FM/TRCS (sometimes reversed by my dislexic brain as TRCS/FM) which I filmed on 8mm first and then optically printed onto 16mm Kodachrome using hi and low contrast mattes to over and under expose the film stock. During this time, 1973 thru 1974, I was living in NYC at the Whitney Program and traveling back/forth to Chicago to use the printer; I owe a great deal of thanks to Bill Brand and Louis Hock for getting SAIC to buy the printer and teaching me how to use it early on.
The original 8mm film (originally called Frame of Mind or FM) was conceived as a very personal attempt to examine and dispel my mental state triggered by hallucinogens; I began filming a series of discreet activities that had become ritualized for me. Unfortunately I had a disturbing reaction to the images in FM when I viewed the film, but then it occurred to me that color, light and sound were as important if not more so than recognizable images. As (negatively) attached as I was to the images there was no need for them. The painting world had already dismissed recognizable forms.
Watching Murnau’s Faust I realized that the continual printing of copies of the film caused increased halation around the images, softening and obscuring them. The peculiar property of light on film is that with greater intensity it spreads outward into areas not in its definition; increased light excites the silver haloid particles exponentially. Thus reprinting with contrast mattes was the appropriate method to obscure the image. The wild sound from the original activities was rerecorded until the sound wave cycle is compromised.
FM/TRCS was first shown at the Knokke-Heist Expermntl 5 Film Festival in Belgium in 1975/76 and received third prize (prix de Albert Frere).
-C.Fitzgibbon