Dream train (mobilities)

 

Length: 1:02

 

This video is a version of the Lumiere brothers’ famous 1895 "The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat.” In the black-and-white video (run through several antiquing/blurring filters), a train slowly approaches a platform. In less than a minute, the train has pulled in, stopped, and people get off and on. A piano tracks the arrival of the train, first with quickly thumping bass notes alternating between C minor and F7 chords, arpeggiated in the bass. The chords and arpeggios slowly ascend the keyboard to higher notes, lighter sounds, and then a slower, plaintive chromatic melody, almost suggesting that the entrance of people onto the scene makes the experience of coming and going on the train sad.