Genur.art

video frame grab, miniDV camcorder still, standard definition, interlaced lines, low resolution, heavy compression, soft smeared detail, video noise, automatic exposure hunting, no flash, available light, diffuse morning window light, flat even lighting, slightly washed out colors, home video, medium quality. A 33-year-old woman stands at a kitchen counter in the morning, one hand on a kettle and the other holding a mug, turning her head toward the camera mid-sentence with her mouth open on a word she is not going to finish. Light comes from a window above the sink under a white sky, soft and shadowless, filling the whole kitchen evenly and putting only the faintest gradient down one side of her face. The camcorder's automatic exposure has settled a little bright, so the window and the worktop by it go slightly pale and her face reads flat with almost no modelling on it. Detail smears the way video does — her hair becomes a soft mass, her eyes lose their edges, and a faint horizontal line structure runs through the whole frame. The kitchen is plain and mid-use: cereal boxes left out, a tea towel over the oven handle, a washing-up bowl with things standing in it, a wall calendar with something written on today, magnets and a takeaway menu on the fridge, a chair pulled out from the table with a bag on it. Compression turns the wall into flat blocks and crawls in the dark under the cupboards. The colour runs slightly warm and washed, the whites not quite white. Focus drifts and settles somewhere near the kettle rather than on her. The framing is handheld and low, tilting a little as whoever is filming shifts their weight. The overall feeling is ordinary, warm and unremarkable, a normal weekday morning being filmed for no reason. low resolution, low quality