‘Slow Service’ is a series of portraits shot using a high speed video camera. This camera, which is normally used for filming mine detonations, science experiments and military tests, captures 1000 frames a second. The footage, when played back at 25 frames per second, has been slowed down so that a second of real time takes forty seconds on the screen. ‘I asked the subjects to pose as if for a passport photograph. We see the transition between this artificial pose and their natural instinctive reaction to the bucket of food that is being thrown at them, and then the impact of the food itself.
I liked the idea of capturing a wasteful, slapstick, human gesture using a medium that is normally reserved for ‘serious’ scientists and bomb designers’. (Marcus Lyall, 2004)
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How to watch
Collection
In ACMI's collection
Previously on display
12 September 2004
ACMI Screen Gallery
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
B1005943
Audience classifications
G
Mediatheque - all ages (ACMI classified)
Subject categories
Crafts & Visual Arts → Video art
Experimental → Experimental films - Australia
Sound/audio
Silent
Colour
Colour
Object Types
Artwork
Materials
Single channel moving image, colour, silent
Holdings
Digital Betacam; Master
Digital Betacam; Sub-master
VHS [PAL]; Reference - timecoded
DVD [PAL]; Copy
DVD [PAL]; Exhibition Copy
MOV file H264; ACMI Digital Access Copy - presentation