| Installations // Installations 2 // Film and Opera // Performances // Videos // Fakes and Film Props |
Writing is an ordinary enough occupation. Yet how precious it is. If writing did not exist, what terrible depressions we would all suffer. Sei Shonagon |
Since my first collaboration with Peter Greenaway in 1990 (Prospero's Books) I have specialized in calligraphy for film and media. This has included more than twenty projects with Greenaway, ranging from operas and installations (Writing to Vermeer, One Hundred Objects to Represent the World) to sound and light shows (Bologna Towers 2000) and live performances (Writing on Water). In recent years I have produced my own video installations(Skin, Changeringing), as well as videos to accompany historical exhibitions. In these (Domschule, Meinwerk Burial, Egill Saga) the tools and techniques of medieval manuscript production are shown, filmed and edited in high resolution to give amazing images of the pen writing on parchment. This work has naturally led to the making of props for historical films, such as the perfect copy of the writing box of Henry VIII, which I made for the television series Henry VIII, Mind of a Tyrant, a Dox production for the BBC. I have also supplied sets of authentic materials to libraries and exhibitions, including samples of pigments used in the Middle Ages, quills, parchment, ink horns and all the accoutrements of a medieval scribal workshop.