Timeless Fruit
Jeff Parkin (American, born 1965)
Timeless Fruit (2023)
4K digital film and music randomly ordered by AI
Credits: Creator: Jeff Parkin. Featuring Vaughn Armstrong; cinematography by Steven Bartholomew, Avery Olsen, Ian Wood; music by The Tane; programming by Adam Bonny, Shane Warby
By Jeff Parkin
I’ve always loved peaches in the late summer and early fall. They are rich, juicy, sweet. They are the fruits of a farmer’s years-long labor of careful, nurturing, pruning, watering, fertilizing, and finally an intense period of climbing and picking and getting the fruit to market so people can enjoy them at the perfect time. I’ve seen discarded boxes of rotting peaches at roadside fruit stands that nobody bought, and thus no one enjoyed the gift of such delicious fruit.
Peaches also remind me of the fruit of the Tree of Life and how at times I don’t partake of its sweetness despite it being freely offered.
In conceptualizing this project, I thought about how time operates for God: it is non-existent. The past, present, and future are all present for Him. This must change his perspective dramatically. I wanted to explore that idea by randomly ordering shots from a traditionally-filmed linear story about a peach farmer who labors diligently to grow and harvest his delicious peaches so he can give them away. Because all God’s children are individual, each film viewing experience is also unique as the AI creates an arbitrary order for the pre-filmed clips which will be different every time the film is viewed.