Study in Microfisch (work in progress) from stephen McLaughlin on Vimeo.
I used to spend a lot of time post university working on my own in the basement of an examining board. I spent my days working my way through microfisch tapes full of exam results trying to find out what someone on the other end of an application form had gotten in English Literature in Surrey in 1978 and attempting to find any semblance of meaning in it all. I grew obsessed with the magnified murk and detritus; fossilised insects, the fingerprints dandruff of god knows who. In the end I looked forward to delving into these tapes to see what I'd find, printing and cataloging what I felt the most important and aesthetically pleasing. I treated each as a landscape and this film is my way of trying to breathe life back into the microscopic worlds trapped in these obsolete technologies.
Soundtracked by me on the broken piano which I used to share my living room with