Jane the Baptist is a sci-fi-techno-ecstatic voyage through the birth canals of modern automated car washes within Los Angeles County. The view is myopic, brutal, and candy lush with frothy synthetic ooze delivered by an attentive robotic hand. It is unending and internal, providing a transcendent passage to see extraordinary in the mundane. The original musical score delivers an accompanying tone that is dizzying, with both ascending and descending notes. Together it is a world gone mad but simultaneously beautiful and hypnotic, like a drive down the Sunset Strip. It is, and it will be a good ride.
The technical design behind the photography, edit, and sound of JANE THE BAPTIST, focuses on immersion, cycles, and the corresponding disorientation. This effect loosely references the Indian philosophy of Samskara — volitional formations and their perpetuations. JTB reflects upon our human condition, it’s perpetuations, and our current global landscape of automation, and the simultaneous movement toward rebirth. The photography, achieved through the use of three fisheye camera are blended together creating a tunneled wrap sensation. This birth canal passage touches back to 1960’s psychedelia and the counter cultural thrust against the wall of war and politics. The editing divisively employs jump cuts to help disorient the viewer’s sense of chronology from one car wash to the other and in turn, a willingness to allow the washing, cleansing, mechanical frothy brutality to continue to do its work. The result is a one pointed gaze, always moving towards center bashed by obstacles of touch and desire. The music and edit collaborate, moving together in choreographed motion to keep attention broad before release.
