16 Second Art

Once reviewing digital pictures of my mother and me on my camera I made an uncanny discovery. My mother’s lips were moving, as if she were trying to talk to me, very slowly, but I wasn’t listening. At first I thought I was hallucinating. It turned out that by mistake the picture was made in “Multiburst” mode and the camera caught us unawares recording 16 seconds of our conversation.

The Multiburst mode was created for amateur sportsmen and Pilates addicts who now had a chance to check their imperfect form. For me this nearly obsolete low-tech function is poised between photography and cinema. The Multiburst commemorates the ephemeral and presents a minimum unit of movement without plot. It reminds us of the early days of cinema when recorded movement was still new.

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