I like taking things away from my artworks to see what happens. When I filmed this video, there were people swimming in the pool, but I 'rubbed them out' with a program on my computer. Making the people invisible let me concentrate on things I might not notice if you could see them, like the shadows and splashes and ripples the swimmers have made in the pool.

When I make a video, I think about the same kinds of things as when I make a drawing or a painting, like the ways the colours will go together and what patterns or shapes the lines in the work will make.

For this work, I like the way the line of the wall makes a stripe between the ocean and the swimming pool, and the different colours. The way the waves move the water around reminds me of the way wet paint moves to make a painting.

My name is Jess MacNeil and I'm the artist who made the work The Swimmers.

To make this video, I put my camera on a tripod and pointed it at what I wanted the scene to be. I liked the colors and patterns in the ocean and the pool. And, the way that these are so different even though they are both water. I zoomed my camera in so that the wall separating the pool from the ocean made a stripe across the center of the image.

When I make a video work I think about the same kinds of things as I do when I make a painting or a drawing. Things like, the way the colors will go together, and what the shapes and patterns will be. But when I make a painting I know that what's making these patterns and shapes is the way that my hand is pushing the brush and the paint around.

When I make a video I'm always asking questions about what it is that makes things look, and move, the way that they do. One of the things that I liked most about the pool and the swimmers is the way that the swimmer's movements make patterns in the water. Ripples and shadows and splashes.

I like taking things away from my artworks, to see what happens, so I rubbed out the bodies of the swimmers with a program on my computer. But the patterns they make in the water are still there.

Having something important missing from the picture turns the picture into a mystery. And, this helps me and the people watching the video concentrate on these things in a way that they might not if the swimmers were still there. If you keep looking you'll see that everything in the image effects everything else. Like the way the ripples from the swimmers make the lines on the bottom of the pool ripple and move as well. Or the way the waves from the ocean splash over into the pool and mix with the splashes the swimmers make.

You might wonder what kind of world this video shows. Is it real or imaginary? You might think about questions like, Who are these people? Why are they missing? Where have they gone? Or imagine what might feel like to be one of the invisible swimmers but still be able to have an effect on the world around you.Of all these ways of thinking about this video, what I enjoy most is being able to look at the same thing in different ways. I hope you enjoy this too.