Complexities in the journey Nearfield opens with a locked off wide shot of a field in summer. It is rich with grasses forming a soft, moving plane of greens, pinks and whites. A stereo ambient field recording of the grass blowing in the wind, birds calling and the hum of insects is audible.

A figure suddenly appears mid-step and continues to walk away from the camera, leaving as a visible trajectory a line of disturbed grass. The ambient audio shifts to a near-field recording made by the figure moving through the grass with a marked increase in volume and richness of sound. Each step through the grass remains at a volume and depth specific to the immediate position of the figure as he moves away from the camera. Becoming smaller and smaller, his steps remain loud and rich. Through this mechanism the viewer is essentially bi-located, in both a fixed visual position, watching the figure move away and aurally moving with the figure away from the camera.

The figure recedes until he reaches the distant boundary of the field, at which point he disappears and the field returns to its undisturbed breezy movement with the audio returning to the ambient field recording of grass, wind, birdcalls and insects.

This work deals with specific and non-specific presence. Through the bi-location mechanism used in the separation of audio and video of the same event the work is a pointer to the ephemeral. A simple case of a figure walking through a field becomes impossible to describe exhaustively. There are too many complexities in the journey from A to B.