bini oculus: stereo landscape continued

bini oculus: i responded to an ‘open call’ brief for the ‘one minutes’ video archive etc. last week, using some footage i recorded of the landscape using 2 i-phones simultaneously. the ‘open call’ brief suggested alienation amongst other things, so i wanted to explore landscape through the strangeness of the human eye’s binocular vision where the left and right eye see through slightly different frames – one more left than the other (parallax) and combine these to form one frame or field of vision. binocular vision is defined as vision using two eyes that have overlapping fields of view and create visual perception of depth or stereopsis – all of which reinforce my exploration of stereo landscape. the term binocular stems for the latin bini meaning double and oculus meaning eye – double eye. i am interested in how this act of looking applies to the framing of the landscape and how it might suggest multiple views  – again looking at challenging the single and fixed perspective.

eye dominance: one of the things i came across when reading up on binocular vision was how we have a dominant eye where we tend to favour visual information from one eye over the other, which can change depending on where our gaze is. it becomes very apparent when looking through a stereoscope. anyway, wanting to revisit some of my gathered two-camera footage, i experimented with superimposing the frames on top of each other as well as side by side as i did in my ‘stereo landscape’ work.

reflection: i think visually the frames playing side by side are more dynamic and seem to resonate with the multiple/compound frame that i have been exploring. the second video with the superimposed frames feels like they need to be more balanced in terms of transparencies or left and right frame/eye could take over from each other at different times – this could be something i play around with. i do like the way it links back to the body in terms of binocular vision and eye dominance. for the moment its a rough cut which i can continue to work on or at least keep in the back of my mind as continue to gather, record and explore.