The Sons of Temperance

[2000] Infrared video to DIGIbeta, 9min.

The medium of video; a trail of data, exists only when it is decoded and interpreted by the apparatus built for it. It could well disappear, or the data could easily be overlooked and its container be considered the subject.

The video is introduced by a voice explaining how audio recordings can be extracted from collections of ancient ceramics:
When a pot was spun on a wheel, the potter's fingernails or tools would resonate with the voices or sounds of what was happening in the vicinity, to create grooves in the clay, which can be played back rather like a vinyl recording.

Jumping forwards in time to a near future, archaeologists furtively meet to share playbacks of recordings held in crystal glasses, using a new 'laser diffraction technique' whereby deformations in crystal structure hold recordings of their time of existence. The work unearths questions of how information from the past could unknowingly be surrounding us now, how do we find the ability to interpret the information once it is legible and does a poetic relation to archaeology improve our chances of understanding it?

'Like Elliot, like Nerval, like anyone obsessed with picking up and incubating what Rilke calls 'The unending message that forms itself from silence', the initiates are finding the knowledge and the isolation just too much to bear.' -Tom McCarthy

The Sons of Temperance is studied on the syllabus of the London Consortium Masters and Doctoral programme in Humanities and Cultural Studies 2011-12.

Cast: Paul Ryan, Danira Govich, Aeon Austin Rose