Michel Banabila’s Soundtrack for Letting Go

Last week I had a meeting with electronic music composer Michel Banabila discussing a possible collaboration.
On his way out I handed him the video “Letting Go”, a film made with a small video camera attached to a pigeon. The sound in the original version consisted in flapping of pigeons wings and the grainy sound of wind.
Only five days later Michel did send me his version of the film and soundtrack. The flapping of the wings can still be heard and the depth of “abstract” sounds affects the video in a dramatic way.

Watch and listen to the new version here

Michel Banabila’s soundtrack “Letting Go” is also available as a free download here

Letting Go

In 2008 I was asked to participate in a project on the railway development in the city of Delft. After 20 years of debate the decision to tunnel the train and the station was finally made. I was asked to document the current situation.

I am living close to Delft, 6 miles crow in Overschie. Standing next to the railway in Delft, it is pointed south, straight in my hometown’s direction. Frome there,  the shortest way home is flying over the railway.

One of my close neighbours is a pigeons fancier. He keeps almost 200 pigeons. Every week, from spring to fall, they are competing in long distant pigeon flights from France and Spain.

Julius Neubronner, a german doctor living in Bavaria in the years prior to World War 1, experimented in his days with small camera’s attached to pigeons. Truly remarkable considering the size of camera’s and the technique of controlling a shutter in a pigeons flight.

These days it is easy to find a webshop selling small videocamera’s. I bought one and had it seized by my neighbour: “small enough to be carried by one of the pigeons” he said.

So I had it attached to a young male pigeon with sharp eyes. After some try-out flights from his dovecote, I travelled to Delft and released it from a high building close to the railway. It went of and did not bother the railway development for a second. It circled the high building and flew eastwards…

Read more on the excellent BLDGblog:  birds eye view

 

Spygeons

Afgelopen week kreeg ik via een email een vraag. Hoe ik een camera aan een duif had bevestigd voor mijn videoproject “Loslaten” uit 2008 over de spoorzone in Delft.
De vragenstelster is Sofie de Wit, een Vlaamse scholiere, bezig met een schoolopdracht over “geheime communicatie”.
Ik antwoordde Sofie dat ik mijn duif had voorzien van een klittenband slabbetje dat met een tie wrap om het lichaam achter de vleugel en met een schoenveter om de nek was vastgemaakt.
Later kreeg ik van Sofie een link naar haar weblog www.sofiedewit.wordpress.com en zag daar dit prachtige duivenharnas. (wat de duif inmiddels onderweg alweer was “kwijtgespeeld”)

Het is van een welhaast erotiserende schoonheid.
Hoe lomp kan je zijn met een tie wrap en een schoenveter?