T.I: A Timescape is a thirty minute single-channel video portraying Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island in San Francisco Bay. The piece consists of a series of static shots of various areas on the islands - both wider ‘landscape’ images and ‘still life’ detail shots - each separated by a brief section of black. The video plays in high definition widescreen video, but contains many shots originally filmed in the lower resolution, square-framed standard definition format. At the beginning of the piece, titles tell us that Treasure Island and Yerba Buena formed a de-commissioned military base; the cameras lingers over empty expanses, deserted corners and boarded-up buildings. These eerie, frozen landscapes sit in striking juxtaposition to the expensive real estate of downtown San Francisco visible just across the water, and the massive edifice of the Bay Bridge, permanently jammed with cars, which passes over the islands. The islands seem stranded between an industrial past and post-industrial future, awaiting redevelopment. The video itself is caught in a similar liminal state: by intercutting H.D. and standard-definition footage of the same location, the piece floats between past and ‘future’ technologies. The film’s disconcerting fusion of H.D and S.D. footage, evidently shot at different points in time but forming an awkward continuity, adds to the uncanny atmosphere generated by the stillness of the landscapes.
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