Zahra Salarnia

Title: Kisses of the Wind
Form: Experimental Film
Technique: Stop Frame Animation
Material: digital photography, digital editing

Kisses of the Wind is an abstract animation that embodies my sensory experience of the Port Waikato dunes in New Zealand, created from digitally edited still photographs and sound. It emerged from a set of preliminary experiments undertaken during the early stages of my PhD research, through which I sought to cultivate a sense of connection and attachment to my new living environment. By engaging with the New Zealand landscape through multisensory interaction, I aimed to understand the place more deeply and translate these affective impressions into an animation.

Phenomenology, psychogeography, and sensory ethnography guided the embodied animation process, in which the body, movement, and sensory interaction served as modes of knowing and understanding throughout the project. The production process was intuitive and experimental, with an outcome that was initially unknown and gradually emerged over time through iterative play. Walking served as the primary method for experiencing and engaging with the environment. As I drifted freely through an unfamiliar landscape, I developed an embodied understanding of place through sight, touch, smell, and sound. These spontaneous movements led me to discover the patterns on the sand, shaped by the wind. I captured a series of photographs of the sand patterns and recorded the sound of the wind, two dominant sensory experiences of the site for me.

Through an exploratory editing process, I created the illusion of motion between the still images by manipulating the duration of each frame and the speed of transitions between them. As one pattern transformed into another, the imagery began to evoke the motion of ocean waves. I embraced this emergent idea because water was also a significant part of my sensory experience of the place. These insights guided my creative decisions regarding the rhythm and overall movement of the animation. As the still photographs of sand gradually transform into moving waves, the dreamlike world of the film emerges from the interaction of differences. In this liminal space, between stillness and motion, sand and sea, the film suspends fixed boundaries, allowing new forms and meanings to emerge.