Am I Making Art

The PFA never fails in providing very "interesting" array of films. Unlike Pine Flat, the Am I Making Art screening showed four films. This First was Theresa Cha's "Mouth to Mouth" which created a field of noise, mainly static and the sound a a running river, while bringing a mouth in and of of the picture. As it faded in and out, the month seemed for form different phonetic shapes. Although it was quite chaotic with the hyperactive static oscillating across the screen, the film was also sensual with the images magically appearing and disappearing at will.

The second film, "I Am Making Art" by John Boldesary, was a 15 minute single shot piece capturing a man creating different physical postures with his body. After each of the transitions to new positions he would say "I am making art". Each individual position created by the middle aged hippie man could represent a model posing for a sculpting class. The only exception is that Boldesary was not posing for a class, but rather the viewers watching his film. This piece seems to support the idea that there is beauty in movement. It was this idea that fueled the work of Muybridge, Marey, Bragaglia, and so many other photographers and film makers throughout history. Each of his movements are deliberate. As he bends like a contortionist, it represents an almost cinomatographcal vision because he holds each position as if they were captured in one of Muybridge's photographs of a galloping horse.

Next in the series came Acconchi's "Theme Song". On the superficial level of what is being recorded, a man lays in from of a camera attempting to seduce his viewers on the other side of the screen by using songs from The Doors and The Beatles to inspire and represent the emotions he was trying to exude. However in actuality, Acconchi was attempting to break down the space between the viewer and the performer. It acts as the inspiration for the movie Video Drone in asking the viewer to come into the film, and interact with the performer. Acconchi acknowledges the different worlds which are separated by the t.v. screen stating, in other words, that the film needs to work to become the same world as the viewer, allowing the viewer to enter into the film. However this is impossibly currently because "the world of film is not free." There are many constraints framing and trapping the performer within the box we know as a television or entwined amongst the rolls of film being shown through a projector.

The final film, East Side, West Side, by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson captured a man and a woman (the woman from "Boomerang") talking at a table. The man is an artist from Los Angeles, and the woman an artist from New York. The two exchange a dialogue that plays with the cliche of the two types of artist at the time. The man represented the organic west coaster while the women played the role of the non instinctual East Coaster.

All of these films discuss the constraints on art, whether, location as in East Side, West Side, the idea of what art is, as shown in I Am Making Art, and even the technological constraints portrayed in Theme Song. These works also shares their connection with language. In the introduction of the films, the PFA curator stated that the series was created to commemorate Bruce Nalman's exhibit in BAM.

Am I Making Art?

Cha's "Mouth to Mouth" was an interesting video where there's only static on the screen and sound. There were about 5 times when only her mouth comes into view and each time this occurs a variation of sound is heard. The first couple times where her mouth comes into view, I didn't notice a change, but the second time her mouth forms an "O" where you can't see her teeth, and the third her mouth forms the same shape but the noise dies down. The fourth appearance her mouth looks like it's making an "e" sound so that all her teeth are showing. Then she moves her head slowly from left to right. And for the duration of the film, the static was accompanied by sound that sounded less like static but more like quickly trickling water. And the fifth time her mouth came into view you could hear birds chirping and the static on the screen actually seemed to orient from her mouth and move outward. The host told she was pronouncing different Korean words, so I thought perhaps this film was commenting on language barrier, and I thought it was interesting that the sounds tended to be from nature.

Jon Baldessari's "I Am Making Art" took me through a process of emotions. He basically recorded himself standing and simply moving his arms and hands a few degrees and called each position "art." At first I was laughing because Baldessari is no "specimen of a man" in the Roman sense. He's not fit, he's not clean shaven and so I already felt like nothing he could do with his body could be considered art. Then I became bored with his monotone voice saying over and over again "I am making art." When boredom passed I began to catch the rhythm with which he was saying the same phrase. Every time he was moving his arms and hands to a certain position he was saying "I am making" and then when he paused at the position he would say "art." I thought, "Interesting, perhaps he means to say that making is the action and art is the form resulting from the action." But thinking this I felt somewhat angry that he should be insulting art with the idea that a simple result of some unplanned and unskilled action is art. Isn't art, at least in the traditional sense, more than just poses of transition shown through some kind of medium? Doesn't it include some refined skill and preconceiving vision used to convey particular meaning? I thought, "What's this guy trying to say about art?" Towards the end he started to play with how his body was composed in the frame by moving to one side or lying on the floor so only his arms or hands showed. I give him a little credit for some creative progress, but still, by the end I just wanted somebody to tackle him.

Vito Acconci's "Theme Song" was pretty interesting, entertaining, and creepy. He's lying on the floor so that his face is right up against the camera and takes up the right half of the screen. The left half is left empty and you can only see his couch in the background. He lays there smoking and changing songs on the tape while seducing the audience to come in and "fall into him" and let the moment take them both. He would say things like "Let my body wrap around yours" and then he'd bring his legs forward to fill the left half of the screen. At first this is all funny, but the sheer length of it and his persistent pick up lines make it creepy by the end. I thought it made an interesting statement about the way we interact with television. Sure his film made it really awkward, but what he was saying was true about other times we watch television. His comments about just letting things go, sinking into the television and the fantasy and the "lack of commitment" rung true about the way we let our minds sink into whatever drama is on and see it was a temporary escape from real life. The only difference here is that while television naturally seduces the mind into complacency and going along with whatever show is on, Acconci simply placed the seduction in the realm of physical lust. As forward and invasive Acconci's film is, it emphasizes how the mental seduction of "regular" television shows is less subtle and more effective.

The last film, "East Coast, West Coast," showing the two artists Nancy Holt ("Boomeranging") and Robert Smithson was really funny. Holt is a New York artist and Smithson is from California. He's visiting her in New York and the second he starts speaking you can tell there's a huge difference in their character. Holt keeps trying to discuss intellectual concepts of definitions, thought processes, and philosophies. She asks him why he's saying all these things like how he's going to go to India. And the whole time Smithson is smoking and answering in a "hippie" style that she's too hung up on words and concepts. He says all his art is just felt - like he sees the paints in front of him and he just makes what he feels. Then when she tries to engage him talking about how there's structure and composition like in the geometry of the Native American blankets he keeps saying, "You're a bad trip. I'm just a simple guy. I use simple words." As he's talking about sensations and going with the flow she keeps trying to bring him back to the real world to think logically about boundaries and distinctions. There's a complete communication breakdown and the west coast artists doesn't even let himself be engaged. With Holt sort of representing east coast artists and Smithson representing west coast artists, east coast and west coast seemed to be broken down into east coast characterized by being intellectual, "presumptuous," having definitions and systems, and always conceptualizing. And west coast seemed to be more sensual, going with the flow, having no system, basically just "feel it man." Overall it was really hilarious, the kind of comedy that can't be scripted, while presenting the conflict Bergson mentions about the mind not being able to both live in the action and see the overall concept simultaneously.

PFA Screening 3-07-07: Am I Making Art

This screening at PFA showed four video artworks: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Mouth to Mouth, John Baldssari’s I am making art, Vito Acconci’s Theme Song, and Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson’s East Coast, West Coast. I thought Cha’s work was particularly interesting; her mouth appeared in a swamp of video noise as she uttered something into the video camera. At some point during the showing, the video noise looked similar to streams of water randomly flowing on the screen. The effect made by the video noise exerted a sense of virtual reality. The juxtaposition of the mouth, the video noise, and the sound made by the mouth made me feel as if there was a gigantic mouth and we were all immersed in a void filled with noise and about to be sucked into the mouth.

I thought Baldssari’s video was the most bizarre of the four shown. Baldessari repositioned his body in a seemingly endless array of postures while uttering “I am making art.” The repositioning and utterance went on for about twenty-five minutes, and by the time it was over, I felt a strong sense of relief. I thought it was a bit painful to sit through the entire clip as he seems to make a mockery of what is art. Nonetheless, his work reminded me of what Bergson said about duration and becoming. Contrary to photography and cinematography where duration is obviously not captured, Badessari’s pause in between gestures also seemed to imply that there was also discontinuity of duration in video.

Acconci and Holt’s works playing back to back presented an interesting comparison of “reality” experienced by viewers through video. Acconci attempts to seduce the viewers by saying “come to me, I know you want to be with me,” even though he and the viewers were fully aware that the act of crossing into the video camera is not possible. His direct gaze into the video camera also had a penetrating effect that enhanced a sense of reality. I thought the act of his holding a cigarette was a very clever one. It showed the passage of time, and this was exactly the time experienced by the viewers. An element of reality was reproduced to accentuate the desired effect through cigarettes.

Instead of directly talking into the video camera, Holt and Smithson’s casual (at times humorous) conversation engaged the viewers to be part of their conversation in an non-intimidating way. Holt and Smithson didn’t look directly at the camera, instead they looked across the table where they were sitting. Even though it was quite obvious that there was no one sitting on the other side, it had an interesting effect in making the viewers felt as if we were in their “reality”.

- Cathy Hwang

Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, Gilles Deleuze

1. In the first commentary Deleuze contradicts Bergson’s first thesis of movement being very different from space since “the space covered is divisible…whilst movement is indivisible.” (1) Bergson is saying that movements are “irreducible among themselves,” because they are all continuous and at the same time all different making it impossible to divide up into homogeneous equivalents. Furthermore, Bergson’s thesis suggested that since movement is heterogeneous it cannot be reconstructed with still “positions in space or instants in time: that is, with immobile sections.” (1) This is a clear reference to cinematography which attempts to reconstitute movement on the screen by quickly combining static frames together. Deleuze asks a very interesting question, however, which causes us to think in a different perspective about reality: “Can we conclude that the result is artificial because the means are artificial?”(2) First, this made me think of cinemas and their apparatus—even though the movement is machine made, does that make it fake? Is movement only real in real time…when it is blatantly in front of us? Isn’t it still movement if someone is moving around “on the screen” even though it was shot from still frames? Moreover, this made me think of video art and the idea of reality vs. virtual reality. If a movie or a game opens up our senses and makes us feel a part of it even though we aren’t actually in them—what is reality? Is it only what is physically around us at any given moment, or can it also constitute anything that makes us feel like we are a part of it?

2. In his discussion of Bergson’s second thesis, Deleuze defines cinema as “the system which reproduces movement by relating it to the any-instant-whatever.” (6) This any-instant-whatever is basically any instant that is equidistant from another one—like the numbers on a clock. What caught my attention was that Deleuze describes cinema as “‘industrial art’…neither an art nor a science,” because this makes us question the purpose of cinema. Deleuze argues that it doesn’t have much scientific interest since science focuses on analysis and it is hard to analyze something related to “any-instant-whatever” which is literarily any random moment in time. Furthermore, he argues that cinema does not have much artistic credibility because art focuses more on “poses and forms that science had rejected.” (6) What is “industrial art” then? Industrial implies machine-made, modern, and repetitive. Art holds connotations of uniqueness, creativity, individuality, and man-made. Thus, it is difficult to image what these two words combined would create. Nevertheless, suggesting that cinema is exactly that is very interesting—I never thought of it that way before. It is simultaneously man-made because it uses machines, but, it produces movement which is something natural, and human-like.

3. The section on Bergson’s third thesis describes his philosophy is a general formula. Basically, reality consists of “movement as mobile section” and “qualitative change” (9) while the illusion in which we all live consists of “immobile sections” and “movement” (9). So, in reality everything is constantly changing including movement; also, instead of objects changing because they are moving, it is their qualities that constantly vibrate and change. The illusion that our perception builds, however, is that the world is made up of static objects and the change only arises from their movement which is direct and has a distinct beginning and end.

4. Lastly, in the section identifying the image and the movement, Deleuze makes a (what seems as a) profound but very confusing statement which caught my attention: “with the cinema, it is the world which becomes its own image, and not an image which becomes world.” (57) Does he mean that cinema is becoming greater than the world in a sense since it can do so much that we cannot do in reality? I understood this as if the world becomes its own image then the camera is the mirror into which the world looks to see its own reflection.

Alina Goldenberg

Pine Flat

This film by Sharon Lockhart was composed in two hour long halves. The first consisted of six 10 minute segments, with a single fixed frame shot of individual children interacting with their setting. The first shot captures a mountain during one of the winter snow falls and a young girl yelling in the background in search of her friend. Even from the first scene the film played with the viewers expectation of what "should happen". Current methods of film making have conditioned their viewers to expect some large climactic event that builds the overall plot. However aside from the natural setting and slow pace of the actions, continuity within the individual scenes is non-existent. Each shot tends to grow more frustrating then the next because the need for action is never fulfilled. From a girl reading a book on a grassy hillside, to the boy sitting along side a stream with his harmonica, or even the boy sleeping on the grass, these seem to represent nature rather than man's effects on it. Only every once in a while does man's influence corrupt the natural sounds with the sound of a gun shot, or an airplane flying over head, or a bus coming to pick up a roadside student. The movie seemed more like a "Soothing Sounds of Nature" Tape that people play right before bed. The action takes a back seat to the sounds that permeate throughout the shot. The subtle snow falling, the babbling of the brook, or the wind gusting through the tall grass; each replaces the real actors (the children) within the shot due to the viewer's search for some movement or plot.


The second half also consists of six 10 minute fit framed shots, but instead have the interaction of multiple children from the small Central Californian town. Again the first shot displays a forest covered in snow, however differing from the opening scene, children emerge at the bottom of the shot and move toward the top and finally disappear as the final minute of the shot runs out. It occurs to the viewer that the film is not necessarily about its subjects, but instead about the portrayal of time and the viewer’s reaction to Lockhart's play with time. Because there is such little action occurring within each shot (or at least not the type of action we are used to with Jean Claude kicking in doors and Spiderman swinging between buildings) it seems that the film has captured both duration and the pregnant moment at the same time. Aside from making its viewers feel like stalkers (when watching the two couples making out, etc.) the film also confronts man's obsession to cut out the "uneventful time" within film. Film has become like Sports Center Highlights given neither enough time to take in the setting or the whole plot.

- Olivia Hatalsky

Editing and Meaning: Balazs and Fabe

Balazs:
Bela Balazs describes editing as the "crowning job" of film-making. To Balazs, editing brings together all the disparate parts of the film and creates a coherent whole. Balazs believes that only by editing the various pieces together, can a the meaning of a shot be clearly analyzed. He compares this to interpreting a patch of color in a painting. Without knowing the larger context of that patch of color within the entire work of art, Balazs states that it would be difficult to understand its meaning. For Balazs, the process of editing is not to cut things but to assemble them together into a whole work of art.

Fabe:
Fabe describes how Sergei Eisenstein rejected the conventional notions that editing should create a smooth continuity. Eisenstein is much more interested in the psychology that editing together a sequence of seemingly conflicting elements would have on the viewer. Fabe points out that his famous Odessa Staircase sequence is full of visual conflicts. The opposition of lines between the panicked people and the actual stairs, the contrast between the tight orderly formation of the Tsar's soldiers and the hysterical masses chaotically running down are all key examples of how Eisenstein edits together contrasts to form his meaning. On top of this, Fabe points out how he also enjoys alternating between wide angles and close ups. Eisenstein seems to take Balazs's ideas to their maximum limit. He heavily relies on editing to achieve his message, so much so that any of the shots he strings together seem to have very little independent meaning on their own and only work within the larger context of the entire staircase sequence.

Fabe also notes how Sergei Eisenstein rejects realism to achieve the desired effects of his montage. She points out how the shots of the mother carrying her child to the Tsar's soldiers, a key moment in the Odessa Staircase sequence, completely contradicts itself. Eisenstein uses light and shadows to create a rich visual metaphor by having the mother both walk into a shadow and cast one as she ascends the stairs. Fabe notes that in order for this to be possible, the sun would have to completely change positions in the sky over the course of a few seconds. However, Eisenstein apprently is unconcerned about this lack of reality in order to achieve his revolutionary message of dynamic conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. In a final irony, Fabe states how some film critics believe the Battleship Potemkin to be a crowning achievement of Soviet "realism" in its portrayal of historical conflict when in reality Eisenstein made absolutely no attempt to pass of his art of montage as realism.

Balazs and Fabe - Joey Ponticello

Fabe
1. Marylyn Fabe attributes Sergei Eisenstein’s work as very much influenced by the works of D.W. Griffith, but instead of merely mimicking the style of Griffith, Eisenstein takes his fundamentals and enhances them to create a more shocking and jolting effect for the audience. Eisenstein was “adamantly opposed to films that slavishly tried to maintain the illusion of realistic theater by smoothly joining shots.” (27) This opposition resulted in films, most notably The Battleship Potemkin, engrossed in conflict on both the level of narrative and in the editing itself. He even went at lengths to create conflict within the detail of each frame. Throughout the passage, Fabe uses words such as clash, conflict, opposition, jerks, shocks, and discontinuity to both quote and emphasize Eisenstein’s work. What is interesting about the comparison between Eisenstein’s narrative work and what some mind consider classical narrative is that for the longest time, filmmaker’s began to believe that continuity and invisible editing was the best way to portray a story in film. I am not saying that it is not a decent way to illustrate the narrative, only that Eisenstein’s work is merely a different way of doing it. Fabe does not necessarily praise Eisenstein for his creative editing; the article is a description of an alternative film style.

2. Time and length of shots played a significant role in determining the realism of early film. Although The Battleship Potemkin is considered a realist film through the use of on location shooting and inexperienced actors, it conflicts heavily in the realm of time. Realism usually favors long takes and deep focus. Fabe claims “realist directors conceive of the frame as a window that only temporarily hides a part of the world, as opposed to a picture frame whose lines demarcate the limits of a carefully composed, patently artistic composition.”(51) The use of off screen space rather than extensive cutting gives the film more credibility as to its realism because time and space are not fragmented. The directors who try to achieve realism must remember that the world extends beyond the frame. There are different types of realism in film and each is identified in the films we watched Monday night. Potemkin is considered realist in the emotions the editing creates in the audience, but this differs from the realism Fabe claims is present in Charlie Chaplin films where the narrative unfolds before us in long takes.

3. To go more in depth on the Chaplin films, Fabe states that the main reason these films are realist even though they still flow continuously, in contrast with Potemkin’s conflict is that most of the narrative unfolds in real time. He claims, “Chaplin’s fims look artless in the sense that they do not call attention to the medium, (yet) the film medium does in fact play a large role in the success of Chaplin’s comic art.”(54) The way Chaplin used the camera and the world around him allowed him to portray his comic narratives at perfect angles and depth of focus. He was able to use different settings that might not be possible to create on the stage, therefore allowing him to explore and utilize different aspects of the mise-en-scene. Chaplin’s persona plays a large part in the comedy of his films, but the fact that each antic unfolds in real time over lengthy periods of time allows audiences to experience it in whole chunks making it more appealing.

Zeno's Paradox - Kirsten Nicholls

1) In Zeno’s Paradox, Mary Anne Doanne starts out with a breakdown of the term real time. Though her discussion of the term was somewhat long-winded, this term comes to represent the backbone of Doanne’s argument that the altering of time is something that takes place in real life, not on the big screen. Time, as she states, is one that is expressed “off-screen, between frames, in darkness”, and not through the collective stills of the film reel.
2) One of the first main points that Doanne states in her argument is that Zeno was the “perfect nemesis” for Bergson due to his philosophical beliefs as a member of the Eleatic School. In this she states that Zeno’s beliefs made him “fully invested in the denial of movement, change, and plurality.” Zeno’s famous argument is one that Bergson himself sites as a falsehood of philosophical thought. In this example, Zeno states that an arrow can never travel from point A to point B because the distance that it is traveling can be divided again and again an infinite number of times until all you are left with is an arrow that at any moment in time is at rest. And since the arrow is at rest, it cannot be in a state of motion, hence it can never reach its final destination.
3) Bergson argues that true movement cannot be divided into different snap-shots of time, as such is the case with cinematography. It cannot be divided for motion is a continuous whole and as such must be studied and understood in its entirety. In this Bergson argues that when creating the illusion of movement that movement has to exist somewhere. When we see movement through the lens of the camera, what we are actually seeing is the illusion of movement. In this Bergson means that to create the illusion of motion you must first have something that is motionless. For example, when a horse is in full gallop, what we actually seeing is the rapid transition of the background as the horse passes it by and the full stride of the horse’s body emphasizing an object in motion. When you breakdown this image an infinite number of times you find an object (i.e. the horse) that is motionless for that one-single moment. Such is the way in which the illusion of motion is accomplished in cinematography, or as Bergson saw it, “cinematograph can only produce the illusion of mobility”, not the actual effect.
4) Overall, I do agree with Doanne’s argument in that Zeno’s theory (though attempting to break new ground in philosophical thought) is at best flawed. For how can one try and disprove motion while at the same time recognizing its existence in their argument. And if mobility is in fact immobility than what does that say about life and existence as a whole. How can you exist when nothing is in motion, and when there can be no cause and no effect. How can you have this very argument if there is no existence to begin with. However as Doanne highlights in Bergson’s arguments, when it comes to cinematography and the illusion of movement, you can stop and start motion at any given point, but it can only be true motion if real time is used. Because without this acceptance of time and space and how bodies move through it, how can such an illusion of movement be right.

Zeno's Paradox - Norbert Wong

1. Mary Anne Doane argues that the manipulation of time primarily takes place off the screen. Time is mainly articulated "off-screen, between frames, in darkness" (190). Of course a director can slow down or speed up the frame rate in order to create a slow-motion or fast-forward effect. However, since time is bound to movement, during a long shot, the line of action of the film cannot make a temporal jump. It can be sped up and slowed down--dramatized--but there is no room for making direct jumps through time. It is not possible to go from event A to event C without passing through B. Thus, to actually crack the temporal plane and make it discontinuous, the director must resort to film editing. Through a montage of clips, one can recreate time, but in the way that the narrator/director intends for the audience to see it. Through parallel editing, viewers of movies are taught to accept the rules of cinematic time--that simultaneous events in "real time" can be represented by one scene following the other in "cinematic time." Ultimately, we gauge the duration of cinematic action based on the movements we observe. Within a single shot, cinematic time is usually equivalent to real time. However, to successfully manipulate time, Doane's observations are unavoidable. It is not what we see--the various camera shots--which tells us that the cinematic time has jumped. Instead, it is the the gap between the frames which signify the jump in cinematic time.


2. In The Life of an American Fireman, there are obvious temporal differences between the outdoor and indoor scenes of the fireman rescue. While some may view the timing difference as a mistake, Doane argues differently: "By repeating the scene, [the movie] reveals what was 'off' and formerly condensed, and 'reexpands' it (189). Here, Doane views the two scenes as a condensed version and an expanded version. Perhaps the film is trying to represent two points of view relative to the people. Perhaps the indoor scene experiences the time of a panicking person in the flaming house when time seems to fly by. Meanwhile, the outdoor scene could very well represent the eyes of a careless bystander, who experiences time in a calmer and slower way. In particular, I found it interesting how Doane uses the words "condensed" and "reexpands" to describe the two scenes. These two words suggest that time can in fact be divided into intervals as Zeno suggests. One cannot condense or reexpand something if that something has no beginning or end. Moreover, rexexpanding and condensing infer that intervals of an action on a given timeline can be removed and replaced at will. This is not possible in Bergsonian time, as movement is whole and cannot be divided into any sort of part.


3. While Doane is sympathetic to Bergson's ideas, she uses Deleuze to argue that his view is a "misrecognition of the cinema's true capabilities" (175). Rather than perceiving cinematic time as a variable of the camera, Deleuze argues that time should be gauged based on the viewers perception instead (175). In this way, the viewer does not actually see a series of phantasmagoric images, but movement itself. Through this, she argues that Deleuze shows that cinema actually refutes Zeno's theory. In essence, the camera is that which divides cinematic action into intervals. But according to Deleuze, only the viewer's point of view actually matters. This makes me question what else actually "matters." It seems that by going this route, Deleuze is merely trying to use a cheap play of words in order to justify the use of film while attempting to remain Bergsonian. Deleuze neither proves nor disproves. Instead, he simply ignores.

Zeno's Paradox- Spencer Rodman

1. Some background information to start out, the reading immediately tells us, "Zeno was the perfect nemesis to Bergson because as a member of the Eleatic School of pre-Socratic philosophers, he was fully invested in the denial of movement, change, and plurality." This is going to be key in my analysis due to the fact my analysis is about their ideas clashing with one another.

2. Zeno's example of the arrow where he states that an arrow can never reach its target because distance or space it must travel can always be divided an infinite number of times. This is a obviously a paradox that undermines Bergson's theory of motion. The theory Zeno presents is definitely false due to the fact, anything with the right amount of time and right equipment can almost get from any one point to another. At first I was confused by Zeno's thought process later to realize his theory is understandable if there were not already convincing evidence at this point that he is absolutely wrong. You can take his arrow idea and go greater into depth with his comparison between Achilles and the tortoise. The tortoise was given a ten unit head start with Achilles being able to run ten times faster than the tortoise. By Zeno argues in his third paradox, Achilles would never pass the tortoise because every time Achilles attains the point where the tortoise was, the tortoise has progressed a tenth of the distance Achilles has therefore the tortoise will always be ahead. Now we all know how this story ends based on childhood novelty but you would assume that Achilles would swoop right by and win the race basically immediately after they started with how fast he ran and the tortoise left in the dust. Zeno suggests that because of the ten unit lead in the beginning that the tortoise would always be ahead due to the infinite amount of time it would take for Achilles to get to from the starting line past Achilles. I completely disagree with this because the Achilles is 10times faster and should annihilate him unless of course he gets injured.

2. Bergson argues for the indivisibility of movement as a continuous whole. "Bergson admits to the fact that in order to produce the illusion of movement there must be real movement somewhere. He locates it in the apparatus, the projector, which moves the film forward." Although Zeno's paradox is false because we know something can go from one point to the next, Bergson admits that to show movement it must be an illusion when he later states, "the movement slips through the interval." Meaning to have one thing look as if it were moving, you have to have something that is still, to create the illusion. Only through this Bergson claims can be the result to avoid complete stillness in a picture. I think that he is right because if you take a picture of lets say a human, and wanted to make it look as if he were moving at a fast rate you would need to make the background move fast, creating the illusion of a moving human.


3. Finally, I do not believe Zeno can relatively disprove the possibility of movement, and certainly cannot convince me that there is no passage of time because over the years I have learned that time is of the essence. Everything evolves around time in real time and illusion time. With time anything can be done. If you could stop time or make it not exist, everything would be put on hold and nothing would be accomplished. When it comes to film I agree with certain techniques you can make time stop yet at the same time keep it going in the sense of illusion but I believe in the film industry you can only get by with slowing down time not the complete annihilation of movement in respect to time.

Office Hours 2/26-3/1 (brooke)

I've added more office hours. You can sign up by posting a comment (be sure that nobody has posted a comment for that time). Depending on what you want to talk about, bring your reading, your 10-on-1 and passages, any drafts of your midterm, etc. If you can't make the time you signed up for please let me know.


TUES 2/27 (at cafe strada, bancroft and college)
6:15 mara


WED 2/28 (Rhetoric Library, top floor in NW corner of Dwinelle Rm 7337)
11:30
11:45
12:30 leesha
12.45 olivia
1
1.15 anthony
1.30 robin
1:45 cathy
2 alina
2:15 chloe
2.30 spencer
2:45 johnny

A Commissioned Works - Feb 14

The opening thirty seconds of A Tight Thirteen Minutes made me laugh. It was two brushes with no ink or paint, brushing on a blank white piece of paper in a rhythmic pattern with a narrator describing what was happening. After I quickly pulled myself together I realized that the sixty second film was actually interesting. The narrator talked about how the rhythmic sound and the motion of the brushes produces a landscape that is visible to the eye, and I actually started to see an image appear on the paper. Just by hearing a repetitious sound and seeing a repetitious motion made an image appear in the brain. This was the perfect opening film because it raised my interest for the rest of A Tight Thirteen Minutes and A Commissioned Works.

All the artists’ of the short films tried to manipulate the representation of time in a different way in either a 60 second film or a four minute film. The film that most affected me in representing time in a different way is John Fernie’s four minute Old Fort Piece. The filming takes place inside a single room of an eighteenth century castle. The camera pans around the perimeter of the room and stops at every window, or opening, then zooms out the window to show the outside. The narrator of the film describes how the single room feels like a place of solitude, and while he is in the room time seems to slow down. It makes him feel completely relaxed and all his anxiety goes away. He expresses his experience of time by stating that someone could “marry a turtle” in a room like this. His experience of time inside the room is slower than outside. This is actually strange to me because when he zooms out the windows there are scenes of nature, which makes the walls of the room a barrier between him and the natural world. Usually time slows down for me when I am immersed in nature, not separate from it, but I guess he feels differently about nature.

The film that ended up being the most disappointing was William Wegman’s four minute Dog/Ball. This film featured a dog sitting in the same spot with a cup in front of it. The dog would catch a golf ball and then drop it. Every time the dog dropped the ball a man would move the cup to the spot where the ball hit. For almost the entire film the dog did not drop the ball in the same spot two times in a row. This shows that everything changes in time and that everything is random. I think Bergson would like this dog because it proved that nobody can really predict the future, no matter how hard they tried. Unfortunately, the dog ended up dropping the ball into the cup, showing that there is some chance to predict the future, even though everything is still random. This film actually engaged the audience the most. Whenever the dog dropped the ball near the cup the audience let out a disappointed moan and when the dog finally made it in the cup the audience cheered. The audience made the film feel like a live show and maybe that was the intention of the film, to show that past actions and time can be refreshed again and again. That the past can be experienced as the present.

Some of the other films in Commissioned Works showed different ways to measure time. In John Baldessari’s 4 Minutes of Trying to Tune Two Glasses a kitchen timer is used to represent the time passing. In Robert Watts Snowflakes, time is measured by the layers that thicken as snowflakes fall. In Eleanor Antin’s The Little Ballerina time is measured in the rotation of a wind up ballerina that revolves at a constant rate. In Siah Armajan’s Skylight at Monticello time is measured by the motion of a bar of light that rotates as it moves forward at a constant rate. I thought that using motion to represent time in films was interesting.

Johnny Mendoza

MIDTERM PAPER

Alfred Stieglitz took photographs of clouds from the 1920’s through the 1930’s. He printed hundreds of these, all with the title “Equivalent.” Some of these are currently in the Measure of Time show at BAM. How are they related to the “measure of time”? Is this a kind of chronophotography? It is a serial project but how is it similar or different from the serial photographs of Muybridge; what about from the images of Marey? What is suggested by the titles? What do you make of the fact that Stieglitz made hundreds of these photographs, over at least ten years? How would you describe the temporality of this project? What is interesting about taking ‘portraits’ of clouds? They are certainly not the traditional subject of a portrait but are they even objects? Are they actions? Is Stieglitz photographing things or ideas, spaces or moments? What concepts from Bergson could you use to think about these problems? Choose one of the Stieglitz photos to analyze in depth. What is in the frame; how does the composition work; what does the light and shape suggest? Is Lessing useful in thinking about the image—is this ‘juxtaposition in space’ or a ‘pregnant moment’? What could be the ‘virtual’ dimension of this image? Are these photographs “dynamisms,” do they show the essence of something, or what Bragaglia calls a “physical transcendentalism”? What ideas from the course so far can you use to think about the temporality of one of these images, and what might this image suggest about the temporality of photography?

Because the measure of time exhibit has been unexpectedly closed, you may write your paper on one of the Equivalents photographs available online at (be sure to indicate which you have chosen): http://www.phillipscollection.org/american_art/artwork/Stieglitz-Equivalent_Series1.htm

Your paper should be 4-6 double spaced pages (see Course Policies handout for more details). It does not need to answer every question raised in the prompt or address all of the texts we have read. It does need to engage Bergson and at least one other text from the course, carefully interpreting specific (quoted and cited) passages from these texts in order to build concrete arguments about the images you discuss. These images jump forward in time so you don’t need to consider the historical context but you will need to consider your image in the larger context of the ideas and themes we have discussed, situating your image in the conversation we have had up to this point. But, you will also need to develop your own argument, using the texts we have read as tools to actively think with as you work out your own interpretation. Read your paper as you write it; when you feel finished give it one final read (not just a spell-check) and fine tune the details. Your grade will be based on the following:
-- careful attention to the image, thoughtful and detailed analysis of the image and its context in the project
-- demonstrates strong grasp of themes and problems we’ve discussed related to time and art
-- draws upon relevant ideas, arguments, terms, and specific quoted passages from texts we have read
-- connects specific details with broader arguments and insights, rigorous thinking, genuine ideas
-- clear, communicative, and intelligent prose; standard academic style and tone; well organized and edited


Schedule and Due Dates for Midterm Paper:

2/21 ‘10-on-1’ due: (20 points)
Read chapter 5 of Writing Analytically on analysis and do the ’10-on-1’ exercise on the image
you chose for the midterm. Start rereading these texts and identifying key passages you want to work with in your paper. (If you feel a little lost facing the assignment, read the other materials in the reader up to and through Chapter 5; the earlier chapters have a lot of tips about getting started.)

2/26 Passages due: (30 points)
Select four to six passages from Lessing, Bergson, and/or Bragaglia that help develop your observations or offer interpretive and argumentative frameworks for thinking about the things you noticed. Type these passages out (with correct citations). After each passage briefly paraphrase it in your own words.

2/28 Read Chapters 6-8 of Writing Analytically on structure as you put your paper together

3/5 Midterm paper due (100 points)

3/7-3/21 Read Chapters 10, 11, and 14 of Writing Analytically on style and revise midterm essay

3/21 Revised Midterm paper due (150 points) (*note change, typo had said 200pts)

PFA Showing 2/14 - "Commissioned Works"

Normally when I experience abstract art, nine times out of ten I won’t understand anything and become easily frustrated by it. But after watching “Commissioned Works,” I think it’s sometimes better not to totally scrutinize and make sense of everything, and rather, just experience the art as a form of entertainment more than anything else. I was continually reminded of Bragaglia’s accusation that if I cannot understand his art, then I’m probably just too stupid. Well if not understanding why a man in a mask danced around naked with his junk tucked between his legs for exactly 4 minutes makes me stupid, then I’d be the first to admit it.

Immediately following the masked nude was another clip much more relaxed and pleasing to the eye, titled “Please Stand By.” A series of quiet landscapes and sceneries were displayed one by one, almost as if with the purpose of helping the viewer to mentally erase the image of the naked dancer. However, neither of the clips were made in reference to another, which suggests that the commissioner of all these short films, James Melchert, had his own artistic touch in the final compilation. Because the films were so diverse and varied, any order in which Melchert put them together could easily have a very different affect on the audience.

Ultimately, my favorite was the clip of William Wegman throwing a ball to his dog over and over. The goal was for the dog to drop the ball and make it into a tin can, which took a series of repeated failures before the dog finally, and unknowingly, made the shot. What I enjoyed most about the clip was that it was easy to relate to considering we’ve all had a pet of some sort that can be a trick in itself to train, but also the film had deep-seated meanings that artists can appreciate on that Bragaglia level. Perhaps the dog resembles ourselves as humans, doing tricks for a goal we’re completely unaware of, such as getting an education when we don’t even have a remote idea of a career in mind. Or maybe the repetition of catching the ball but missing the shot conveys the frustrations of striving for a goal, getting so close, but only missing by a few millimeters. The point is I have no idea because one, Bragaglia thinks I’m stupid and two, there really is no one answer. This compilation of films illustrates that the real meaning of modern art is to make your own interpretation regardless of what the artist originally had in mind. While many of these clips stumped me completely, I like to think there are at least two different interpretations even if I can’t think of one.

Anthony Castanos

PFA 2/14 Screening: Together Again: Collectively Created Compilations

The screening included two separate compilations, A Tight Thirteen Minutes and Commissioned Works, 1976. The first part included 60-second films by various Bay Area artists that included scenes of paint brushes acting as a drums on paper and resonating a sound and ultimately building an image out of “nothing.” All the portions were very different and in each individual way questioned time and what could be done in a short amount of it. The next screening included 15 four minute visual art projects that were made again by Bay Area artists with an assignment of depicting ways time is measured. The intention of this assignment was to see what would happen when similar instructions are given to different artists but obtain different responses from each. What happened was a unique compilation of completely unique short films that at first glance might seem to have nothing to do with time, or how it is measured; however, they each show a different perspective on an eternal question of what signifies a moment in time.

One of the first films was Robert Watts’ Snowflakes which depicted time in layers with snowflakes falling down and layering on top of the camera screen until all we can see is a blurry white image. In his interpretation, time is a continuous process that begins with nothing, builds on top of itself, and ultimately ends in nothing—for us. From another perspective, the snowflakes keep falling and falling with no beginning and no end; however, if we are underneath the snowflakes we can only experience the moment from the time we open our eyes and until the snowflake layer blocks the view from our eyes. David Askevold’s An Excerpt from the Ambit, on the other hand, had no beginning nor end—signifying that time is immeasurable since we can never know when “the clock” started ticking and when it stopped.

Dennis Oppenheim depicted time as being in a circular motion in his short film called Spinning Knives. In his piece, a person is throwing knives at a spinning board and watching it “cut” up the board with its shadow. I believe this knife can represent clocks and how it cuts up time into “random” intervals established by someone outside of nature—just like “someone” is throwing the knife; it does not fly down by itself. Lastly, one more work by Les Levine, The Selling of a Video Artist, reminded me of Bergson’s argument that “time is invention” (115), because the commentator spoke about visual art as the only way of feeling absolute time, compared to TV programming which is just a way of making us buy things. If time is used properly, as these video artists are trying to do—creating something completely new, unique, and significant in their work, then this time is much more than just measured intervals, it is their creativity, and invention.

Alina Goldenberg

Futurist Photodynamism - Laura Wood

1. According to the article photodynamism “analyses and synthesizes movement.” However, there is never really a clear definition given for “photodynamism” in the reading; since it is the title and the main focus of the article I thought beginning with a more concrete definition would be helpful. I will attempt to create one here. “Photo” sometimes means the reproduction of an event in time and “dynamism” (according to dictionary.com) is “the activeness of an energetic personality.” Thus, photodynamism can be considered the active and energetic reproduction of an event in time. It seems from the article that it is more a combination of philosophy or perception of photography and a distorted visual image of movement. This may seem very similar to art forms such as photography, chronophotography, cinematography, however, photodynamism appears to try to stay separate from the different forms of are that attempt to reproduce motion. This is because photodynamism “despise[s] the precise, mechanical, glacial reproduction of reality.

2. In an analogy using a clock it is stated that one sees little with chronophotography (only the “quarter hours”), a little more can be viewed with cinematography (the “minutes”), but with photodynamism you can see all the “intermovemental fractions… between seconds.” They are basically stating that Photodynamism is the most in depth way of viewing and thinking about motion. The strange part about using this analogy is that everything about a clock is mechanical which seems to be what photodynamism is trying to stay away from. In addition, a clock is an attempt to represent time, which can be considered something in constant motion or continuously changing. To me this analogy just seems contradictory to the ideals of photodynamism.

3. “For photodynamism, it is desirable and correct to record the images in a distorted state, since images themselves are inevitably transformed in movement… we prefer to see everything in motion, since as things are dematerialized in motion they become idealized, while still retaining, deep down, a strong skeleton of truth.” With these types of images it would be difficult to see what is/was actually there; however, if this is truly the best way of viewing things (as photodynamism argues) than maybe our minds are tricking us into believing that we see things still when we don’t. This type of argument reminds me a lot of Bergson in that photodynamism wants us to take a deeper look into the idea of motion and both (photodynamism and Bergson) are critical of film and different art forms of representation. Does this mean that photodynamism can be considered more accurate than our eyes? Since we can’t see the blur or “transformation in movement” maybe our eye work too slowly, or maybe this is intentional so we can make sense of the images that appear ‘clear’ to us since they “retain… a skeleton of truth.” Similar to what Bergson said, if everything were moving and we thought too much about motion we would probably go insane.

4. Throughout the style of writing appears to follow a pattern: most paragraphs begin by criticizing what one form of representation lacks (i.e. photography only allows the viewer to “move abruptly from on state to another”) and then does one of two things 1) describes how photodynamism does it better or 2) shows how photodynamism avoids doing the same thing (i.e. with photodynamism you can see the “intermovemental fractions… between seconds.”). By doing so, photodynamism proves how desperately they do not want to be grouped with the other art forms. However, aren’t they still creating a representation of movement even if it is not in a “precise [and] mechanical” way? Aren’t they just trying to understand motion better in order to create better representations of motion? “Now a knowledge of the paths traced by bodies in action and of their transformation in motion will be indispensable for the painter of movement.”

5. Another thing that I thought about was that Zeno would disagree with the entire paper simply by stating that motion does not exist.

Futurist Photodynamism

by anton giulio bragaglia 1st july 1913
http://www.391.org/manifestos/antongiuliobragaglia_futuristphotodynamism.htm

(***This is the reading for Wed. Please print it out, mark it up, and bring it with you to class.)

To begin with, Photodynamism cannot be interpreted as an innovation applicable to photography in the way that chronophotography was. Photodynamism is a creation that aims to achieve ideals that are quite contrary to the objectives of all the representational means of today. If it can be associated at all with photography, cinematography and chronophotography, this is only by virtue of the fact that, like them, it has its origins in the wide field of photographic science, the technical means forming common ground. All are based on the physical properties of the camera.

We are certainly not concerned with the aims and characteristics of cinematography and chronophotography. We are not interested in the precise reconstruction of movement, which has already been broken up and analysed. We are involved only in the area of movement which produces sensation, the memory of which still palpitates in our awareness.

We despise the precise, mechanical, glacial reproduction of reality, and take the utmost care to avoid it. For us this is a harmful and negative element, whereas for cinematography and chronophotography it is the very essence. They in their turn overlook the trajectory, which for us is the essential value.

The question of cinematography in relation to us is absolutely idiotic, and can only be raised by a superficial and imbecilic mentality motivated by the most crass ignorance of our argument.
Cinematography does not trace the shape of movement. It subdivides it, without rules, with mechanical arbitrariness, disintegrating and shattering it without any kind of aesthetic concern for rhythm. It is not within its coldly mechanical power to satisfy such concerns.

Besides which, cinematography never analyses movement. It shatters it in the frames of the film strip, quite unlike the action of Photodynamism, which analyses movement precisely in its details. And cinematography never synthesises movement, either. It merely reconstructs fragments of reality, already coldly broken up, in the same way as the hand of a chronometer deals with time even though this flows in a continuous and constant stream.

Photography too is a quite distinct area; useful in the perfect anatomical reproduction of reality; necessary and precious therefore for aims that are absolutely contrary to ours, which are artistic in themselves, scientific in their researches, but nevertheless always directed towards art.

And so both photography and Photodynamism possess their own singular qualities, clearly divided, and are very different in their importance, their usefulness and their aims.
Marey's chronophotography, too, being a form of cinematography carried out on a single plate or on a continuous strip of film, even if it does not use frames to divide movement which is already scanned and broken up into instantaneous shots, still shatters the action. The instantaneous images are even further apart, fewer and more autonomous than those of cinematography, so that this too cannot be called analysis.

In actual fact, Marey's system is used, for example, in the teaching of gymnastics. And out of the hundred images that trace a man's jump the few that are registered are just sufficient to describe and to teach to the young the principal stages of a jump.

But although this may be all very well for the old Marey system, for gymnastics and other such applications, it is not enough for us. With about five extremely rigid instantaneous shots we cannot obtain even the reconstruction of movement, let alone the sensation. Given that chronophotography certainly does not reconstruct movement, or give the sensation of it, any further discussion of the subject would be idle, except that the point is worth stressing, as there are those who, with a certain degree of elegant malice, would identify Photodynamism with chronophotography, just as others insisted on confusing it with cinematography.

Marey's system, then, seizes and freezes the action in its principal stages, those which best serve its purpose. It thus describes a theory that could be equally deduced from a series of instantaneous photographs. They could similarly be said to belong to different subjects, since, if a fraction of a stage is removed, no link unites and unifies the various images. They are photographic, contemporaneous, and appear to belong to more than one subject. To put it crudely, chronophotography could be compared with a clock on the face of which only the quarter-hours are marked, cinematography to one on which the minutes too are indicated, and Photodynamism to a third on which are marked not only the seconds, but also the intermovemental fractions existing in the passages between seconds. This becomes an almost infinitesimal calculation of movement.

In fact it is only through our researches that it is possible to obtain a vision that is proportionate, in terms of the strength of the images, to the very tempo of their existence, and to the speed with which they have lived in a space and in us.

The greater the speed of an action, the less intense and broad will be its trace when registered with Photodynamism. It follows that the slower it moves, the less it will be dematerialised and distorted. The more the image is distorted, the less real it will be. It will be more ideal and lyrical, further extracted from its personality and closer to type, with the same evolutionary effect of distortion as was followed by the Greeks in their search for their type of beauty.

There is an obvious difference between the photographic mechanicality of chronophotography -embryonic and rudimentary cinematography - and the tendency of Photodynamism to move away from that mechanicality, following its own ideal, and completely opposed to the aims of all that went before (although we do propose to undertake our own scientific researches into movement).

Photodynamism, then, analyses and synthesises movement at will, and to great effect. This is because it does not have to resort to disintegration for observation, but possesses the power to record the continuity of an action in space, to trace in a face, for instance, not only the expression of passing states of mind, as photography and cinematography have never been able to, but also the immediate shifting of volumes that results in the immediate transformation of expression.

A shout, a tragical pause, a gesture of terror, the entire scene, the complete external unfolding of the intimate drama, can be expressed in one single work. And this applies not only to the point of departure or that of arrival - nor merely to the intermediary stage, as in chronophotography - but continuously, from beginning to end, because in this way, as we have already said, the intermovemental stages of a movement can also be invoked.

In fact, where scientific research into the evolution and modelling of movement are concerned, we declare Photodynamism to be exhaustive and essential, given that no precise means of analysing a movement exists (we have already partly examined the rudimentary work of chronophotography).

And so - just as the study of anatomy has always been essential for an artist - now a knowledge of the paths traced by bodies in action and of their transformation in motion will be indispensable for the painter of movement.

In the composition of a painting, the optical effects observed by the artist are not enough. A precise analytical knowledge of the essential properties of the effect, and of its causes, are essential. The artist may know how to synthesise such analyses, but within such a synthesis the skeleton, the precise and almost invisible analytical elements, must exist. These can only be rendered visible by the scientific aspects of Photodynamism.

In fact, every vibration is the rhythm of infinite minor vibrations, since every rhythm is built up of an infinite quantity of vibrations. In so far as human knowledge has hitherto conceived and considered movement in its general rhythm, it has fabricated, so to speak, an algebra of movement. This has been considered simple and finite (cf. Spencer: First Principles - The Rhythm of Motion). But Photodynamism has revealed and represented it as complex, raising it to the level of an infinitesimal calculation of movement (see our latest works, e.g. The Carpenter, The Bow, Changing Positions).

Indeed, we represent the movement of a pendulum, for example, by relating its speed and its tempo to two orthogonal axes. We will obtain a continuous and infinite sinusoidal curve. But this applies to a theoretical pendulum, an immaterial one. The representation we will obtain from a material pendulum will differ from the theoretical one in that, after a longer or shorter (but always finite) period, it will stop. It should be clear that in both cases the lines representing such movement are continuous, and do not portray the reality of the phenomenon. In reality, these lines should be composed of an infinite number of minor vibrations, introduced by the resistance of the point of union. This does not move with smooth continuity but in a jerky way caused by infinite coefficients. Now, a synthetic representation is more effective, even when its essence envelops an analytically divisionist value, than a synthetic impressionist one (meaning divisionism and impressionism in the philosophical sense). In the same way the representation of realistic movement will be much more effective in synthesis - containing in its essence an analytical divisionist value (e.g. The Carpenter, The Bow, etc.), than in analysis of a superficial nature, that is, when it is not minutely interstatic but expresses itself only in successive static states (e.g. The Typist).

Therefore, just as in Seurat's painting the essential question of chromatic divisionism (synthesis of effect and analysis of means) had been suggested by the scientific enquiries of Rood, so today the need for movemental divisionism, that is, synthesis of effect and analysis of means in the painting of movement, is indicated by Photodynamism. But - and this should be carefully noted - this analysis is infinite, profound and sensitive, rather than immediately perceptible.

This question has already been raised by demonstrating that, just as anatomy is essential in static reproduction, so the anatomy of an action - intimate analysis - is indispensable in the representation of movement. This will not resort to thirty images of the same object to represent an object in movement, but will render it infinitely multiplied and extended, whilst the figure present will appear diminished.

Photodynamism, then, can establish results from positive data in the construction of moving reality, just as photography obtains its own positive results in the sphere of static reality.
The artist, in search of the forms and combinations that characterise whatever state of reality interests him, can, by means of Photodynamism, establish a foundation of experience that will facilitate his researches and his intuition when it comes to the dynamic representation of reality. After all, the steady and essential relationships which link the development of any real action with artistic conception are indisputable, and are affirmed independently of formal analogies with reality.

Once this essential affinity has been established, not only between artistic conception and the representation of reality, but also between artistic conception and application, it is easy to realise how much information dynamic representation can offer to the artist who is engaged in a profound search for it.

In this way light and movement in general, light acting as movement, and hence the movement of light, are revealed in Photodynamism. Given the transcendental nature of the phenomenon of movement, it is only by means of Photodynamism that the painter can know what happens in the intermovemental states, and become acquainted with the volumes of individual motions. He will be able to analyse these in minute detail, and will come to know the increase in aesthetic value of a flying figure, or its diminution, relative to light and to the dematerialization consequent upon motion. Only with Photodynamism can the artist be in possession of the elements necessary for the construction of a work of art embodying the desired-for synthesis.

With reference to this the sculptor Roberto Melli wrote to me explaining that, in his opinion, Photodynamism 'must, in the course of these new researches into movement which are beginning to make a lively impression on the artist's consciousness, take the place which has until now been occupied by drawing, a physical and mechanical phenomenon very different from the physical transcendentalism of Photodynamism. Photodynamism is to drawing what the new aesthetic currents are to the art of the past.' . . .

Now, with cinematography and Marey's equivalent system the viewer moves abruptly from one state to another, and thus is limited to the states that compose the movement, without concern for the intermovemental states of the action; and with photography he sees only one state. But with Photodynamism, remembering what took place between one stage and another, a work is presented that transcends the human condition, becoming a transcendental photograph of movement. For this end we have also envisaged a machine which will render actions visible, more effectively than is now today possible with actions traced from one point, but at the same time keeping them related to the time in which they were made. They will remain idealised by the distortion and by the destruction imposed by the motion and light which translate themselves into trajectories.

So it follows that when you tell us that the images contained in our Photodynamic works are unsure and difficult to distinguish, you are merely noting a pure characteristic of Photodynamism. For Photodynamism, it is desirable and correct to record the images in a distorted state, since images themselves are inevitably transformed in movement. Besides this, our aim is to make a determined move away from reality, since cinematography, photography and chronophotography already exist to deal with mechanically precise and cold reproduction.
We seek the interior essence of things: pure movement; and we prefer to see everything in motion, since as things are dematerialised in motion they become idealised, while still retaining, deep down, a strong skeleton of truth.

This is our aim, and it is by these means that we are attempting to raise photography to the heights which today it strives impotently to attain, being deprived of the elements essential for such an elevation because of the criteria of order that make it conform with the precise reproduction of reality. And then, of course, it is also dominated by that ridiculous and brutal negative element, the instantaneous exposure, which has been presented as a great scientific strength when in fact it is a laughable absurdity.

But where the scientific analysis of movement is concerned - that is, in the multiplication of reality for the study of its deformation in motion - we possess not merely one but a whole scale of values applied to an action. We repeat the idea, we insist, we impose and return to it without hesitation and untiringly, until we can affirm it absolutely with the obsessive demonstration of exterior and internal quality which is essential for us.

And it is beyond doubt that by way of such multiplication of entities we will achieve a multiplication of values, capable of enriching any fact with a more imposing personality.
In this way, if we repeat the principal states of the action, the figure of a dancer - moving a foot, in mid-air, pirouetting - will even when not possessing its own trajectory or offering a dynamic sensation, be much more like a dancer, and much more like dancing, than would a single figure frozen in just one of the states that build up a movement.

The picture therefore can be invaded and pervaded by the essence of the subject. It can be obsessed by the subject to the extent that it energetically invades and obsesses the public with its own values. It will not exist as a passive object over which an unconcerned public can take control for its own enjoyment. It will be an active thing that imposes its own extremely free essence on the public, though this will not be graspable with the insipid facility common to all images that are too faithful to ordinary reality.

To further this study of reality multiplied in its volumes, and the multiplication of the lyrical plastic sensation of these, we have conceived a method of research, highly original in its mechanical means, which we have already made known to some of our friends.

But in any case, at the moment we are studying the trajectory, the synthesis of action, that which exerts a fascination over our senses, the vertiginous lyrical expression of life, the lively invoker of the magnificent dynamic feeling with which the universe incessantly vibrates.
We will endeavour to extract not only the aesthetic expression of the motives, but also the inner, sensorial, cerebral and psychic emotions that we feel when an action leaves its superb, unbroken trace.

This is in order to offer to others the necessary factors for the reproduction of the desired feeling. And it is on our current researches into the interior of an action that all the emotive artistic values existing in Photodynamism are based.

To those who believe that there is no need for such researches to be conducted with photographic means, given that painting exists, we would point out that, although avoiding competing with painting, and working in totally different fields, the means of photographic science are so swift, so fertile, and so powerful in asserting themselves as much more forward looking and much more in sympathy with the evolution of life than all other old means of representation.

Bergson - Part 2 : Olivia Hatalsky

1. This second section of Bergson's "Modern Science" is concerned with the evolution of scientific though between ancient and modern methods. The primary example used here is the emergence of taxonomies. From as early as the first paragraph strong ties were made to a Foucauldian way of thinking. Bergson stated “signs substitute for the objects themselves”(329) which relates, in my mind, to Foucault’s theory that with out current modes of seeing, the word and “sign”, as Bergson referred to it, have come to be more valuable than the actual three-dimensional objects they represent. The way in which our mind simplifies and categorizes, what Bergson calls “laws of genera” (330), referring the scientific toxonimization of our world has caused both scientists and humans alike to overlook to gaps between both different objects as well as the relationship between symbols and the objects that they represent. Yes Bergson emphasizes that cinematographical vision is wrong, but why are the “intervals between moments” that are overlooked with this type of vision so valuable to him? In a sense, modern man has tried to conquer time through science by breaking it into smaller pieces dissecting each moment for more study, but what Bergson seems to comprehend is that man’s current mode of seeing does replicated the real it only distorts it. Although the title of the piece is “Creative Evolution”, which seems to condone new attempts at understanding and representing time, Platonic and Aristotelian Ideas are lacking, while to current modes do too much and alter the real.

2. It is easy to think that Bergson is just a senile old man who doesn’t like the technological changes caused by film occurring around him. But is there something more? Is it more that just a pure invalidation of technological advances? I actually believe that he has taking a page from the works of Walter Benjamin who believed that with capturing a moment through any reproductive mean detracts from the original “aura”. Yet Bergson takes this argument a step further. Even the discussion of a moment through language detracts from the “total definition or description of a period.” (110) This occurs because instead of describing one single fact, several distinguishable phases are noted. With the sentence “none of them has the right to set itself as a moment that represents or dominates the others” Bergson virtually invalidates the idea of the pregnant moment. This is almost to say that the sum of all of the cinematographically created moments do not add up to the actual real period. In essence, the sum is greater than the whole of its parts. And although the view from a camera is far more precise than that of an eye, this still doesn’t seem to compensate for the intervals of time missed between moments recorded.

3. There are two types of knowledge that Bergson introduces. The first is cinematographical and the second states that “we should no longer be asking where a moving body will be, what shape a system will take… it is the very flux of the real that we should be trying to follow.”(342) This second kind of knowledge which displaces cinematographical vision almost calls humans to appreciate the current moment—smell the flowers. But this isn’t a fortune cookie instructing its reader to focus on today and deal with tomorrow when it comes. Furthermore Bergson describes this second knowledge as “practically useless”(343) because it will not extend mans domain over the real. So why is it here? It only exposes that the first type of knowledge (cinematographical), which allows people to foresee the future, is again, a fraud. This vision is just a representation of the real which is actually going on currently. Bergson seemingly want to have his cake and eat it too. He want to pure vision of reality, but at the same time he craves a “empire over nature”(343). How is this possible? Man is still a slave to time no matter that he can break a day into 24 hours or re-watch a moment that happened in the past. Scientific knowledge has tried to give man a greater understanding of time and nature by forming hierarchies and taxonomies of information. This mosaic of information is incomplete, as Bergson discusses. Yes, like the lapses of time missed by cinematographical time, scientific knowledge is not a real portrayal of the world, but it is an attempt for further understanding. Vision through this mode is incomplete, but does Bergson have a better suggestion for understanding the world?

-Olivia Hatalsky

Bergson's Creative Evolution Pt. 2 - Jamal Hunt

1. In the “Modern Science” section of the reading, Bergson first compares the goals of ancient and modern science. Ancient science was essentially concerned with the pregnant moment: the “ideas of Plato or of Aristotle correspond to privileged or salient moments. They…characterize a period of which they express the quintessence” (110). Modern science, on the other hand, strives to describe something at every possible point in time. That is to say, it tries to break up time into an infinite number of pieces and be able to describe each one through empirical laws. Bergson relates this shift in scientific thought to the invention of photography and film. Instead of painting a horse galloping as our eye sees it, we photograph it many times and treat all instances as equal. Instead of thinking about the falling of an object, scientists ignore any specific fall and try to develop an equation to predict the position of any falling object at any time (110). Modern science works toward a functional end, and to do so it depends completely on discrete units of time on which to calculate. This first section is almost entirely intuitive and does not challenge our normal view of time. Bergson takes a relatively long while to prove something we all know: science is interested in quantitative results and it relies on strict calculation to get those results. By doing so, he lays the groundwork for his real argument that follows.

2. Objections to Bergson’s case for time being an indivisible flow are almost all related to science somehow. Any non-scientific objection can easily be chalked up to a natural resistance to a change in our conditioned view of the world. In addition to being counterintuitive, indivisible time seems to make any scientific question impossible to answer. It seeks to destroy the functional division of time that governs our lives. By binding science so strongly to the interval measurement of time, Bergson can reconcile science and fluctual time and remove science as an opponent to it. He first explains that fluctual time has no meaning to science. Modern science “always considers moments, always virtual stopping-places, always, in short, immobilities. Which amounts to saying that real time, regarded as a flux…escapes the hold of scientific knowledge” (113). Science cannot exist without points in time to calculate on. Here, just when any scientist is apt to be at their most extreme opposition to a continuous view of time, Bergson quite brilliantly explains that in fact, his view of the world and science can coexist. Precisely because of the modern scientist’s inattention to specific instances, science and fluctual time are not mutually exclusive. In his words, what “is important to the physicist is the number of units of duration the process fills; he does not concern himself about the units themselves and that is why the successive states of the world might be spread out all at once in space without his having change anything in his science or to cease talking about time. But for us, conscious beings, it is the units that matter” (114). Correct proportions are the only things that matter in calculations, so science can continue unchecked even if everyone embraces the true nature of time. Bergson seems to be making a sort of covert compromise by indicating that it is acceptable for the functionally useful façade of divisible time to continue as long as we all realize that it is only a construction and that in reality time never stops. Suddenly his ideas do not seem quite so difficult to consider.

3. Bergson’s most interesting idea in this section involves a reversal of the usual view of the constancy of time. It is easy to imagine that although time fluctuates quite a bit based on our experience—time flying during fun or slowing to a crawl during a boring activity—there is some external clock that ticks away at a constant pace. He begins with the example of waiting for a sugar cube to melt: “While the duration of the phenomenon is relative for the physicist,…this duration is an absolute for my consciousness, for it coincides with a certain degree of impatience which is rigorously determined” (114). Certainly this makes sense; a person looking at the amount of time over which the event took later sees only a number. Their experience of it takes only as long as their eyes are on the page or their mind is on the matter. Bergson dwells on his complete lack of power to influence the period of the melting. His experience of that time (the “psychical duration” as he calls it) is absolutely forced upon him. Though this makes little sense looking from a scientific perspective, it has a kind of undeniable visceral truth. To me, to everyone, the only absolute time is the time each person experiences. Every other time is only imagined and can be purposefully distorted to any amount, whereas our experienced time is out of our direct control.

4. Bergson goes further with this idea and relates it to art. Considering a child putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a painting, he posits that because the child will get better at finishing the puzzle after multiple experiences, its completion time will move toward instantaneous. The time taken is variable and not absolute. On the other hand, an artist making a painting is creating something. The act of creation “is not an interval that may be lengthened or shortened without the content being altered” (115). The puzzle will never change no matter how long it takes to put it together, but the real painting must take a certain amount of time or it would not be the same painting. That is to say, the act of creation in itself creates absolute time. “Time is invention or it is nothing at all” (115). This theory values art and creation highly and is perhaps a criticism of our abandonment of genuine art for a manufactured third-person timescale. Bergson seems fed up with the fake construction of an interval-based existence. His ultimate point is simple: It “will appear the necessity of a continual growth of the universe, I should say of a life of the real” (116). Almost paradoxically, this call for a life of the real harkens to the original quest of science for absolute truth. According to Bergson, our quest has sadly led us farther away from truth rather than closer to it.

Bergson's Creative Evolution - Ethan Makhluf

1. In the selection from Bergson’s work “Creative Evolution”, he theorizes on the function and basis of human intellect. “The function of the intellect is to preside over actions. Now, in action, it is the result that interests us; the means matter little provided the end is attained” (99). Bergson gets his idea across by using the analogy of a person lifting their arm. This action requires several steps to complete, yet the human mind does not consider all the muscles contractions and tensions required – it just envisions the end result. The rest – the steps involved to produce the action – “elude our consciousness or reach it only confusedly” (99). Bergson finds that human perception is based on distinguishing qualities such as color and sound from different persons, objects, and motions. What does it say about human intellect if the main function of it is simply presiding over actions? What then drives the actions themselves, and do we have control over this seemingly arbitrary force? This, combined with his idea that the steps involved in an action either completely elude our conscience or confuse us, and we could assume that, while not outright faulting humans, Bergson does not think as highly of the human mind as others would have you believe. Further, if the human intellect is only concerned with the end result for such frivolous actions as raising an arm, does this apply to more serious concerns and actions? For some, if not many, this would seem true.

2. It seems as though Bergson is criticizing the way the human mind perceives things. With the human arm analogy, Bergson notes that the mind only thinks of the end result. It is as if nothing happens from when the arm leaves point A and arrives at point B. Bergson, though, states “the body is changing form at every moment; or rather, there is no form, since form is immobile and the reality is movement. What is real is the continual change of form: form is only a snapshot view of a transition” (101). He finds reality to be fluid and continuous, and since our perception chops up this reality into different forms and re-presents it, our mind is essentially tricking us. Bergson’s main idea is his comparison of this way of perception to a cinematograph. Our mind works much the same way as a cinematograph, which for instance could take several pictures of soldiers in formation and then animate it to suggest or recreate the action of marching. “We take snapshots, as it were, of the passing reality, and, as these are characteristic of reality, we have only to string them on a becoming…situated at the back of the apparatus of knowledge, in order to imitate what there is that is characteristic in this becoming itself”(103). With that said, maybe Bergson isn’t criticizing the way the human mind perceives things – after all, how could this be helped? It simply is. Rather, perhaps Bergson is criticizing cinema/film.

3. Bergson also talks about the motion of an arrow, specifically the break down or “spatializing” of its path (the same diagram we saw in class). He says that you cannot break up the movements of the arrow mathematically, that it is one constant motion, never stopping. There is only a starting point, point A, and an ending point, point B. This is related to the idea of a human being progressing through life. Bergson notes that we imagine stops on the evolution of life – infancy, adolescence, maturity, old age. Like the arrow though, Bergson feels life travels along a path, never stopping along the way, but constantly changing: “The reality, which is the transition from childhood to manhood, has slipped between our fingers…[becoming] is the reality itself” (106). To see – for lack of a better word – correctly, Bergson says we must “escape from the cinematographical mechanism of thought” (106). Bergson believes that in life there are no distinguishable stops - or check points, in a sense - that can be applied from birth to death. Life is a constant state of transition. From this we could perhaps extract his own opinion about evolution itself: the human of today is not the end point of the evolution process, we are still in a state of transition/evolution (however slow and indiscernible it may be) and will undoubtedly look, act, and think different down the line.

Ethan Makhluf