VIDEO IMAGE: GLASS BLOCKS / THISTLE PLANTS
Video recording of a glass block wall in the laboratory building of the former Botanical Institute of the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main: Pots of thistle plants (Sonchus gomerensis) stand in front of the glass block wall opposite the Botanic Garden's greenhouses. The leaves of the plants move in the summer wind.
The decoration of the glass blocks, an overlay of eight vertical and eight horizontal divisions, fragments the image of the plants beind the glass and makes them appear in a square structure in the recorded video image.
The finished video image is created according to the modular principle:
A glass block is selected, digitally cropped and inserted several times in the editing programme into a frame-filling grid that corresponds in detail to the original structure of the wall. Within the image grid, the same block is shifted on the time axis by eight seconds at a time. In this way, a total of 15 points in time and time sequences are listed simultaneously in the video in the sense of a time span set in the moment, visible in each image. The structure of the repetition remains recognisable because the time offset of eight seconds is within the range of short-term memory. In the video image, the restless movements of the plants and the changing light contrast with the austerity of the grid in the glass.
