Feast of St. Francis
Bamboat | Mitchell
Ama Codjoe (voice) and Rupali Morzaria (graphics)
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Audio (English; 5 minutes)
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It was believed that St. Francis of Assisi spoke to animals.
In a celebration of mythic beings and the narratives that shape them,
we experience a ceremonial procession of bugs and beasts and Francis’ feast.
IMAGE DESCRIPTIONS
1. A camel’s face has been cropped and edited with a subtle highlight and drop shadow to appear isolated and as if sitting on top of the web page’s surface. The graphic is a choppy animation, focusing on the camel’s head as it moves closer in frame or larger on the web page, slowly chewing food. The camel leaves the frame, ending the animation in no more than 5 seconds.
2. A floating “3D” geometric object-- slightly more complicated than a cube, revolves on the spot in the top left corner of the web page. Footage shot from the feast of St.Francis-- a procession of animals and people wearing white robes in a church, is projected onto the sides of this geometric object. The footage is obscured and cut off as the object revolves in 2D webspace. Below is a circle that multiplies itself, moving from one side of the screen to the other and back again. Inside it, the face of a white horse is cropped, tight and confined to the border encircling it.
3. An obtuse triangular shape with curved edges houses a video of the legs of a camel wearing a ceremonial garland standing next to a blac and white cow. They are both surrounded by people in white robes who are about to bless them at an altar. To the bottom left of the triangle is a semi-circle. Inside it is a video of the hooves of the cow standing next to the camel in the triangle.
4. A circle with a ram inside of it stands among people in white ceremonial robes. Below it a rotating cube with a video sideways showing people walking a bird to the altar as onlookers watch in amazement.
5. There is a still image of a woman in white robes holding an owl up in the air as it tries to flee her grip. The image is encased in an abstract shape that loosely mirrors the outline of a violin. The image repeatedly shudders and shakes with a yellow light flare conjuring thunder.
6. There is a long horizontal cutout of an audience stretching across the bottom of the web page, it is in black and white. Text bubbles in shades of yellow, orange and green, appear on top of the cutout, with descriptors indicating size and shape, like “giant” and “very small”. The text bubbles travel from right to left across the image of the audience and then quickly reverse back. The entire composition disappears briefly from the screen before reappearing and beginning again on loop. Below it there is a 2D cutout of a large tan coloured turtle floating. It rotates very slowly along its x and y axis, warping at different perspectives and then returning for moments to its original rendering.
7. Two circles float on a while background, one bigger than the other. They both contain the same moving image of a person walking in ceremonial white robes with a crowd of onlookers waiting in anticipation for what is to come. The images are blurry and have an effect as if we are looking at it through water.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Feast of St. Francis by Bamboat | Mitchell. Audio Description by Ama Codjoe Visualized by Rupali Morazaria
The original footage for Feast of St. Francis was filmed at the Cathedral Church of St.John the Divine, New York (October 4, 2018.) Camera: Lauryn Siegel.