Collaboration with artist Jo Marie Jensen

The video, Hail, part installation part storytelling, sets up an interaction between nature and technology. Nature and the natural order are represented by a large tree with low, wide-spreading branches located in a peaceful, grassy area on the bay. The sounds of gently lapping waves, rustling leaves, and bird calls add to the serenity of the scene. Technology and the human-created, synthetic world are represented by broken and obsolete electronic pieces.

The film opens with a slow zoom into what appears to be a graveyard. As the camera nears the square, grey blocks nestled in the grass you realize that you are looking at discarded computer equipment rather than headstones.

The scene slowly fades to a large tree on the bay. The camera pans across the grass where more than 50 CPUs, printers, computer monitors, calculators, and scanners lie scattered at the base of the tree. They seem abandoned and out of place. They are unplugged, unwanted and therefore dead.

Soon you hear the sound of dripping and the camera pans up to a branch on which several pieces of ice are hung. The ice slowly melts in the sun. As the dripping increases a cluster of ice drops from the branch and you hear clinking as ice hits metal. More ice pieces drop hitting various pieces of electronics. The hail is starting to build. Some of the drips of water and the falling hail segments are slowed down increasing your sense of the passage of time. The slow visual and auditory undulations in a small pool of water caused by a single drop are both beautiful and surreal.

Soon the hail is coming down in torrents; the sound is loud and cacophonous. Here the film includes quick jump cuts of 1 to 2 second segments of earlier scenes in the film. This adds to the chaos of the hailstorm.

Almost as quickly the hailstorm slows and ends. The camera focuses on a single printer mounded with ice. That is the final scene of the film, but as the credits start to roll we see a single CPU gradually sink into the ground as if by its own weight. Eventually it is covered by dirt until it is no longer visible. Finally we just see a sunken depression in the grass.

Over this scene run the credits beginning with the two definitions of hail:

hail, n.¹

1. Ice or frozen vapour falling in pellets or masses in a shower from the atmosphere.

hail, n.²

1. An exclamation of ‘hail!’; a respectful greeting or salutation. 2. The act of hailing some one; a shout of welcome; a shout or call to attract attention.

hail, n.¹, refers to the more obvious use of hail in the form of ice in the film. hail, n.², as a respectful greeting, refers to our relationship to the technological world we’ve created. We not only accept it, we welcome and revere it.

The interaction between hail and electronic pieces in the film allows us to contrast the natural world and technology. Is there a conflict between the two worlds? As we focus on the technology do we lose touch with the natural world? If not, why not? As the momentum of technological changes builds, what will become obsolete in 10 years, 5 years, or even in 1 year?