Experiments in Buoyancy (2013) came from a desire to build a physical relationship with digital video. Printing frames of video onto paper turned pixels into physical objects, exposing them to the disorder of the natural world. Using footage recorded over several years, the piece became a test of the resilience of things, human and other, against attrition.
“Walter implicitly posits that the human impulse to read nature as unwelcoming and destructive-a reading his own video initially seems to support-is a far more pernicious force, and the more destructive one. No matter their sometimes comic ineffectiveness, our relentless attempts to rationalize nature are acts of violence that make our self-appointed foe all the more volatile and unpredictable. The aura of menace that pervades Experiments in Buoyancy ultimately derives not from an uncaring universe, but a blinkered humanity.” - Samuel LaFrance, Cinemascope
Screenings:
New York Film Festival
Rotterdam International Film Festival
Hamburg International Short Film Festival
Videoex
Dresden International Short Film Festival
L’Alternativa
Athens International Film and Video Festival
Klub Katarakt Experimental Music Festival
Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival
Leipzig Cinematheque
Roots and Culture, Chicago, IL
NOFEST, UNZA, Milan, IT