Héctor Rodriguez
Gestus: Redux, (2018)
The Gestus project consists of a custom software that analyzes the movements of source videos in a database, identifying sequences that contain similar micro- movements and rendering them side by side. The current version uses source material drawn from Louis Feuillade’s 1916 film Judex. The film was shown in cinemas as a serial with 12 episodes, a prologue, and a brief epilogue. Each episode has an average length of less than half an hour. The total running time of the film is 300 minutes.
The work mainly exists as a single-channel video installation. The image is organized as a grid with nine cells. The source film is shown without interruptions in the central cell. The software identifies eight shots, all from Judex, whose movement (speed and direction) resembles the segment currently in the center and shown in the other eight cells.
An early version of the work, Gestus: Judex, was first presented in ISEA 2011 and exhibited at the School of Creative Media of the City University of Hong Kong in 2012. It has been subsequently shown in various festivals around the world. Gestus Redux (2018) is a thoroughly revised version of the work, including a new color scheme designed especially for this work.