Video Installation

And the Walls Became the World All Around (Maurice Sendak 1963)

Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival 2015
Hawick, Scottish Borders.

Photograph: Patrick Rafferty

This piece brings together a collection of encounters with landscape and the elements, and uses projection mapping to create a kinesthetic experience of film.
The exquisite line from Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (Harper & Row 1963) is quoted for the installation's title, to point to the multi-layered process of personal meaning-making; when the walls of our interior and exterior worlds collide, shift & interchange

And the Walls Became the World All Around (Maurice Sendak 1963)

Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival 2015
Hawick, Scottish Borders.

Photograph: Patrick Rafferty

This piece brings together a collection of encounters with landscape and the elements, and uses projection mapping to create a kinesthetic experience of film.
The exquisite line from Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (Harper & Row 1963) is quoted for the installation's title, to point to the multi-layered process of personal meaning-making; when the walls of our interior and exterior worlds collide, shift & interchange

And the Walls Became the World All Around (Maurice Sendak 1963)

Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival 2015
Hawick, Scottish Borders.

This piece brings together a collection of encounters with landscape and the elements, and uses projection mapping to create a kinesthetic experience of film.
The exquisite line from Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (Harper & Row 1963) is quoted for the installation's title, to point to the multi-layered process of personal meaning-making; when the walls of our interior and exterior worlds collide, shift & interchange

And the Walls Became the World All Around (Maurice Sendak 1963)

Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival 2015
Hawick, Scottish Borders.

This piece brings together a collection of encounters with landscape and the elements, and uses projection mapping to create a kinesthetic experience of film.
The exquisite line from Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (Harper & Row 1963) is quoted for the installation's title, to point to the multi-layered process of personal meaning-making; when the walls of our interior and exterior worlds collide, shift & interchange

Road Works, detail;
Sandbags 1

Hidden Door Festival 2015,
Edinburgh

This installation at Hidden Door Festival in 2015, presented footage of road workers digging into the ground, late at night, mapped onto a still life of sandbags slumped on the floor of the gallery
The intention of the work is duplicitous: both cynical and celebratory
Laughing, and loving being observed and appreciated, the workmen represent a homage to camaraderie, and grafting for a living; surviving; learning, persevering.
Meanwhile the sand bags become totemic, shamanistic; portals to an unreal world of mysterious work.
With four workmen endlessly digging their way out of the sand bags, the piece simultaneously offers a sense of the bizarre. With a play on the idea of 'digging holes' ('if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging'), it takes a humorous look at the never ending process of maintaining and improving services and roads as a metaphor for life’s inherent struggle; and the futility or foolishness therein.
This piece was made with the permission and input of the workers.

Road Works, detail;
Sandbags 1

Hidden Door Festival 2015,
Edinburgh

This installation at Hidden Door Festival in 2015, presented footage of road workers digging into the ground, late at night, mapped onto a still life of sandbags slumped on the floor of the gallery
The intention of the work is duplicitous: both cynical and celebratory
Laughing, and loving being observed and appreciated, the workmen represent a homage to camaraderie, and grafting for a living; surviving; learning, persevering.
Meanwhile the sand bags become totemic, shamanistic; portals to an unreal world of mysterious work.
With four workmen endlessly digging their way out of the sand bags, the piece simultaneously offers a sense of the bizarre. With a play on the idea of 'digging holes' ('if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging'), it takes a humorous look at the never ending process of maintaining and improving services and roads as a metaphor for life’s inherent struggle; and the futility or foolishness therein.
This piece was made with the permission and input of the workers.

Road Works, detail;
Sandbags 1

Hidden Door Festival 2015,
Edinburgh

This installation at Hidden Door Festival in 2015, presented footage of road workers digging into the ground, late at night, mapped onto a still life of sandbags slumped on the floor of the gallery
The intention of the work is duplicitous: both cynical and celebratory
Laughing, and loving being observed and appreciated, the workmen represent a homage to camaraderie, and grafting for a living; surviving; learning, persevering.
Meanwhile the sand bags become totemic, shamanistic; portals to an unreal world of mysterious work.
With four workmen endlessly digging their way out of the sand bags, the piece simultaneously offers a sense of the bizarre. With a play on the idea of 'digging holes' ('if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging'), it takes a humorous look at the never ending process of maintaining and improving services and roads as a metaphor for life’s inherent struggle; and the futility or foolishness therein.
This piece was made with the permission and input of the workers.

Road Works, detail;
Sandbags 1

Hidden Door Festival 2015,
Edinburgh

This installation at Hidden Door Festival in 2015, presented footage of road workers digging into the ground, late at night, mapped onto a still life of sandbags slumped on the floor of the gallery
The intention of the work is duplicitous: both cynical and celebratory
Laughing, and loving being observed and appreciated, the workmen represent a homage to camaraderie, and grafting for a living; surviving; learning, persevering.
Meanwhile the sand bags become totemic, shamanistic; portals to an unreal world of mysterious work.
With four workmen endlessly digging their way out of the sand bags, the piece simultaneously offers a sense of the bizarre. With a play on the idea of 'digging holes' ('if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging'), it takes a humorous look at the never ending process of maintaining and improving services and roads as a metaphor for life’s inherent struggle; and the futility or foolishness therein.
This piece was made with the permission and input of the workers.

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Drive, 2011

Drive, 2012
video still

Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival
Hawick, Scottish Borders

This film was developed as an installation piece including 35mm slide projections, and drawings.

The piece set out to express the intensity of feeling that can be experienced on and about certain journeys; familiar, or one-time journeys, as they reside in memory.

In this case, the particular focus was on a coastal journey from South West Wales to North Wales.
I wanted to explore the way that a sense of one’s geography is heightened by proximity to an edge or boarder - the proprioception of landscape, as well as the way memory functions to create and consolidate meaning, attaching powerful emotions to visual and sensory cues, so that a journey through landscape can provide or become a ritual of pilgrimage or transition.
The layering within the video of racing water and wind swept grass as well as evocative home movie style clips, through the motif of a rear-view wing mirror plays with both the idea of leaving and the physicality of driving; the unnatural nature of speed and the continual displacement of air, rushing to fill the space/moment we left behind.

Drive, 2012
installation view

Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival
Hawick, Scottish Borders

This film was developed as an installation piece including 35mm slide projections, and drawings.

The piece set out to express the intensity of feeling that can be experienced on and about certain journeys; familiar, or one-time journeys, as they reside in memory.

In this case, the particular focus was on a coastal journey from South West Wales to North Wales.
I wanted to explore the way that a sense of one’s geography is heightened by proximity to an edge or boarder - the proprioception of landscape, as well as the way memory functions to create and consolidate meaning, attaching powerful emotions to visual and sensory cues, so that a journey through landscape can provide or become a ritual of pilgrimage or transition.
The layering within the video of racing water and wind swept grass as well as evocative home movie style clips, through the motif of a rear-view wing mirror plays with both the idea of leaving and the physicality of driving; the unnatural nature of speed and the continual displacement of air, rushing to fill the space/moment we left behind.

Drive, 2012
installation view

Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival
Hawick, Scottish Borders

This film was developed as an installation piece including 35mm slide projections, and drawings.

The piece set out to express the intensity of feeling that can be experienced on and about certain journeys; familiar, or one-time journeys, as they reside in memory.

In this case, the particular focus was on a coastal journey from South West Wales to North Wales.
I wanted to explore the way that a sense of one’s geography is heightened by proximity to an edge or boarder - the proprioception of landscape, as well as the way memory functions to create and consolidate meaning, attaching powerful emotions to visual and sensory cues, so that a journey through landscape can provide or become a ritual of pilgrimage or transition.
The layering within the video of racing water and wind swept grass as well as evocative home movie style clips, through the motif of a rear-view wing mirror plays with both the idea of leaving and the physicality of driving; the unnatural nature of speed and the continual displacement of air, rushing to fill the space/moment we left behind.

Still Life with moving Image (Roadworks), 2013

Still Life with moving Image, 2013

Still Life with moving Image, 2013

Still Life with moving Image, 2013

Interactive video installation 1(Dogs)

Untitled video projection 1 (Dogs)

Untitled video projection 1 (Dogs) installation view

Scottish Society of Artists 114th Annual Open Exhibtion, 2011
Royal Scottish academy, Edinburgh

Cairn Energy Prize

This interactive piece presented an empty, well-used cardboard box as a benign, accidental object in the grand gallery space of the RSA building
On approaching the box, the viewer is startled by a barking Alsation/mongrel dog straining up towards the viewer as if contained within the box.

Knowing that, for many in the SSA's broad audience, the initial response to the empty cardboard box might be mild irritation, even disbelief, mixed with a reluctant curiosity, the piece creates a gratifying moment of tension and release.

It is simple in this sense, but it is also nuanced; The footage is taken from a video sketchbook of encounters and observations which the artist accumulates, looking to translate those moments when vivid reality encroaches on, or pierces, our interior worlds in such a way as to remind us of the proximity of life and death; the magic in realism

The artist experiments with the kinesthetic possibilities of video and creative projection, seeking to impact the viewer with a poetic layering and sequencing of ideas and sensations

Untitled video projection 1 (Dogs) installation view

Scottish Society of Artists 114th Annual Open Exhibtion, 2011
Royal Scottish academy, Edinburgh

Cairn Energy Prize

This interactive piece presented an empty, well-used cardboard box as a benign, accidental object in the grand gallery space of the RSA building
On approaching the box, the viewer is startled by a barking Alsation/mongrel dog straining up towards the viewer as if contained within the box.

Knowing that, for many in the SSA's broad audience, the initial response to the empty cardboard box might be mild irritation, even disbelief, mixed with a reluctant curiosity, the piece creates a gratifying moment of tension and release.

It is simple in this sense, but it is also nuanced; The footage is taken from a video sketchbook of encounters and observations which the artist accumulates, looking to translate those moments when vivid reality encroaches on, or pierces, our interior worlds in such a way as to remind us of the proximity of life and death; the magic in realism

The artist experiments with the kinesthetic possibilities of video and creative projection, seeking to impact the viewer with a poetic layering and sequencing of ideas and sensations

Untitled video projection 1 (Dogs)
video still

Scottish Society of Artists 114th Annual Open Exhibtion, 2011
Royal Scottish academy, Edinburgh

Cairn Energy Prize

This interactive piece presented an empty, well-used cardboard box as a benign, accidental object in the grand gallery space of the RSA building
On approaching the box, the viewer is startled by a barking Alsation/mongrel dog straining up towards the viewer as if contained within the box.

Knowing that, for many in the SSA's broad audience, the initial response to the empty cardboard box might be mild irritation, even disbelief, mixed with a reluctant curiosity, the piece creates a gratifying moment of tension and release.

It is simple in this sense, but it is also nuanced; The footage is taken from a video sketchbook of encounters and observations which the artist accumulates, looking to translate those moments when vivid reality encroaches on, or pierces, our interior worlds in such a way as to remind us of the proximity of life and death; the magic in realism

The artist experiments with the kinesthetic possibilities of video and creative projection, seeking to impact the viewer with a poetic layering and sequencing of ideas and sensations

Forest, 2011

Forest, 2011
video still

Alchemy Film & moving Image Festival
Hawick, Scottish Borders

This commissioned installation piece was filmed and devised for Alchemy during a residency at Heriot Toun Studio in the summer prior to the festival.

10 days were spent filming and experimenting, alone in various tracts of plantation woodland, where the artist created various ‘apparitions’; using smoke, red balloons and mirrors; These materials, used in previous artworks, represent here the breath and the self; fleeting mindfulness, but also the heightened senses of moments of fear; when one feels there could be another observer in that deserted place.

The installation invites the viewer into a visceral sense of that aloneness and self consciousness – being the watcher watching the watcher. The majority of the 5 minute split screen projection features footage taken of the video camera itself on a tripod in the still, silent forest; representing both the artist and the viewer in the space.
Meanwhile, other footage is then mapped onto a tumbling, crumpled paper screen, from beneath which a cluster of the same red balloons seem to be escaping
The remaining walls, and parts of the carpeted floor, are adorned with a simplified, almost codified forest motif, created from black electrical tape – representing the relatively monochrome, lifeless and noiseless environment of this type of pine forest at ground level.

The video is silent, with the intention of demanding a more raw encounter. Where an atmospheric sound-scape would provide an easier path for the viewer to the intended emotional response, perhaps the silence presents more directly that sense of unease and exposure.

Forest, 2011
video still

Alchemy Film & moving Image Festival
Hawick, Scottish Borders

This commissioned installation piece was filmed and devised for Alchemy during a residency at Heriot Toun Studio in the summer prior to the festival.

10 days were spent filming and experimenting, alone in various tracts of plantation woodland, where the artist created various ‘apparitions’; using smoke, red balloons and mirrors; These materials, used in previous artworks, represent here the breath and the self; fleeting mindfulness, but also the heightened senses of moments of fear; when one feels there could be another observer in that deserted place.

The installation invites the viewer into a visceral sense of that aloneness and self consciousness – being the watcher watching the watcher. The majority of the 5 minute split screen projection features footage taken of the video camera itself on a tripod in the still, silent forest; representing both the artist and the viewer in the space.
Meanwhile, other footage is then mapped onto a tumbling, crumpled paper screen, from beneath which a cluster of the same red balloons seem to be escaping
The remaining walls, and parts of the carpeted floor, are adorned with a simplified, almost codified forest motif, created from black electrical tape – representing the relatively monochrome, lifeless and noiseless environment of this type of pine forest at ground level.

The video is silent, with the intention of demanding a more raw encounter. Where an atmospheric sound-scape would provide an easier path for the viewer to the intended emotional response, perhaps the silence presents more directly that sense of unease and exposure.

Forest, 2011
projection view

Alchemy Film & moving Image Festival
Hawick, Scottish Borders

This commissioned installation piece was filmed and devised for Alchemy during a residency at Heriot Toun Studio in the summer prior to the festival.

10 days were spent filming and experimenting, alone in various tracts of plantation woodland, where the artist created various ‘apparitions’; using smoke, red balloons and mirrors; These materials, used in previous artworks, represent here the breath and the self; fleeting mindfulness, but also the heightened senses of moments of fear; when one feels there could be another observer in that deserted place.

The installation invites the viewer into a visceral sense of that aloneness and self consciousness – being the watcher watching the watcher. The majority of the 5 minute split screen projection features footage taken of the video camera itself on a tripod in the still, silent forest; representing both the artist and the viewer in the space.
Meanwhile, other footage is then mapped onto a tumbling, crumpled paper screen, from beneath which a cluster of the same red balloons seem to be escaping
The remaining walls, and parts of the carpeted floor, are adorned with a simplified, almost codified forest motif, created from black electrical tape – representing the relatively monochrome, lifeless and noiseless environment of this type of pine forest at ground level.

The video is silent, with the intention of demanding a more raw encounter. Where an atmospheric sound-scape would provide an easier path for the viewer to the intended emotional response, perhaps the silence presents more directly that sense of unease and exposure.

Alice Betts

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