In MARS BEACH (2018) Atton continues to explore the possibilities of using a single image as the sole foundation for an entire film. The image used here is of a collage on photograph measuring four-inches by six-inches that Atton composed beforehand. Intricate hand cut paper clippings were arranged and glued onto the bodies of two beach goers inside a 1960’s photograph and serve as the focus of what Atton manipulates visually throughout the film. The paper clippings are mirrored optically and the point of reference for most scenes is made intentionally non-symmetrical so as to signify a complexity-web of filigree that extends beyond the frame of the video. Next, varying geometric shapes are masked around moving textures and inlayed into the scenes digitally at harmonic points to give the now manipulated original photograph of Atton’s collage an informed sense of movement beyond that of only using a conventional kaleidoscopic video effect and thus serve to represent the complex mechanisms taking place within the hidden quantum world of all things.

As for sound, Atton recorded multiple tracks of varying sinewave passages on keyboard and layered-in manipulated field recordings of beach ambience within a digital audio workstation. The soundtrack serves as the films metronome and audible reflection of an underlying, albeit hallucinatory, discourse on the sacred geometry of sound and vibration (Natural Harmonics Series).

Made entirely with an iPhone and iPad mini.