Aureole [2021]

Single channel, 7 min 32 sec, 16mm film and betacam video transferred to digital, colour, stereo / / film credits, exhibitions and screenings here >

In meteorology, the aureole is an atmospheric, optical phenomenon; the visible inner disc of a corona, produced by the diffraction of light from the sun or the moon, bright starlight or planet-light.

'Aureole' brings together unused celestial images from Scott’s earlier film, 'Diviner' (2017), with vocoder-readings from Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel 'The Left Hand of Darkness' (1969), scored by Chu-Li Shewring’s remix of the House track ‘Brighter Days’ (1992) by Cajmere featuring Dajae. Aureole is a transition between a ‘lost’ chapter from 'Diviner' and 'Wendy' (2022, forthcoming), a film fan-letter to composer Wendy Carlos, whose many interests include solar eclipse photography. Accelerating to a euphoric end, the film is the duration of the longest total solar eclipse, when the moon completely covers the sun.

You will witness the day become near-night, like the deepest twilight. Sunset colors bathe the full horizon, while a gaping black hole gazes down at you from the inky sky, eye-like and surreal, surrounded by the solar corona, a halo of pearly ephemeral light of delicate beauty. Each time the corona looks quite different, and like an old friend's face you'll recognize each in photographs.

Wendy Carlos www.wendycarlos.com

'Aureole' is accompanied by a new text 'Winter is a planet' by Dave Tompkins, available as a downloadable PDF on the MattFlix website.