This Moment

Artist Statement

I addressed the program theme of everyday experience by speaking upon the power of the present moment. This is a subject which I have spent a lot of time talking about in my life, and find it very important. It was hard for me to sit down and write a 3 to 7 minute narrative on something so expansive. How could I deduce something so vast and meaningful to the confines of a short narrative? I knew what I wanted to talk about, just not how I wanted to go about it. I told myself, “Don’t think, do.” I decided to just jump into it, and started crafting visuals and then meshing them with a sound scape. I did this by walking around aimlessly with an audio recorder and camera. I had no plan, only to capture whatever came to me. Things started to take shape and eventually I had a rough visual and audio cut finished. I began to craft the narrative around what I had done. It was then that I realized that the organization of my random clips, pictures, and sounds had no flow. I reorganized everything, slowly piecing it all together again, with words this time. This process of creating everything almost haphazardly was extremely rewarding for me. Things ended up coming together in a way which I could never have possibly planned. The creation of this video was done entirely in the moment.

Artist Bio

Zachary P. Halpern is from White Salmon, Washington. He is currently a sophomore at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He has only just begun his exploration into the world of video essay, and holds plans to continue on the exciting pathway. Next year, Zachary will be studying where art and science meet, and how that pinnacle can be used to communicate for a better understanding. After Evergreen, life is uncertain. Wherever he is, Zachary hopes to be spreading his concepts and ideas in the pursuit of a higher collective awareness.