Lots of material has been generated during the sessions at Holyrood Academy. Firstly stills and short clips from our initial water finding workshop, then later longer pieces of footage and sound recordings as the students explored the idea of water finding and relationships with the local landscape. We continued to practice and speculate about ancient craft and the local geology. This work will be edited into a short film, completed by early spring 2023.
Workshopping the film
We explored the less frequented corners of the school grounds, we often gravitated towards a willow tree at the intersection of two streams. We filmed with the costumes the students made after the initial mapping activities.
Brodie’s polaroids
The students generated a wordstorm of words about the project, about dowsing and their experiances. I organised them a little to make a section of scripted voice-over for the film.
“We are a group, we are a team, we have different skills. Mapping land, dressing up rocks with beliefs.”
“Animals within water, species of natural things”
“squirrels are free for vast distances”
“We’re searching”
“nurturing random interactions and questioning beleifs and stories”
“We interview each other, our water colour ideas, waterflows over water, over minerals, rocks and streets until drainage”.
“photograph + record, wanderings and connections to make a reality video.”
“We’re looking at different views, above and below, environmental and social, now and then, land and sea. We get wet shoes and wet socks”
“We document the real red history AND the murky naratives”
“both truth and confusion”
“Estimations of water sources, possible sink holes, a painfull pool, money fears in the wet grass”
“toxic rain drops, wet history”
“We’re using tools and our senses: mystery rain rods and independent willow”
“costume making, cotton inky outfits help our divining rod + pendant team”
“leaf pencil, natural paper-film, sharpie seawear of yellow and grey”
“microphone pendulum in the river”
“metal rods, Y- shaped twigs and distance sticks”
“Creative water levels ripple leaves and dandelions”
“We made true art-stone fashion because nature cannot flirt with fake ecology”
“daisy garment, mud design, doswing stream-tunnel-pipes”
“underground oak tree”
“mushrooms in the blue sky”
“birch tree: nature magic”
“grass smells like lemons, trees on iron water rocks.”
“flowers after soggy yellow water rainfall”
“earth geography is strange, green camera colours branch weirdly flowing over the fabric of environmental information.
We recorded this text in the music room and experimented with some other sound effects too.
The finished costumes as they were during the final session.
Water Histories 