image that's like, two inches by one and a half inches wide, or something. Really changes, really changes it. 

Michelle: Oh, there's one other question in the chat. What is your process like for making the soundscapes?

Dwayne: For the soundscapes, you know, I collect a lot of found sounds, ambient sounds. I use… Back when I wore jeans that were way too big for me, I used to always carry a… like a tape recorder in my pocket, in my front pocket, and I just recorded everything. I'm still kind of in that habit with the iPhone.

So usually it starts with found sound recording. But often, what it ends up turning into is just playing with a lot of guitar pedals and creating a sound that I'm looking for. It's usually looking at a video, looking at an image, getting a sound in my head, trying to create it, not quite getting there, getting something that is a bit surprising but works anyway, and then just going with it. And often marrying that with found sounds 

So if you… If anyone was at the Art Gallery of Alberta show, there was a 12 minute audio loop that sort of told the story in audio form of this jury trial in the woods by all these forest demons. And there were, it was… It was populated with characters, and there were events. There were moments where, you know, like the clerk rolls in his tray full of documents, and there's a moment where he leaves, there's a moment where the judge bangs his gavel and everybody rustles and makes a bunch of noise. So that was a combination of found sounds. 

I have recordings from buildings, recordings from pipelines. I had a microphone up against the Trans Mountain pipeline, just getting the sort of like (zipping noise) sound of people that were sawing on the pipeline. I was supposed to be there, it was related to a job. It wasn't me trespassing or anything, FYI. Recordings of like, electrical boxes, voices, people talking around campfires with the sound bouncing off the trees. There's a piece of sound in there. If anyone's ever gone to the Edmonton Arts Council, there's a - in the wintertime - there's a fan, a really squeaky fan. Somebody was singing opera and there was a fan that was squeaking like a chipping sparrow, almost,  with this, like a (whirring noise) sound. And I laid that into the audio for the AGA exhibit. That was the sound of the clerk wheeling his stuff in. 

But then a lot of it is just sort of trying to create the sounds that I didn't capture, but would like to have on guitar and lots of guitar pedals and synth. So sometimes it's just kind of like tapping strings; sometimes there's actual notes; sometimes it's just tons of reverb; sometimes it's taking a device and putting it into what's called self oscillation, where it just runs away with the noise, and just kind of creates this like, infinite sound that you can then manipulate and play with. So basically, yeah, it's, it's a combination of, like, found sounds and my now going on about six year long obsession with guitar pedals. I just ordered one today. That will probably be the prominent feature in all of the soundscape stuff that I do for the next little while. (laughs) Until it's no longer a novelty. 

But yeah, that's about it.

Michelle: We're hitting sort of the hour mark here. Oh, sorry, aAron, did you have a question? 

aAron: Oh, no, no. I just wanted to thank Dwayne. Yeah. 

Dwayne: Yeah, thanks, aAron. That was awesome! 

I also really appreciate the stuff that you wrote. That was really, really insightful and smart, and I might have to dig that up again next time I need some clips for an application or something. (laughs)

aAron: Any time. 

Dwayne: Yeah. Thanks a lot. And yeah, thanks, Michelle and Latitude. And thanks, aAron, again, and everyone who tuned in and watched this also in the future. 

Michelle: Yeah. Thank you both so much for all of this, for being here today and for this wonderful conversation. And yeah, thanks everyone for being here and for asking great questions as well.

I'm going to (audio cuts off).