Response 1

My initial feeling about Terry Fox’s The Children’s Tapes was that it was simply meant to be a composition of tricks and traps that would be amusing to an adolescent. However as I began to delve deeper into the simplicity and seemingly lifeless objects they began to have purposes, conflicts, and even emotions or evoke such in myself as the viewer. Thus the video portrayed everyday objects such as forks, spoons, candles, matches and fire as having conflicting relationships that allow them alter their states of being and struggle to assert a hierarchy or control over one another. In many of the scenes the almighty hand is visibly causing the objects to behave in a certain manner or setting in motion a series of events that illuminate a hierarchy of cause and effect. For instance, in the initial and final scenes the hand creates an apparatus in which when one object is moved by the hand others sequentially are cause to do something eventually resulting in the entrapment of a fly. While the hand doesn’t directly capture the fly it causes other objects to, based upon there spatial relationship. Other scenes evoke anxiety by causing the viewer to wonder not only what is going on but what is going to happen. The close shots of the extended duration of the balancing spoons, forks, and matches give the viewer excitement and expectation that a certain outcome will occur. In one of such scenes a bent fork and spoon are balancing. At first it is unclear that they are balancing as the shot is very close and dark, but as the scene widens the twisted and disfigured utensils are seen to be carefully combined to be a stable balancing sculpture. This remains for an extended period with no visible changes, thus leaving the viewer split between boredom and suspense. Then suddenly the spoon begins to teeter-totter. The sudden movement creates a panic of whether or not the sculpture can recover or it will be destroyed. Eventually it comes crashing down and the scene is concluded. Once again the control of one object in relation to another is portrayed. While the extended period of the stable structure makes the objects seem as though they are in control, and external object overthrows their balance causing them to fall. In another scene matches are bent and arranged into a pattern then a candle comes into the frame and liquid wax is dripped over the matches. The wax alters the configuration of the matches causing them to expand into a star. The hand caused the candle to drip wax on the matches and the wax cause the matches to move apart thus showing a hierarchy of causation. In the second to last scene a flame is toyed with, tempted and teased by a spoon repeatedly as if the spoon is asserting itself as more powerful and with each motion of the spoon it is discovering the weaknesses of the flame. It finally extinguishes the flame and a plume of smoke is released. The spoon has devoured the flame and declared its dominance. While at first glance the video seems as though it displays magical scenes that would amuse and excite a child it also emphasizes stratification of flames to water to metal to wax to wood and to the almighty hand of man.