The Power of Repetition
Video by Lea Wülferth and Derek Muro
A Finalist for the Deanna Tulley Multimedia Contest, “Pursuit of Sadness” is an audiovisual collaboration between Lea Wülferth, a writer and visual artist, and Derek Muro, a composer and sound artist, built around the following repeating words displayed on screen and interspersed with other images:
he gets himself a balloon / he lets it fly away / he flees to the attic / he cries
Born from a dream in which a friend said her 2 year-old son sought to experience the depth of sadness, it’s a simple story on its surface. But repetition changes it. We can’t get that initial pureness of feeling when we go through the same motions over and over. And eventually sadness may turn into a new experience, such as letting go.
Over 7 repetitions we start to perceive the story differently as well, and as the soundtrack changes from literal to more abstract the immediacy of feelings fade, and we are left less with sadness than a feeling of peace and hopefulness.
Lea Wülferth (@l_peregrine) is a Brooklyn-based artist, exploring themes of freedom, identity, memory, and truth(s) on a personal and socio-political level across different media. She was named Author of the Month by Spillwords Press in December 2017 and has published poems and artwork in Chaleur, The Esthetic Apostle, Watershed Review and more. Her paintings and mixed media art have been exhibited at the A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn Museum, The Living Gallery and Pratt Institute, among others. In 2017, she opened the YouTooCanWoo gallery in Brooklyn to provide opportunities to showcase and engage with the amazing artistic talent in her creative community and create immersive experiences. She graduated with master’s degrees from the University of Oxford, England, and the Sorbonne in Paris, France.
Derek Muro (@wavebreakr.mp3) is a composer of music focused on the associative properties of sound related to emotion, memory and perception. He’s created musical works for film, video games, interactive media, branded content, dance, theater and concert listening such as Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere and Webby Award-winner Coke Habit, and performances at BAM, the Yale Institute for Music Theatre, and European festivals. He is a graduate of Manhattan School of Music and the Juilliard Pre-College program.
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