A REMARKABLE Edinburgh-based film pioneer is to be celebrated at a special audio-visual event in Glasgow this week.
A new live score has been added to archive footage created by Eric Lucey, who experimented with techniques now common in programmes like Frozen Planet.
The score is by composer Jules Rawlinson whose output includes A Requiem for Edward Snowden, which blends live electronics with a chamber trio.
Lucey studied science at the University of Edinburgh and became an innovator in the application of film as a tool for scientific research.
He ran the experimental film unit attached to the then-Genetics Department of the university, setting it up as the first films of living cells were emerging. The use of polarised light meant the movement of chromosomes within a cell could be seen as it divided.
Lucey, who rejected the division between science and art, realised the potential for film to manipulate time and invented props to aid his work, which varied from the time-lapse microphotography of cells dividing in tissue culture to the courtship behaviour of fruit flies.
“What I find inspiring in Lucey’s work are the images themselves, the abstract qualities of pattern, texture and detail in fractured crystals, billowing ripples and so on that are related to the kinds of sounds I like and use, but there’s also the effort
involved in capturing these images in the first place given the technology of the day,” said Rawlinson.
Interval and Instance is part of Cryptic Nights 2019 and is on at the CCA on June 6.
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