My friend Katie McKay and I love water. We're both our happiest when we're swimming and over the last year we've been trying to figure out why. We've been trying to capture the magic of swimming the best way we can - by harvesting sounds, sights, and sentiments. We call our collaboration part & parcel.
Our first shot at this turned into a film called Wavelengths where we interviewed adult lane swimmers about how swimming makes them feel. This piece was projected outside the Centennial Pool building in Halifax as Part of Nocturne 2013.
In the summer of 2014 we decided to move out of the pool and into the lake. Halifax is a coastal city so people mostly associate it with ocean times but it is truly a city of lakes. Beautiful beckoning bodies of water are only a bike ride away and we wanted to capture their glory.
So, we took our microphones, cameras, goggles and bathing suits to as many lakes as we could find. We invited our friend Rebecca Roher to come along and illustrate what she could see. We collaborated closely with composer Al Melnyk to create a dreamy bubbly soundscape and then with the incredible help of designer Lukas Steinman we crafted an immersive parallax web experience.
To launch the site we hosted an unusual screening experience at the Khyber Centre for the Arts. Jacinte Armstrong choreographed a moveable screen. We projected the video elements of the project onto a sheet of white lycra (bathing suit material!) as dancers Rhonda Baker and Kathleen Doherty activated the screen.
This project would not have been possible without the support of Arts NS, HRM Open Projects, the Centre for Art Tapes and The Khyber Centre for the Arts.
We're also totally indebted to Kira, Annie, Jude, Casey, Eva, Nick, Sophia, Rosalyn, Becca, Jayme and Zolk.