Brianna Fitzgerald

In this performative media piece I unwind a 35year-old spool of string which has been in my family since my dad was a young-adult. After unwinding the spool for an unspecified (and variable) length of time, I stop, and then begin winding the string back onto the spool, trying to match exactly the pattern which I unwound.

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A webcam is placed directly above the spool of string and tracks the movement of my hand as I unwind the spool. This video tracking is then processed through Max MSP Jitter which uses the information to control video effects and mixing between two videos of a previous iteration of the performance.

This work is part of a larger body of work which has considered consumable objects which have come to become part of my family history; the main objects are the spool of string and boxes of matches. I consider these consumable objects in relation to my own ideas of permanence and loss. I continue to cope with the loss of my grandpa after his death in 2013, in relation to this loss, I reconsider the object and relationships that I have with objects that have had a long-term placement in my life. Things that I perceive or have thought of to be permanent tend to be consumable commodity objects; a large 35year-old spool of string, a box filled with 1000 match boxes. The relationships I have with these objects mirrors my ability to cope with my grandpa’s death, though I never should have thought that he would always be in my life, I in many ways did, and coping with his loss has prompted me to re-consider other things in my life which I have at one point thought of as permanent, but are not in any way.