Jennifer Nightingale

Jennifer is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Media, and Course Leader for ARU's BA (Hons) Media Production degree. She graduated from the MFA at the Slade School of Fine Art and currently lecturers at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge and the Royal College of Art, London.

[email protected]

Background

Jennifer's film Pinhole Camera Film No. 1 was cited in Nicky Hamlyn's book Film Art Phenomena (published by the BFI in 2004) and was screened at the Serpentine Gallery London. Knitting Pattern has been screened at the Tate Modern, London.

The Pinhole film series and Knitting film series present ideas of gesture and trace in relation to the frame and the technology of the 16mm Bolex camera, and in both cases they re-configure controls of a conventional production process.

Pinhole Camera Film No.1 asserts a mode of making, which takes film back to its origins through a reductionist methodology and a focus on material and the role of camera - the tracing of light through the plastic of the celluloid. These traces of light, viewed as uninterrupted streaks on the filmstrip are re-animated within the projection experience, imposing the conventional frame rate of 24x a second and duration of time unreflective of the pro-filmic event.

The films Knitting a Frame (pictured) and Knitting Pattern No.1 employ common systems of production to reflect issues of time and pattern, exploring analogies between artists' film/animation and knitting. Again these films extend the notion that construction of the film and/or fabric can be reliant on programming, controls and human gestures outside of their respective conventions.

In Knitting a Frame a single frame animation method is used. The knitter is at once the performer and the producer of the work; their gesture of knitting produces/advances the film and in doing so inscribes every frame with a precise moment in time. Through this act the knitted fabric and the film are indexicaly tied and the time-lapse is dictated by the knitters own rhythm. The filmmaker becomes the machine and the line of yarn mirrors the throw of the projector.

In Knitting Pattern No. 1 the pattern is transformed from a pictorial graph where pattern is experienced singularly to a film where the viewer experiences many images over a duration and the rhythm of the changing coloured balls of wool creates optical colour mixing through the persistence of vision.

Areas of research supervision

• Artists' Film and Video
• Experimental Animation

Recent presentations and conferences

07/10 Animation Deviation conference, University of the West of England, Bristol.

Performances and public exhibitions

10/12 Time Base Media Film and Video at UCA 1972-2012, Maidstone.

07/10 Acoustic Images showcase screening, BFI, London.

11/09 Leeds International Film Festival, Leeds.

10/09 Retrospective at the Strange Screen film festival, Thessaloniki, Greece.

11/08 Kinetic Colour, Tate Modern, London.

10/08 Aleatory Colour, Gehry Pavilion, Serpentine Gallery, London.

06/08 Diversions: A Festival of Experimental Film and Video, Filmhouse Cinema, Edinburgh.

10/07 Further2 Residency, London. Funded and supported by Artquest, Film London and no.w.here lab.

08/06 Edinburgh Film Festival, Edinburgh.

08/06 Portobello Film Festival, London.

07/06 26th Cambridge Film Festival, Cambridge: AMI Single and AMI Double programmes.

02/05 Curzon Soho, London: in association with 'Werner Nekes: Eyes, Lies and Illusion' at the Hayward Gallery, London.

11/04 Cinéma de Baille, Amsterdam: Abstract Cinema programme.

Spring/04 Simrishamn International Film Festival, Sweden.

10/03 The Lux: Book Launch of Film Art Phenomena by Nicky Hamlyn.

08/03 Film Anthology Archives New York: New Film and Video Artists.