FINAL PAPER PROPOSAL
due on Blog (as comment to this post) by Thursday, 5pm
1 paragraph, approx 100 words.
Title, artist/director, and date of the object you will write about.
Why you want to write about this, how you will relate it to the course.
How you’ll focus and narrow the scope.
Initial ideas about sources.
Initial concerns or questions.
Your final paper will be 8-10 pages. You will need to use one of the theorists from the second half of our course (Deleuze, Virilio, Sobchack). You will also need to find at least TWO other sources. At least one must directly relate to your chosen object, and at least one must provide historical or theoretical context. The sources should be academic, the kinds of things we might have used in class if we had studied that object; so for instance you could use a review published in Film Quarterly but not a review published in USA Today.
Sites for Finding Media Art, Digital Art:
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/search/keyword:cinema
http://www.rhizome.org/
http://artport.whitney.org/
some examples:
http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/battleofalgiers/BattleofAlgiers.shtml
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/art_and_cinematography/douglas/
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/24-hour-psycho/
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/illuminated-average/
at BAM in Measure of Time: Ken Goldberg piece, Shirley Shor piece
Partial List of Potential Films:
Rashoman
Run Lola Run
Sliding Doors
Bourne Identity
Mission Impossible 3
The Day After Tomorrow
Pulp Fiction
Sex Lies and Videotape
Crash
Memento
EXistenZ
I-Robot
AI
Premonition
12 Monkeys (is based on La Jetee)
TVSeries: Daybreak, 24
Irreversible
Chunking Express
2046
(films from) The Decalogue
La Femme Nikita
Hiroshima Mon Amour
Places to find Sources:
Project Muse: muse.jhu.edu/
JStor: www.jstor.org/
Berkeley library: http://sunsite5.berkeley.edu:8000/
PFA Library: http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/pfalibrary/
Berkeley Media Resources: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/
Monday, April 9, 2007
Sunday, April 8, 2007
1. Throughout this excerpt, Sobchack refers to a sense of duty, "ethical responsibility" (136) or "ethical investment" (140). She argues that each technological advance -photography, cinema, and electronic- changes the "norms of ... ethical investment" (140). She says that "As our aesthetic forms and representation s of 'reality' become externally realized and then unsettled first by photography, then cinema, and now electronic media, our values and evaluative criteria of what counts in our lives are also unsettled and transformed" (136). In other words, as technology advances, representations of reality externalize our perceptions of it more and more and this breaks down our sense of ethics. Military training seems to be a good example of this. First, there were shooting ranges where you shoot a picture of someone, not a real person. Technology has advanced to the point where soldiers are being trained to shoot using video-games like Doom or virtual simulations that simulate them dropping a bomb over a building. But in these technological mediums, there seem to be no real consequences except you use up your life points, "game over," or "mission accomplished." They do not see real blood or the families that grieve over a lost relative. It seems that as these technological intermediates overlap more and more representations of reality, the connection between a person and reality and its consequences become weaker and so does his/her sense of ethics. Perhaps this correlation is not a coincidence but rather reveals that in the real world there is an unchangeable moral standard or "ethical responsibility" which exists like the body but through cultural values and technology, its representation is different but this representation is not reality.
2. Sobchack refers to Chris Marker's film La Jetee and uses it to demonstrate the difference between photographs -"moment" (144)- and cinema -"lived momentum" (145). In the film, still photographs of a woman are shown and Sobchack describes it as seeming to only see a figure in memory: "frozen and re-membered moments that mark her loss as much as her presence" (145). From this paragraph it seems to imply that this woman is no longer with the hero, that in reality she is not there but her presence remains through the photograph, keeping her from completely vanishing. But then she "suddenly blinks" as the "increasingly rapid cinematic succession of stilled and dissolving photographic images of her" (145) approach motion and subtly achieve it and "the image becomes 'fleshed out,' and the woman turns from a posed odalisque into someone who is not merely an immortalized lost object of desire but also -and more so- a mortal and desiring subject" (146). Isn't this "increasingly rapid cinematic succession of stilled and dissolving" the same as the increasing reduction of the interval? At this point where the intervals are so small we perceive the representation of movement and the woman appears to regain a degree of substance or "flesh" as "we and the image are reoriented in relation to each other. the space between the camera's (and the spectators) gaze and the woman becomes suddenly inhabitable" (146). It appears that the woman may have vanished completely had it not been for the photograph that preserves the memory of her, making the photograph the point between her presence and her nonexistence, like a vanishing point where something of substance passes out of existence. But by rapidly succeeding these photographs or vanishing points, we bridge the space inbetween and seem to have a direct experience with her. It's interesting that traditionally a body must move towards a vanishing (along a z-axis) watching the image in the distance get closer and closer before being able to stand in direct relationship with it in the real world, but this film seems to propose that rapidly succeeding representations of vanishing points bring it from a removed distance to an involved, relational and intimate experience perhaps like the way reading brings an experience to a reader. Each word has a presence as it has a definition and purpose (verb or adjective), but alone it does not mean much; it simply exists like the woman in the photograph. But place a word after it and a word after that, each word its own vanishing point, and eventually a sentence forms and with it meaning and experience for the reader. As shrinking spaces between words to a critical size lets readers cross the time and distance separating the reader from the author, so does shrinking the interval between successive still photographs let viewers cross the time and distance (the z-axis) which is the removal of the third dimension that separates the viewer from the person using the camera.
3. I noticed that Sobchack spells "remembered" with a hyphen as "re-membered" (145). It seems appropriate to spell it this way emphasizing the "re" as if to imply the revers of "dismembered," suggesting that through the photograph she loses substance because she's dismembered of her body but can be "re-membered" in photograph, although not to the real her. In the same way electronics like a television might "atomize" (155) or dismember information of a whole, like an image, into pieces like electrons or pixels, and disperse it
across a system like the television screen to re-member it into a 2-D image. As electronics today accomplish this process with abstract things like image and information the negative consequences we may encounter are a noisy image or mistranslation. What consequences might occur if electronics atomize a living body to the effect of, in reality, accomplishing the "suddenly inhabitable"? The Fly is a movie in which such a scenario is presented. Jeff Goldblum is a scientist working on teleporting objects. The machine he invented essentially takes the object or material, analyzes it, atomizes it, passes it to the destination pod, and then "re-members" it there. for things like metal and paper the process works successfully, but when he put a baboon in it, the baboon came out the destination pod inside out. Later he realizes this occurs because the machine is interpreting the object's makeup insufficiently and demonstrates this by putting in a steak and observing that the steak after teleportation is artificial. It seems that to "re-member" something is to produce something like the original but actually a fake representation that falls short of the original. Then he understands this mistake occurred because he didn't teach the machine to recognize living tissue. So the machine's ability to re-member the steak was limited because it could only re-member the steak based on what it knows which is controlled by the scientist. Later Goldblum himself goes into the pod but there is a fly in the pod also so that when he comes out the other pod, his and the fly's bodily molecules are mixed and several problems arise. It follows that electronic capabilities are subject to what humans teach them to do. Therefore, it appears logical that since humans are often incapable of remembering things objectively and accurately, that electronic should be incapable also, resulting in the diminishing of reality.
2. Sobchack refers to Chris Marker's film La Jetee and uses it to demonstrate the difference between photographs -"moment" (144)- and cinema -"lived momentum" (145). In the film, still photographs of a woman are shown and Sobchack describes it as seeming to only see a figure in memory: "frozen and re-membered moments that mark her loss as much as her presence" (145). From this paragraph it seems to imply that this woman is no longer with the hero, that in reality she is not there but her presence remains through the photograph, keeping her from completely vanishing. But then she "suddenly blinks" as the "increasingly rapid cinematic succession of stilled and dissolving photographic images of her" (145) approach motion and subtly achieve it and "the image becomes 'fleshed out,' and the woman turns from a posed odalisque into someone who is not merely an immortalized lost object of desire but also -and more so- a mortal and desiring subject" (146). Isn't this "increasingly rapid cinematic succession of stilled and dissolving" the same as the increasing reduction of the interval? At this point where the intervals are so small we perceive the representation of movement and the woman appears to regain a degree of substance or "flesh" as "we and the image are reoriented in relation to each other. the space between the camera's (and the spectators) gaze and the woman becomes suddenly inhabitable" (146). It appears that the woman may have vanished completely had it not been for the photograph that preserves the memory of her, making the photograph the point between her presence and her nonexistence, like a vanishing point where something of substance passes out of existence. But by rapidly succeeding these photographs or vanishing points, we bridge the space inbetween and seem to have a direct experience with her. It's interesting that traditionally a body must move towards a vanishing (along a z-axis) watching the image in the distance get closer and closer before being able to stand in direct relationship with it in the real world, but this film seems to propose that rapidly succeeding representations of vanishing points bring it from a removed distance to an involved, relational and intimate experience perhaps like the way reading brings an experience to a reader. Each word has a presence as it has a definition and purpose (verb or adjective), but alone it does not mean much; it simply exists like the woman in the photograph. But place a word after it and a word after that, each word its own vanishing point, and eventually a sentence forms and with it meaning and experience for the reader. As shrinking spaces between words to a critical size lets readers cross the time and distance separating the reader from the author, so does shrinking the interval between successive still photographs let viewers cross the time and distance (the z-axis) which is the removal of the third dimension that separates the viewer from the person using the camera.
3. I noticed that Sobchack spells "remembered" with a hyphen as "re-membered" (145). It seems appropriate to spell it this way emphasizing the "re" as if to imply the revers of "dismembered," suggesting that through the photograph she loses substance because she's dismembered of her body but can be "re-membered" in photograph, although not to the real her. In the same way electronics like a television might "atomize" (155) or dismember information of a whole, like an image, into pieces like electrons or pixels, and disperse it
across a system like the television screen to re-member it into a 2-D image. As electronics today accomplish this process with abstract things like image and information the negative consequences we may encounter are a noisy image or mistranslation. What consequences might occur if electronics atomize a living body to the effect of, in reality, accomplishing the "suddenly inhabitable"? The Fly is a movie in which such a scenario is presented. Jeff Goldblum is a scientist working on teleporting objects. The machine he invented essentially takes the object or material, analyzes it, atomizes it, passes it to the destination pod, and then "re-members" it there. for things like metal and paper the process works successfully, but when he put a baboon in it, the baboon came out the destination pod inside out. Later he realizes this occurs because the machine is interpreting the object's makeup insufficiently and demonstrates this by putting in a steak and observing that the steak after teleportation is artificial. It seems that to "re-member" something is to produce something like the original but actually a fake representation that falls short of the original. Then he understands this mistake occurred because he didn't teach the machine to recognize living tissue. So the machine's ability to re-member the steak was limited because it could only re-member the steak based on what it knows which is controlled by the scientist. Later Goldblum himself goes into the pod but there is a fly in the pod also so that when he comes out the other pod, his and the fly's bodily molecules are mixed and several problems arise. It follows that electronic capabilities are subject to what humans teach them to do. Therefore, it appears logical that since humans are often incapable of remembering things objectively and accurately, that electronic should be incapable also, resulting in the diminishing of reality.
Am I Making Art?
I don’t really know how to characterize the films I have viewed at the PFA besides saying they are “interesting.” The film I will be discussing this time is “Am I Making Art.” It consisted of four different sections.
The first segment was of a “salt and pepper” screen (black and white dots, like one with no signal) with the image of a mouth emerging at different intervals of time throughout. I think it is ironic (if not intended) or symbolic (if planned) that the piece is about communication barriers (according to Cha Hakkyung, the artist) since the screen appears to have no signal which represents no communication. I also found it interesting that most of the sounds were of nature rather than words. These are “signs” which people of all areas would recognize as opposed to particular languages which only a specific group in a particular space and in a particular time would understand.
The next scene appeared analogous to a photo shoot where a model moves a little bit (to give the photographer a different angle or shot) and then holds the pose, repeating this process until the shoot is complete. It was of a scruffy looking older man posing in front of what I assumed was a monitor (where he was looking at the replication of his image while he was “making art”). He was within a confined space, but was moving within this area. He was contorting his body into different positions and would then hold the pose and say, “I am making art.” The transitions between the different poses were not dramatic; in fact, it probably took him less than a second to go between positions. It appeared as though he was using a distinct appendage during each transition. For example, he moved his arm from his side to his shoulder and repeated the phrase then moved his leg from the floor to a 90 degree angle and repeated the phrase. It looked like he tried to isolate each one in his motions by hesitating and “striking a pose” in this fashion. The motions themselves were done quickly and then held for a comparable amount of time or a little longer (so that the phrase was said while he was “motionless”). It reminded me of people like Muybridge and how he tried to brake up movements into still figures to try to understand motion.
Another scene was of a man lying facing the camera. He was very close to the screen (or he at least appeared to be while we were watching, it could have been zoomed in on him). He was smoking, humming, singing, listening to music, and apparently seducing the audience. More likely, however (since this is a “piece of art”), he was trying to prove that the viewer is not within the same space or in the same time as the area and time where the art is being created, yet the individuals watching feel connected to or involved with the story plot and actors. This is similar to the point in one of the scenes from Video Drone (I think it was called) where the guy makes out with the television (literally making the spaces and times exist as one in the same). Until virtual reality, however (and maybe not even then), we will not be able to be in two times or places at once.
All in all I thought the points these scenes were trying to discuss were interesting, however, I wouldn’t like to watch the film again.
The first segment was of a “salt and pepper” screen (black and white dots, like one with no signal) with the image of a mouth emerging at different intervals of time throughout. I think it is ironic (if not intended) or symbolic (if planned) that the piece is about communication barriers (according to Cha Hakkyung, the artist) since the screen appears to have no signal which represents no communication. I also found it interesting that most of the sounds were of nature rather than words. These are “signs” which people of all areas would recognize as opposed to particular languages which only a specific group in a particular space and in a particular time would understand.
The next scene appeared analogous to a photo shoot where a model moves a little bit (to give the photographer a different angle or shot) and then holds the pose, repeating this process until the shoot is complete. It was of a scruffy looking older man posing in front of what I assumed was a monitor (where he was looking at the replication of his image while he was “making art”). He was within a confined space, but was moving within this area. He was contorting his body into different positions and would then hold the pose and say, “I am making art.” The transitions between the different poses were not dramatic; in fact, it probably took him less than a second to go between positions. It appeared as though he was using a distinct appendage during each transition. For example, he moved his arm from his side to his shoulder and repeated the phrase then moved his leg from the floor to a 90 degree angle and repeated the phrase. It looked like he tried to isolate each one in his motions by hesitating and “striking a pose” in this fashion. The motions themselves were done quickly and then held for a comparable amount of time or a little longer (so that the phrase was said while he was “motionless”). It reminded me of people like Muybridge and how he tried to brake up movements into still figures to try to understand motion.
Another scene was of a man lying facing the camera. He was very close to the screen (or he at least appeared to be while we were watching, it could have been zoomed in on him). He was smoking, humming, singing, listening to music, and apparently seducing the audience. More likely, however (since this is a “piece of art”), he was trying to prove that the viewer is not within the same space or in the same time as the area and time where the art is being created, yet the individuals watching feel connected to or involved with the story plot and actors. This is similar to the point in one of the scenes from Video Drone (I think it was called) where the guy makes out with the television (literally making the spaces and times exist as one in the same). Until virtual reality, however (and maybe not even then), we will not be able to be in two times or places at once.
All in all I thought the points these scenes were trying to discuss were interesting, however, I wouldn’t like to watch the film again.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
The Medium Is 4/4/07
The Medium Is is a collection of works from the 1970’s, which explore the instantaneity of video and its presentations through unique techniques. Lynda Benglis’ Now muddles the ideas of “live recording” and pre-recorded material. In the 12 minute video from 1973 the words “now,” “start recording,” “do you wish to direct me?” repeat constantly while a woman’s face is visible facing itself in a colored background. It is unclear what is going on or how the scene is shot; it seems as if there is a monitor behind the woman who is showing pre-recorded material of the same woman doing similar actions and saying the same words. The action of the “live” woman right in front of the camera do not match up with the actions on the screen—they are the same but do not occur simultaneously, meaning the live woman is copying what is happening on the screen. So it is unclear what is live and what is pre-recorded.
Richard Serra’s Boomerang was shown in which, as we’ve seen, Nancy Holt has headphones on and can hear her voice after she speaks her words, not simultaneously. It was almost painful to watch her deteriorate again as she begins to slow down and feel like she has lost control over herself. At the end of the video, right as Nancy is at her final breaking point, she reveals her thoughts on the pollution of TV: it “cuts [us] off from reality as we usually experience it.” This reminds me of Verilio’s argument about ecological pollution by video technology and that it causes a hybrid man, a transhuman, to emerge who neither roams the world in a journey or is sedentary in an urban environment; this new man experiences the world, and motion through immobile devices such as TV without having to actually move himself. Thus, our reality, real time is completely different than of the people who existed before TV, and media was invented. Furthermore, just like this video experiment caused Nancy to break down, maybe TV is slowly doing the same thing to our senses and creativity.
Two Faces by Hermine Freed was a really interesting eight minute video from 1972 in which a prerecorded image of the artist was flipped and was courting her own identity. It began with two heads facing each other (it looked very real) and they were moving into each other and back—emerging from within each other. Then they began to do other symmetric movements, and later they began tongue playing and kissing. I had to remind myself that it was all just one person playing with mirrors, images and video, not two identical women. Although the artist has a doubled image in the video, she herself seems very alone because in reality she is touching her mirror image; her actions are between herself—the reality, and the mirrored double. However, I had some trouble figuring out the overall theme or point of the video, I just really enjoyed the artist’s creativity in using and video technology.
Dan Graham presented a 23 minute video called Performer/Audience/Mirror that dealt with just that—a performer, the audience, and the mirror. In it a man walked into a room with a mirror in the back and a group of people sitting on the floor facing the mirror. The man began talking about his position, posture, and balance; he described his movement by describing every specific action of every part of his body. It was interesting to think about if he was acting out what he was saying or if he was describing what he was doing. Nevertheless, he kept switching from facing the audience to facing the mirror and from describing himself to describing the audience. People began looking at themselves in the mirror and began to look like a unit, a collective, not individuals. I think what the video might have been trying to show is people’s fixation with TV. As the audience kept listening to the man speak, they looked into the mirror at themselves so the mirror became the screen and the audience became a unifying image. Also, everything the man was commentating on was happening right there and then, his speech was not premeditated; the people’s reactions, movements, and expressions provided him with ideas as a sort of feedback loop—he spoke, they reacted, and then he spoke again based on their reactions. In turn, this mirrors how TV and the media work showing that the audience (us) is their inspiration and consumer.
The last video by Peter Campus called Three Transitions was my favorite because of its special effects. He creates three self-portraits with technological aspects and then destroys them. In the last scene a hand is holding a piece of paper with the image of Peter on it and then it is set it on fire. As the paper burns the image disappears with it. It raised the question of where do these videos go after they are shown? It is as if the people shown on TV disappear, burn away when their purpose is finished and the video is shot, and shown. Moreover, it reminded me of Verilio who argues that the nomad is dissipating because the journey is no longer necessary for the intake of information; thus, it is needless to go in search of information because it is provided through the transapperant horizon. This video might hint at the fact that as quickly as we gain information, as quickly we can lose it because of our reliance on machines. The video image of Peter was destroyed by nature, by fire; this shows the dominance of nature over technology because in the end, fire can destroy anything. If we continue to rely on optoelectronics we will forget how it is to be in motion on a trajectory and search for information the “old” way.
Reminders
The reading for next week is Vivian Sobchack's article, "The Scene of the Screen", which is the last item in your reader. (And Monday night we will have a screening.)
At the end of next week you'll need to post a proposed idea for your final paper on the blog, so think about films, videos, or digital media objects that you would like to write about...we're open minded, as long as you can investigate some aspect relating to time.
At the end of next week you'll need to post a proposed idea for your final paper on the blog, so think about films, videos, or digital media objects that you would like to write about...we're open minded, as long as you can investigate some aspect relating to time.
Monday, April 2, 2007
Talks, Films, & Events (Repost)
A reminder of upcoming events...
You are required to attend the 4/22 dance performance on campus as well as TWO other events. One must be a film, the other can be a film or lecture. Post a response and evaluation for both the events you choose to attend. Please start a new post if you are the first to respond to an event. Then other people who also attended can post their responses as comments to the initial response. The responses should be similar to reading responses, describing the film a bit for those who did not see it but focusing on your ideas rather than on summarizing, doing some thinking about relationship of the event to themes in the course.
More events may be added to this list as they are announced. You may attend up to three extra events for extra credit (extra events 10pts each, required events 25 each except April 22 event counts double for 50).
Websites for More info about locations, tickets, etc:
Yerba Buena http://www.ybca.org/
Berkeley Art, Technology, Culture Colloquium http://atc.berkeley.edu/
Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/
California College for the Arts http://www.cca.edu/calendar/
TUESDAY APRIL 3 PFA
7:30 Anthology Film Archives: Recent Preservations
Andrew Lampert in Person
Lampert, archivist and programmer at Anthology Film Archives, long a key institution on the East Coast arts scene, presents classics of 1960s and '70s avant-garde in fabulous prints that you'd normally have to travel to New York to see. Program includes:
Film Number 16 Oz: The Tin Woodman's Dream (Harry Smith, c. 1967). Zenscapes (Marie Menken, c. 1957). Note to Colleen (Saul Levine, 1974). Nine Variations on a Dance Theme (Hilary Harris, 1966). Five 8mm Films (George Landow, 1961-62). Fuses (Carolee Schneemann, 1964-67)
Wednesday April 4
7:30 The Medium Is, works by Lynda Benglis, Peter Campus, Hermine Freed, Dan Graham, Richard Serra
With its instantaneous feedback and image manipulation, video technology creates a nowness of perception along with the distraction offered by any good spectacle. In Now, Lynda Benglis’s first color tape, the eponymous word is repeated, questioning the currency and the command. Then, over-driving the color image, Benglis collapses the notion of the medium as neutral. Wearing headphones in Richard Serra’s Boomerang, Nancy Holt repeats phrases that are heard, then heard again in delay. The effect is of feedback effectively devouring its own message. Using a split screen in Two Faces, Hermine Freed faces herself, caressing her mirrored image. Suspended between images, Freed exists as a doubled person, alienated and adrift. Recorded in San Francisco, Dan Graham’s Performer/Audience/Mirror is a study of mediated relations, a mirror standing in for the TV as the artist describes the audience before him. The circularity of the exchange captures the phenomenology of feedback. In Peter Campus’s seminal tape Three Transitions, inherent properties of the medium become potent metaphors for the depiction of internal states and the breach between reality and illusion.—Steve Seid
Now (Lynda Benglis, 1973, 12 mins, Color, Mini-DV, From VDB). Boomerang (Richard Serra, 1974, 10.5 mins, B&W, DVD, From The Museum of Modern Art, New York). Two Faces (Hermine Freed, 1972, 8 mins, B&W, Mini-DV, From VDB). Performer/Audience/Mirror (Dan Graham, 1975, 23 mins, B&W, DVD, From EAI). Three Transitions (Peter Campus, 1973, 5 mins, Color, Mini-DV, From EAI).
• (Total running time: 59 mins, U.S.)
Thursday April 5, Friday April 6 PFA (counts as one event)
Thurs April 5 7:30 Tropical Malady, Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand/France, 2004, 118 mins)
Fri April 6 7:00 Tropical Malady: Shot-by-Shot, Discussion with Apichatpong Weerasethakul
(Sud pralad). The agreeably irrational Tropical Malady melds folk fable with euphoric modern moviemaking, effortlessly traversing the mundane and the miraculous. In this pastoral with a dark pulse, two beguiling stories unfold: the first a playful romance between a handsome soldier, Keng, and Tong, a country boy; the second, a nocturnal journey into a realm of shape-shifting creatures. While Keng and Tong’s blissful courtship is told through moody, tender tableaux, the seeds of a lurking apprehension are being quietly sown—a dead body is found at the edge of the jungle, cows are found slaughtered in the fields. The villagers tell of a spirit that inhabits the body of a wandering tiger. As the second story emerges, Tropical Malady leaves behind the matter-of-fact for the mystical, a lush jungle peopled by talking monkeys and tricksters in human form. And who is that stalking the dread tiger? Is it soldier Keng? In this numinous tropic, we relish the malady of not necessarily knowing. Winner, Prix du Jury, Cannes 2004.
TUES APRIL 10 PFA
7:30 BB Optics: Optical Printing and Preservation Work
Bill Brand in Person
Brand presents a wide range of works preserved or printed by his firm, BB Optics, including avant-garde pieces and films confiscated from the Nixon White House by the FBI. Program includes:
New Left Note (Saul Levine, 1968/82). Nixon White House Super-8 Films (Reel S-10) (1969-73). The Fallen World (Marjorie Keller, 1983). Fire in My Belly (David Wojnarowicz, 1986-87). Home Avenue (Jennifer Montgomery, 1989). Black and White Film (Robert Huot, 1968-69). Daffodils (Katy Martin, 1979/81)
Tuesday, April 10 at Stanford University
4:30pm
the Sawyer Seminar Visualizing Knowledge: From Alberti's Window to Digital Arrays
presents a panel discussion between Pavle Levi and Marta Braun on "The Visibility of Motion."
Lectures and discussion will be held at the Stanford Humanities Center, 424 Santa Teresa
Ave., Stanford, CA 94305, (650) 723-3052.
http://visualization.stanford.edu information
http://visualization-wiki.stanford.edu streaming audio
THURSDAY APRIL 12 PFA
7:30 Time After Time
In experimental works and emotionally evocative narratives, students examine memory and its decay.
Program includes: Wandern (Daniel Czernilofsky, 5 mins). you are i hate you (Marik Armstrong, Josh McVeigh-Schultz, 14 mins). My Companions (Wenhua Shi, 1 min, B&W). A Sikh in America (Peter Alsop, 5 mins). Multiple Hugs & Kisses (Yosuke Hosaka, 6 mins). Saturday Ice Fever (Scott Bishop, Siyu Song, Frances You, 2 mins). Hard Knock Life (Alison Beaumont, 2005, 2 mins). Blips and Beeps (Nikolaos Hanselmann, 4.5 mins, B&W). Urban Jungle (Sophie Cooper, 8.5 mins). Fractal (Morgan Swing, 15 mins). Home Movies (Jason Karpman, 3.5 mins, B&W)
Total running time: 67 mins (plus Q & A)
Friday April 13 PFA
8:50 The Passenger
Michelangelo Antonioni (Italy/France/Spain, 1975, 123 mins)
A penetrating political thriller, The Passenger, set in the Sahara, is also a desert film, and it resembles the much earlier L’avventura—a desert island film—with its horizontal vistas and its theme of absence. Jack Nicholson portrays a London journalist named Locke who, sent to cover a rebellion in North Africa, assumes the identity of a man, Robertson, who has died in the next hotel room. Locke is running away from being a journalist—from the codes that replace knowing, the images that replace seeing. He’s much like Monica Vitti’s Vittoria in L’eclisse in his desire for escape, for a mask. But, embracing Robertson’s globetrotting, increasingly mysterious persona, he finds himself pursuing not the man’s life, but his death. Even the camera seems to have a will toward another world: it distractedly tracks a passing camel in the desert, an anachronistic horse-drawn carriage in Munich. The film’s famous final seven-minute zoom literally draws out the pain of seeing in focus.
Monday April 16 Doug Aitken 7:30
Art Technology Culture Colloquia, on campus (see website for location)
Internationally known Video and Digital artist Doug Aitken talks about his work.
http://archidose.blogspot.com/2007/01/30-in-30-27.html
TUESDAY APRIL 17 PFA
7:30 Anger Rising: The Restoration of Works by Kenneth Anger at UCLA Film and Television Archive
Ross Lipman in Person
New 35mm prints of four of Kenneth Anger's most famous films, plus an illustrated lecture by UCLA's Lipman detailing the challenges involved in restoring them. Program includes:
Fireworks (1947). Rabbit's Moon (1971). Scorpio Rising (1963). Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965)
Jim Campbell at Hosfelt Gallery March 17-April 28
Jim Campbell is a digital artist (and pioneer of HDTV) who installs arrays of LED lights to produce unusual projections of film of video. He has a show of new work open right now in San Francisco. If you want to go you can write about the exhibit as an event review.
http://www.hosfeltgallery.com/HTML/exhibitions.htm
Jim Campbell TALK at PFA Sat April 21 12pm in MEASURE OF TIME gallery
(REQUIRED) Sunday April 22, 2pm Zellerbach theater, Berkeley Dance Project
Directed by Lisa Wymore
Featuring The Reception, a cross-disciplinary performance piece utilizing dance choreography and tele-immersion technology to explore a re-visioning of cyber culture and corporeal presence. Also featuring new choreographic works by Tammy Cheney, Robert Moses, Carol Murota, and Ellis Wood. The Reception: Co-directed by Lisa Wymore (TDPS) and Ruzena Bajcsy (CITRIS). *The April 22 performance will be followed by a post-performance discussion: Being Here: Presence/Remote Presence within Live and Media Based Performance by N. Katherine Hayles.
The Resonance Project is a team of choreographers, dancers, computer engineers, and visual and sound artists who are investigating concepts of presence/remote presence and corporeal and code interactivity within live and media based performance. Unique to the project is the use of a "performance as research" model, within which scientists and artists collaborate to explore a re-visioning of cyber culture and corporeal presence.
You do not need to buy a ticket for this performance, meet in front of the theater before the show.
TUESDAY APRIL 24 PFA
7:30 Academy Film Archive: Recent Preservations
Mark Toscano in Person
Preservationist Toscano presents abstractions, conceptual pieces, and dryly humorous films, all preserved in the past year at the Academy. Program includes:
Film Exercise #5 (John & James Whitney, 1944). The Assignation (Curtis Harrington, 1952). Documentary Footage (Morgan Fisher, 1968). Runs Good (Pat O'Neill, 1970). Four Corners (Diana Wilson, 1978). Future Perfect (Roberta Friedman, Grahame Weinbren, c. 1976). Brummer's (David Bienstock, 1967). Murder Psalm (Stan Brakhage, 1980).
Wednesday May 2
3:00 Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Tsai Ming-liang (Taiwan, 2003, 82 mins)
Lecture by Marilyn Fabe
(Bu jian bu san). In Goodbye, Dragon Inn, Tsai Ming-liang, director of Vive l'Amour (1994) and What Time Is It There? (2001), created the sharpest combination yet of his major themes—rain, missed connections, and the poetry of loneliness—juxtaposed this time against something completely unexpected: a martial arts film. It's a rainy night in Taipei, and the crumbling neighborhood kino-barn is showing King Hu's swordplay classic Dragon Inn. Most of the audience appears to be elsewhere, offscreen dreamers haltingly putting their thoughts of love into very slow motion while the onscreen kinetic frenzies keep blazing on like helpful cues. Visualizing the fantasies of anyone who's ever worked in a movie theater, or just adored being in one, Goodbye, Dragon Inn underscores the essence of why people watch films: to be reminded of what it is to live, and what it means to dream.
You are required to attend the 4/22 dance performance on campus as well as TWO other events. One must be a film, the other can be a film or lecture. Post a response and evaluation for both the events you choose to attend. Please start a new post if you are the first to respond to an event. Then other people who also attended can post their responses as comments to the initial response. The responses should be similar to reading responses, describing the film a bit for those who did not see it but focusing on your ideas rather than on summarizing, doing some thinking about relationship of the event to themes in the course.
More events may be added to this list as they are announced. You may attend up to three extra events for extra credit (extra events 10pts each, required events 25 each except April 22 event counts double for 50).
Websites for More info about locations, tickets, etc:
Yerba Buena http://www.ybca.org/
Berkeley Art, Technology, Culture Colloquium http://atc.berkeley.edu/
Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/
California College for the Arts http://www.cca.edu/calendar/
TUESDAY APRIL 3 PFA
7:30 Anthology Film Archives: Recent Preservations
Andrew Lampert in Person
Lampert, archivist and programmer at Anthology Film Archives, long a key institution on the East Coast arts scene, presents classics of 1960s and '70s avant-garde in fabulous prints that you'd normally have to travel to New York to see. Program includes:
Film Number 16 Oz: The Tin Woodman's Dream (Harry Smith, c. 1967). Zenscapes (Marie Menken, c. 1957). Note to Colleen (Saul Levine, 1974). Nine Variations on a Dance Theme (Hilary Harris, 1966). Five 8mm Films (George Landow, 1961-62). Fuses (Carolee Schneemann, 1964-67)
Wednesday April 4
7:30 The Medium Is, works by Lynda Benglis, Peter Campus, Hermine Freed, Dan Graham, Richard Serra
With its instantaneous feedback and image manipulation, video technology creates a nowness of perception along with the distraction offered by any good spectacle. In Now, Lynda Benglis’s first color tape, the eponymous word is repeated, questioning the currency and the command. Then, over-driving the color image, Benglis collapses the notion of the medium as neutral. Wearing headphones in Richard Serra’s Boomerang, Nancy Holt repeats phrases that are heard, then heard again in delay. The effect is of feedback effectively devouring its own message. Using a split screen in Two Faces, Hermine Freed faces herself, caressing her mirrored image. Suspended between images, Freed exists as a doubled person, alienated and adrift. Recorded in San Francisco, Dan Graham’s Performer/Audience/Mirror is a study of mediated relations, a mirror standing in for the TV as the artist describes the audience before him. The circularity of the exchange captures the phenomenology of feedback. In Peter Campus’s seminal tape Three Transitions, inherent properties of the medium become potent metaphors for the depiction of internal states and the breach between reality and illusion.—Steve Seid
Now (Lynda Benglis, 1973, 12 mins, Color, Mini-DV, From VDB). Boomerang (Richard Serra, 1974, 10.5 mins, B&W, DVD, From The Museum of Modern Art, New York). Two Faces (Hermine Freed, 1972, 8 mins, B&W, Mini-DV, From VDB). Performer/Audience/Mirror (Dan Graham, 1975, 23 mins, B&W, DVD, From EAI). Three Transitions (Peter Campus, 1973, 5 mins, Color, Mini-DV, From EAI).
• (Total running time: 59 mins, U.S.)
Thursday April 5, Friday April 6 PFA (counts as one event)
Thurs April 5 7:30 Tropical Malady, Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand/France, 2004, 118 mins)
Fri April 6 7:00 Tropical Malady: Shot-by-Shot, Discussion with Apichatpong Weerasethakul
(Sud pralad). The agreeably irrational Tropical Malady melds folk fable with euphoric modern moviemaking, effortlessly traversing the mundane and the miraculous. In this pastoral with a dark pulse, two beguiling stories unfold: the first a playful romance between a handsome soldier, Keng, and Tong, a country boy; the second, a nocturnal journey into a realm of shape-shifting creatures. While Keng and Tong’s blissful courtship is told through moody, tender tableaux, the seeds of a lurking apprehension are being quietly sown—a dead body is found at the edge of the jungle, cows are found slaughtered in the fields. The villagers tell of a spirit that inhabits the body of a wandering tiger. As the second story emerges, Tropical Malady leaves behind the matter-of-fact for the mystical, a lush jungle peopled by talking monkeys and tricksters in human form. And who is that stalking the dread tiger? Is it soldier Keng? In this numinous tropic, we relish the malady of not necessarily knowing. Winner, Prix du Jury, Cannes 2004.
TUES APRIL 10 PFA
7:30 BB Optics: Optical Printing and Preservation Work
Bill Brand in Person
Brand presents a wide range of works preserved or printed by his firm, BB Optics, including avant-garde pieces and films confiscated from the Nixon White House by the FBI. Program includes:
New Left Note (Saul Levine, 1968/82). Nixon White House Super-8 Films (Reel S-10) (1969-73). The Fallen World (Marjorie Keller, 1983). Fire in My Belly (David Wojnarowicz, 1986-87). Home Avenue (Jennifer Montgomery, 1989). Black and White Film (Robert Huot, 1968-69). Daffodils (Katy Martin, 1979/81)
Tuesday, April 10 at Stanford University
4:30pm
the Sawyer Seminar Visualizing Knowledge: From Alberti's Window to Digital Arrays
presents a panel discussion between Pavle Levi and Marta Braun on "The Visibility of Motion."
Lectures and discussion will be held at the Stanford Humanities Center, 424 Santa Teresa
Ave., Stanford, CA 94305, (650) 723-3052.
http://visualization.stanford.edu information
http://visualization-wiki.stanford.edu streaming audio
THURSDAY APRIL 12 PFA
7:30 Time After Time
In experimental works and emotionally evocative narratives, students examine memory and its decay.
Program includes: Wandern (Daniel Czernilofsky, 5 mins). you are i hate you (Marik Armstrong, Josh McVeigh-Schultz, 14 mins). My Companions (Wenhua Shi, 1 min, B&W). A Sikh in America (Peter Alsop, 5 mins). Multiple Hugs & Kisses (Yosuke Hosaka, 6 mins). Saturday Ice Fever (Scott Bishop, Siyu Song, Frances You, 2 mins). Hard Knock Life (Alison Beaumont, 2005, 2 mins). Blips and Beeps (Nikolaos Hanselmann, 4.5 mins, B&W). Urban Jungle (Sophie Cooper, 8.5 mins). Fractal (Morgan Swing, 15 mins). Home Movies (Jason Karpman, 3.5 mins, B&W)
Total running time: 67 mins (plus Q & A)
Friday April 13 PFA
8:50 The Passenger
Michelangelo Antonioni (Italy/France/Spain, 1975, 123 mins)
A penetrating political thriller, The Passenger, set in the Sahara, is also a desert film, and it resembles the much earlier L’avventura—a desert island film—with its horizontal vistas and its theme of absence. Jack Nicholson portrays a London journalist named Locke who, sent to cover a rebellion in North Africa, assumes the identity of a man, Robertson, who has died in the next hotel room. Locke is running away from being a journalist—from the codes that replace knowing, the images that replace seeing. He’s much like Monica Vitti’s Vittoria in L’eclisse in his desire for escape, for a mask. But, embracing Robertson’s globetrotting, increasingly mysterious persona, he finds himself pursuing not the man’s life, but his death. Even the camera seems to have a will toward another world: it distractedly tracks a passing camel in the desert, an anachronistic horse-drawn carriage in Munich. The film’s famous final seven-minute zoom literally draws out the pain of seeing in focus.
Monday April 16 Doug Aitken 7:30
Art Technology Culture Colloquia, on campus (see website for location)
Internationally known Video and Digital artist Doug Aitken talks about his work.
http://archidose.blogspot.com/2007/01/30-in-30-27.html
TUESDAY APRIL 17 PFA
7:30 Anger Rising: The Restoration of Works by Kenneth Anger at UCLA Film and Television Archive
Ross Lipman in Person
New 35mm prints of four of Kenneth Anger's most famous films, plus an illustrated lecture by UCLA's Lipman detailing the challenges involved in restoring them. Program includes:
Fireworks (1947). Rabbit's Moon (1971). Scorpio Rising (1963). Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965)
Jim Campbell at Hosfelt Gallery March 17-April 28
Jim Campbell is a digital artist (and pioneer of HDTV) who installs arrays of LED lights to produce unusual projections of film of video. He has a show of new work open right now in San Francisco. If you want to go you can write about the exhibit as an event review.
http://www.hosfeltgallery.com/HTML/exhibitions.htm
Jim Campbell TALK at PFA Sat April 21 12pm in MEASURE OF TIME gallery
(REQUIRED) Sunday April 22, 2pm Zellerbach theater, Berkeley Dance Project
Directed by Lisa Wymore
Featuring The Reception, a cross-disciplinary performance piece utilizing dance choreography and tele-immersion technology to explore a re-visioning of cyber culture and corporeal presence. Also featuring new choreographic works by Tammy Cheney, Robert Moses, Carol Murota, and Ellis Wood. The Reception: Co-directed by Lisa Wymore (TDPS) and Ruzena Bajcsy (CITRIS). *The April 22 performance will be followed by a post-performance discussion: Being Here: Presence/Remote Presence within Live and Media Based Performance by N. Katherine Hayles.
The Resonance Project is a team of choreographers, dancers, computer engineers, and visual and sound artists who are investigating concepts of presence/remote presence and corporeal and code interactivity within live and media based performance. Unique to the project is the use of a "performance as research" model, within which scientists and artists collaborate to explore a re-visioning of cyber culture and corporeal presence.
You do not need to buy a ticket for this performance, meet in front of the theater before the show.
TUESDAY APRIL 24 PFA
7:30 Academy Film Archive: Recent Preservations
Mark Toscano in Person
Preservationist Toscano presents abstractions, conceptual pieces, and dryly humorous films, all preserved in the past year at the Academy. Program includes:
Film Exercise #5 (John & James Whitney, 1944). The Assignation (Curtis Harrington, 1952). Documentary Footage (Morgan Fisher, 1968). Runs Good (Pat O'Neill, 1970). Four Corners (Diana Wilson, 1978). Future Perfect (Roberta Friedman, Grahame Weinbren, c. 1976). Brummer's (David Bienstock, 1967). Murder Psalm (Stan Brakhage, 1980).
Wednesday May 2
3:00 Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Tsai Ming-liang (Taiwan, 2003, 82 mins)
Lecture by Marilyn Fabe
(Bu jian bu san). In Goodbye, Dragon Inn, Tsai Ming-liang, director of Vive l'Amour (1994) and What Time Is It There? (2001), created the sharpest combination yet of his major themes—rain, missed connections, and the poetry of loneliness—juxtaposed this time against something completely unexpected: a martial arts film. It's a rainy night in Taipei, and the crumbling neighborhood kino-barn is showing King Hu's swordplay classic Dragon Inn. Most of the audience appears to be elsewhere, offscreen dreamers haltingly putting their thoughts of love into very slow motion while the onscreen kinetic frenzies keep blazing on like helpful cues. Visualizing the fantasies of anyone who's ever worked in a movie theater, or just adored being in one, Goodbye, Dragon Inn underscores the essence of why people watch films: to be reminded of what it is to live, and what it means to dream.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Open Sky - Johnny Mendoza
1. In Paul Virilio's Open Sky he argues that the development of telecommunications will lead to the "loss of the traveller's tale and, with it, the possibility of some kind of interpretation"(25) of "the traveller's tale". The advance in live-feed technology enables our society to be "telepresent to the whole world" (25); that people can be present in many places at once by means of observing it through a television. This eliminates the need for a "traveller's tale" because people no longer need to remember the places they have been because they can just videotape it and that will replace their memory. Virilio argues this will prevent any kind of interpretation of those moments because the video provides a "real-time image" and an "illumination of the reality of the facts" (26). Virilio makes a valid argument about the demise of the "traveller's tale", but he makes some untrue assumptions about live-feed video and human memory. He argues that video will replace memories, but in fact it can act as a second memory, or second interpretation to an experience. A video can show a place or event in one perspective, but a person's memory will provide a whole new perspective in the way that the human brain perceives the same event of place. Observing a place different than a person's present location through a live-feed video does not allow the person to be actually present at both locations, since the seeing the video will give a completely different perspective on the place than actually traveling there. Instead video allows the person to be visually present, which is the perspective the video gives. Virilio is right that telecommunications is starting a "telepresent" society, but he is wrong if he thinks it detracts from actually traveling somewhere and developing a "traveller's tale".
2. Virilio argues that there exists pollution that goes beyond affecting only physical substances, and he calls it "dromospheric" (22) pollution. A pollution that affects people's perceptions of duration and the world, which is caused by the "communications revolution" (22). According to Virilio, though, the study of ecology does not include this temporal pollution, but it should since the whole world is experiencing a "public duration" (23). This "public duration" plays out as humans move around and experience new things through their "journey" (23), which in turn implies there will be a future. However, telecommunications causes people to not move around and experience things, since these experiences can be brought straight to them by way of the television, which causes people to be stuck in the present moment. This prevents people from following their transhumant instincts, which affects the dromology, or duration, of the world as a whole, since the world has no future it has become "endotic" (25). Virilio's argument of the world becoming "endotic" with the advance in telecommunication technology has come a little late. It can be argued that the world has been in the process of becoming "endotic" since the invention of the train and then with the invention of the airplane it became more "endotic". Telecommunication has just increased the endocity of the world, and there will always be something else to diminish "spatial exteriority" (25) even more.
3. Virilio describes “the speed of the new optoelectronic and electroacoustic milieu” as a “final void..., a vacuum that no longer depends on the interval between places or things..., but on the interface of an instantaneous transmission” (33). Because the electromagnetic waves of a video-feed travel at the speed of light they can travel any distance on earth instantly, eliminating the relationship of space and time. Since there is no longer any relationship between space or time, video turns the world into a “void” or black hole, in which a person can instantaneously cover any distance by watching his/her television. Virilio is grossly over exaggerating in his description of the “final void”. Yes, the live-feed does weaken the relationship between time and space, but so did the train, the airplane, and cars. Video is not the ultimate “void”, it is just one on many inventions that enables people to travel distances at a greater speed.
Johnny Mendoza
2. Virilio argues that there exists pollution that goes beyond affecting only physical substances, and he calls it "dromospheric" (22) pollution. A pollution that affects people's perceptions of duration and the world, which is caused by the "communications revolution" (22). According to Virilio, though, the study of ecology does not include this temporal pollution, but it should since the whole world is experiencing a "public duration" (23). This "public duration" plays out as humans move around and experience new things through their "journey" (23), which in turn implies there will be a future. However, telecommunications causes people to not move around and experience things, since these experiences can be brought straight to them by way of the television, which causes people to be stuck in the present moment. This prevents people from following their transhumant instincts, which affects the dromology, or duration, of the world as a whole, since the world has no future it has become "endotic" (25). Virilio's argument of the world becoming "endotic" with the advance in telecommunication technology has come a little late. It can be argued that the world has been in the process of becoming "endotic" since the invention of the train and then with the invention of the airplane it became more "endotic". Telecommunication has just increased the endocity of the world, and there will always be something else to diminish "spatial exteriority" (25) even more.
3. Virilio describes “the speed of the new optoelectronic and electroacoustic milieu” as a “final void..., a vacuum that no longer depends on the interval between places or things..., but on the interface of an instantaneous transmission” (33). Because the electromagnetic waves of a video-feed travel at the speed of light they can travel any distance on earth instantly, eliminating the relationship of space and time. Since there is no longer any relationship between space or time, video turns the world into a “void” or black hole, in which a person can instantaneously cover any distance by watching his/her television. Virilio is grossly over exaggerating in his description of the “final void”. Yes, the live-feed does weaken the relationship between time and space, but so did the train, the airplane, and cars. Video is not the ultimate “void”, it is just one on many inventions that enables people to travel distances at a greater speed.
Johnny Mendoza
Open Sky
1) Virilio opens this reading by comparing his “dromospheric” pollution to the pollution of natural contamination—emphasizing the apparent dangers of dormology. He claims that new technology of communication and travel has caused pollution to “spread further that the elements, natural substances, air, water, fauna and flora – as far as the space-time of our planet” (137). We can see from this that his problem with technology goes beyond the physical contaminates that are produced by machines, but rather how they affect human perception and duration. This shows an indirect irony of how these new methods of travel and communication, which are supposed to advance man-kind, actually contaminate them. Virilio goes on to claim that this “machine time” pollution has to do with “ergonomics… economics… [and] politics” instead of “ecology” (137). With a statement like this, it seems hard to consider such technological advancements as a pollution because in natural contaminates in ecology actually degrade and eat away at an environment, while “machine time” actually makes designs, economies and governments more efficient/useful.
2) He admires the “original [‘warrior’] nomad for whom the journey… are dominate” and says that the other type of man, the “sedentary urban ‘civilian,’” focuses on the “subject and object” (139). The sedentary man is more focused on the cause and result of an event—similar to Bergson’s belief in the cinematographical habit of the mind—whereas the nomad is more concerned with the process or “journey” itself. The practical, cinematographical interests of the sedentary man result in the title of “civilian” because he/she is not willing to do things outside of the social construct of the state. For example, Virilio explains that the use of the “remote control and long-distance telepresence” will cause an “ultimate state of sedentariness where real-time environmental control will take over from the deployment of the real space of the territory” (139). As we can see, the sedentary “civilian” utilizes the remote control in order to change the channel without having to go through the “journey” of going to change the channel manually on the television set. Now, the “warrior” label on the nomadic man serves as a hyperbole to emphasize Vilirio’s respect for them because getting up off of the couch to change the channel or going to talk to someone in person as opposed to the telephone does not literally make you a warrior.
3) Photography is viewed by Virilio as a freezing of time that represents movement and Virilio believes that a collection of these “time-light” photographs in cinematographic sequence forms “real-time video” (140-141). Even though they would agree on the “representative” quality of a photograph, Virilio’s view of video is a clear departure from the views of Henri Bergson because Bergson explicitly believes that cinematography is at best a representation of motion, whereas Virilio believes that cinematography shows motion in “real-time.” Virilio depicts cinematography both as “the greatest scientific invention since fire,” and an invention that runs on electricity and that doesn’t have to follow “chronological time” (141). Unlike Bergson, Virilio glorifies video through the deployment of an absolute. However, by stating that film does not need to be chronological, Virilio brings back the beginning of his paper, where he talked about how machines caused dromospheric pollution because they eliminated the “journey,” and how such things would be distanced from the natural way of perceiving the world.
-Christopher Melgaard
2) He admires the “original [‘warrior’] nomad for whom the journey… are dominate” and says that the other type of man, the “sedentary urban ‘civilian,’” focuses on the “subject and object” (139). The sedentary man is more focused on the cause and result of an event—similar to Bergson’s belief in the cinematographical habit of the mind—whereas the nomad is more concerned with the process or “journey” itself. The practical, cinematographical interests of the sedentary man result in the title of “civilian” because he/she is not willing to do things outside of the social construct of the state. For example, Virilio explains that the use of the “remote control and long-distance telepresence” will cause an “ultimate state of sedentariness where real-time environmental control will take over from the deployment of the real space of the territory” (139). As we can see, the sedentary “civilian” utilizes the remote control in order to change the channel without having to go through the “journey” of going to change the channel manually on the television set. Now, the “warrior” label on the nomadic man serves as a hyperbole to emphasize Vilirio’s respect for them because getting up off of the couch to change the channel or going to talk to someone in person as opposed to the telephone does not literally make you a warrior.
3) Photography is viewed by Virilio as a freezing of time that represents movement and Virilio believes that a collection of these “time-light” photographs in cinematographic sequence forms “real-time video” (140-141). Even though they would agree on the “representative” quality of a photograph, Virilio’s view of video is a clear departure from the views of Henri Bergson because Bergson explicitly believes that cinematography is at best a representation of motion, whereas Virilio believes that cinematography shows motion in “real-time.” Virilio depicts cinematography both as “the greatest scientific invention since fire,” and an invention that runs on electricity and that doesn’t have to follow “chronological time” (141). Unlike Bergson, Virilio glorifies video through the deployment of an absolute. However, by stating that film does not need to be chronological, Virilio brings back the beginning of his paper, where he talked about how machines caused dromospheric pollution because they eliminated the “journey,” and how such things would be distanced from the natural way of perceiving the world.
-Christopher Melgaard
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Open Sky
1) Virilio takes a look at the impacts of what the newest forms of technology has on our environment. This isn't to say the physical environment that surrounds us, but our relative place in the world and our perception of the time in which we live it. He coins the term "dromospheric" pollution(Virilio 137). What he means by dromospheric pollution seems to be that, given humanity's ability to become more of a collective due to the fast paced communications and filmography, we have lost the "essence of the path, the journey" (Virilio 137). The patterns and rhythm of life no longer have their flux and flow through time, in preparation for what is to come next. That "next" that used to be within the collective, the "traject[ory]" (Virilio 139) no longer exists because we live in a world of instant moments. Everything now can be captured and contained in the merest of seconds and the lengths of time that used to be no longer last. He states that we are losing the momentum that is life and are becoming sedentary creatures as a result.
2) To make the previous statement more concise, Virilio illustrates the idea of a third horizon, a "trasapparent horizon spawned by telecommunications, that opens up the incredible possibility of a 'civilization of forgetting', a live (live-coverage) society that has no future and no past, since it has no extension and no duration, a soceity intensely present here and there at once-in other words, telepresent to the whole world" (Virilio 139). Instant communication leaves us devoid of any duration, the duration that could become our future as well as the lengthening of time that could have been our past. Life becomes only a repetition of instants, instants that are impossible to have memory of because there is no substasive "time" to remember. No longer are we at one place to travel to another, to be here in the present to travel to the future, but everywhere at once without the ability to expand in time or space. This new horizon that has invaded our world has consequences not only in the way that we live but in our perceptions of the world and the way that we think.
3) When everything becomes instantaneous, with "no more delay" (Virilio 140) then things that we percieve are no longer represented in volume. When the "interval becomes thin" (Virilio 140) then the objects themselves are perceived to lack the depth and solidity that they once did. The weight and substance are no longer relevant to the way that we think or the way that time affects them. Space is altered along with the new timing, and it is here the Virilio says that photography can take hold. Photography records time, and therefore stops the moments, and even though "in reality time does not stand still" (Virilio 140) there has come a new definition in photographic time that no longer parallels that of passing time. The new definition has to do with the change in the perception of density of things in our world. It is only the "surface of the negative freezes the time" (Virilio 141). Along with this registers a new time in Cinema, a time that has a new concept of a present time that is "no longer represented in chronological time---past-present-future--- but in the chronoscopic time --underexposed-exposed-overexposed-" (Virilio 141). This transfer of time coincides with the previous idea of time no longer having a past or future. We, our bodies and perceptions, are the center of the world and it is our substance that causes time to exists--to propel it forward-- but if we are caught in a perpetual present, we cannot lead time to any future point.
4) Together, all arguments about the change of time and perception of our motion in life, hinge on the change in our communications, which are based on the speed of light and sound. These changes disrupt our ability to have memories, have chronological time (in which can have a past, present, and future), and move together with a collective rhythm that has always been. I believe that Virilio sees the cinema as an antagonist to this because it helps develop the "ever-present" that we seem to have become stuck in. It enables time to take on a new form and our perceptions to be taken along with it. It is a true distortion of the way we perceive the world because "dromospheric pollution is pollution that attacks the liveliness of the subject and the mobility of the object by atrophying the journey to the point where it becomes needless" (Virilio 144). In the end, if we have no future to live for, no journey to live our life along, then what is the point?
2) To make the previous statement more concise, Virilio illustrates the idea of a third horizon, a "trasapparent horizon spawned by telecommunications, that opens up the incredible possibility of a 'civilization of forgetting', a live (live-coverage) society that has no future and no past, since it has no extension and no duration, a soceity intensely present here and there at once-in other words, telepresent to the whole world" (Virilio 139). Instant communication leaves us devoid of any duration, the duration that could become our future as well as the lengthening of time that could have been our past. Life becomes only a repetition of instants, instants that are impossible to have memory of because there is no substasive "time" to remember. No longer are we at one place to travel to another, to be here in the present to travel to the future, but everywhere at once without the ability to expand in time or space. This new horizon that has invaded our world has consequences not only in the way that we live but in our perceptions of the world and the way that we think.
3) When everything becomes instantaneous, with "no more delay" (Virilio 140) then things that we percieve are no longer represented in volume. When the "interval becomes thin" (Virilio 140) then the objects themselves are perceived to lack the depth and solidity that they once did. The weight and substance are no longer relevant to the way that we think or the way that time affects them. Space is altered along with the new timing, and it is here the Virilio says that photography can take hold. Photography records time, and therefore stops the moments, and even though "in reality time does not stand still" (Virilio 140) there has come a new definition in photographic time that no longer parallels that of passing time. The new definition has to do with the change in the perception of density of things in our world. It is only the "surface of the negative freezes the time" (Virilio 141). Along with this registers a new time in Cinema, a time that has a new concept of a present time that is "no longer represented in chronological time---past-present-future--- but in the chronoscopic time --underexposed-exposed-overexposed-" (Virilio 141). This transfer of time coincides with the previous idea of time no longer having a past or future. We, our bodies and perceptions, are the center of the world and it is our substance that causes time to exists--to propel it forward-- but if we are caught in a perpetual present, we cannot lead time to any future point.
4) Together, all arguments about the change of time and perception of our motion in life, hinge on the change in our communications, which are based on the speed of light and sound. These changes disrupt our ability to have memories, have chronological time (in which can have a past, present, and future), and move together with a collective rhythm that has always been. I believe that Virilio sees the cinema as an antagonist to this because it helps develop the "ever-present" that we seem to have become stuck in. It enables time to take on a new form and our perceptions to be taken along with it. It is a true distortion of the way we perceive the world because "dromospheric pollution is pollution that attacks the liveliness of the subject and the mobility of the object by atrophying the journey to the point where it becomes needless" (Virilio 144). In the end, if we have no future to live for, no journey to live our life along, then what is the point?
Friday, March 23, 2007
PFA Response-The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
The animated film, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, was comical and exciting to watch. The creators generated comedy by using simplistic dialogue. For example, Makato (main character) finds that her sister has eaten her pudding and travels back in time to prevent this from happening. When she does this, she looks at the pudding and pauses; the audience anticipating what she will say finds it funny when she finally utters the obvious, “pudding”! I found it interesting that something so simple could produce humor. A scene that was also very comical was when Mankato’s friend, Chikoti, asks her to date him. She leaps back numerous times to prevent this conversation from occurring. Each time becomes more and more of a joke. She first tries to change the subject completely, which makes no sense whatsoever. The second time she decides to just walk away as he is talking to her. These are both examples of the simplistic nature of the film that ultimately made it humorous.
I also thought the format of the film was very well planned. At the beginning of the film we see random scenes, where Makato runs into some problems. Although these were funny, I had a difficult time understanding the significance of these scenes. Later in the film, these scenes come into play as Makato travels back in time. The creators used them to give Makato a motive to use her time traveling powers to go back in time and change her clumsy acts. The first half of the movie was very straightforward, and was easy to follow, but as the film progressed, conflicts were unveiled.
Makato’s aunt mentions the possibility that others around her may be losing as she gains from time leaping. This caused the viewer to question how safe Makato’s time leaping really is. I thought the creator(s) of the film did a great job of setting up the main conflict, and presenting it in this way (through another character’s observation). Later in the film, Makato realizes that her friend Kosuke and an innocent girl could die because the breaks on her bike had been broken. I found myself wondering if Makato would ever figure out how to fix the mess she was in. Conflict in a film adds to its depth and makes it more appealing. I did not want Kosuke and the girl to die, which caused me to continue to watch due to suspense. The film used a simplistic style at first to create humor and set up the major conflicts, which ultimately make the film more fascinating to watch.
I also thought the format of the film was very well planned. At the beginning of the film we see random scenes, where Makato runs into some problems. Although these were funny, I had a difficult time understanding the significance of these scenes. Later in the film, these scenes come into play as Makato travels back in time. The creators used them to give Makato a motive to use her time traveling powers to go back in time and change her clumsy acts. The first half of the movie was very straightforward, and was easy to follow, but as the film progressed, conflicts were unveiled.
Makato’s aunt mentions the possibility that others around her may be losing as she gains from time leaping. This caused the viewer to question how safe Makato’s time leaping really is. I thought the creator(s) of the film did a great job of setting up the main conflict, and presenting it in this way (through another character’s observation). Later in the film, Makato realizes that her friend Kosuke and an innocent girl could die because the breaks on her bike had been broken. I found myself wondering if Makato would ever figure out how to fix the mess she was in. Conflict in a film adds to its depth and makes it more appealing. I did not want Kosuke and the girl to die, which caused me to continue to watch due to suspense. The film used a simplistic style at first to create humor and set up the major conflicts, which ultimately make the film more fascinating to watch.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Midterm Paper Revision
Hi everyone. Just a reminder that the final revision of the midterm paper is due tomorrow in class. Be sure to attach the graded first version of the paper that we handed back to you--especially the typed comments you received. If possible try to staple this all together. You can detach the 10-on-1's and paraphrases at this point. I've pasted below a reminder of the format:
"Unless otherwise specified, all non-digital assignments must be handed in typed, printed, and stapled, and must include your name, the date, the course title, and an assignment title on the cover page. Papers must be formatted in black Times 12 font, double spaced, one-sided, with 1” top and bottom margins and 1.25” left and right margins. Please use a header or footer with page numbers and your last name since sometimes pages become detached. "
Also, here is some last minute advice about introductions and conclusions. They are always the last things to be sorted out!
Good luck, and don't be afraid to really rewrite instead of just 'editing' or 'revising'--we will be more forgiving of a major, yet imperfect, effort than of minor manicuring. In other words, if you just left things the same for this time around you would not get the same grade: we expect your writing and thinking to be more polished, or, if this is not the case, that it is because you reconsidered your argument and wrote an almost new paper.
FEEDBACK on Midterm Paper:
Introductions and Conclusions
Your introduction should introduce a problem or question. It should not try to contextualize the paper’s theme within broad categories like all of history or ‘mankind,’ but should instead articulate a modest and realistic scope for its exploration. The introduction does not need to present or summarize the essay’s entire argument, and it should not present a list of what will be discussed in the paper. It should present something as an interesting question, or a problem worth thinking about, and set the stage to begin this thinking. The conclusion should return to the problem or question raised in the introduction in such a way that it is clear the essay has ‘ended up’ somewhere different from where it began; it should not repeat the introduction, but reconsider the question or problem in a more nuanced way than was possible before the detailed readings that the paper offered. But, the conclusion should not claim to ‘wrap up’ everything or solve everything or offer the total and final truth about anything. It should not add new, large claims or expand to broad concerns such as the nature of art, society, the human mind, etc. It could, however, add a slightly changed emphasis to some argument or claim you have made, raising a small question or admitting that something could be seen otherwise or perhaps developed further. It may help to imagine that your paper is one chapter in the middle of a book you are writing: even though this one ‘chapter’ could stand on its own as ‘complete,’ and could appear in an anthology all alone and make sense, this ‘chapter’ feels like it begins by picking up an existing set of concerns (rather than starting from scratch) and feels like it ends by opening up avenues for thinking that would only be addressed in the next chapter.
Good introductions from your papers (modified):
From 1925 to 1931, Alfred Stieglitz photographed clouds. He accumulated a collection of these photographs, giving each image the title “Equivalent” despite the fact that each represented a different scene captured at a different time. What equates these photographs may be their collective attempt to freeze the movement of a cloud, always in flux, into the instantaneous form of an image. With this photographic representation of movement, Stieglitz continues the exploration begun by early motion photographers Edweard Muybridge, Étienne-Jules Marey, and Anton Bragalia.
Alfred Stieglitz’s Equivalent (1930) captures both the temporality and timelessness of clouds. As a single photograph, it conveys motion and stillness, intention and contingency. It both reproduces reality and creates something new. As one in a series of cloud photographs all titled Equivalent, it is just part of a larger project that initiates a new kind of photography, departing from a tradition that includes the chronophotography Edweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey, and the photodynamism of Anton Bragaglia. As a composition in both time and space, Stieglitz’s project bridges the gap between poetry and painting that Lessing explored in Laocoon. And, with a subject matter peculiarly between form and movement, this photography of clouds seems to embody and challenge Henri Bergson’s opposition between the creative flux of duration and the “snapshot” views with which we capture and represent it.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, instantaneous photography seemed to offer new possibilities for representing time and motion. Anticipating the invention of cinema, Edweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey developed techniques of chronophotography, attempting to inscribe the trace of movement within a rapid series of photographic images. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, however, Alfred Stieglitz explored a different kind of serial photography, producing a body of work with a different representation of time. Photographing clouds over a span of about ten years, he created a uniquely delayed series collected under the general title “Equivalent.” While each photograph captures only one particular instant, the relationship between these photographs and the moments that they instantiate suggest that photography can represent multiple and complex temporalities.
"Unless otherwise specified, all non-digital assignments must be handed in typed, printed, and stapled, and must include your name, the date, the course title, and an assignment title on the cover page. Papers must be formatted in black Times 12 font, double spaced, one-sided, with 1” top and bottom margins and 1.25” left and right margins. Please use a header or footer with page numbers and your last name since sometimes pages become detached. "
Also, here is some last minute advice about introductions and conclusions. They are always the last things to be sorted out!
Good luck, and don't be afraid to really rewrite instead of just 'editing' or 'revising'--we will be more forgiving of a major, yet imperfect, effort than of minor manicuring. In other words, if you just left things the same for this time around you would not get the same grade: we expect your writing and thinking to be more polished, or, if this is not the case, that it is because you reconsidered your argument and wrote an almost new paper.
FEEDBACK on Midterm Paper:
Introductions and Conclusions
Your introduction should introduce a problem or question. It should not try to contextualize the paper’s theme within broad categories like all of history or ‘mankind,’ but should instead articulate a modest and realistic scope for its exploration. The introduction does not need to present or summarize the essay’s entire argument, and it should not present a list of what will be discussed in the paper. It should present something as an interesting question, or a problem worth thinking about, and set the stage to begin this thinking. The conclusion should return to the problem or question raised in the introduction in such a way that it is clear the essay has ‘ended up’ somewhere different from where it began; it should not repeat the introduction, but reconsider the question or problem in a more nuanced way than was possible before the detailed readings that the paper offered. But, the conclusion should not claim to ‘wrap up’ everything or solve everything or offer the total and final truth about anything. It should not add new, large claims or expand to broad concerns such as the nature of art, society, the human mind, etc. It could, however, add a slightly changed emphasis to some argument or claim you have made, raising a small question or admitting that something could be seen otherwise or perhaps developed further. It may help to imagine that your paper is one chapter in the middle of a book you are writing: even though this one ‘chapter’ could stand on its own as ‘complete,’ and could appear in an anthology all alone and make sense, this ‘chapter’ feels like it begins by picking up an existing set of concerns (rather than starting from scratch) and feels like it ends by opening up avenues for thinking that would only be addressed in the next chapter.
Good introductions from your papers (modified):
From 1925 to 1931, Alfred Stieglitz photographed clouds. He accumulated a collection of these photographs, giving each image the title “Equivalent” despite the fact that each represented a different scene captured at a different time. What equates these photographs may be their collective attempt to freeze the movement of a cloud, always in flux, into the instantaneous form of an image. With this photographic representation of movement, Stieglitz continues the exploration begun by early motion photographers Edweard Muybridge, Étienne-Jules Marey, and Anton Bragalia.
Alfred Stieglitz’s Equivalent (1930) captures both the temporality and timelessness of clouds. As a single photograph, it conveys motion and stillness, intention and contingency. It both reproduces reality and creates something new. As one in a series of cloud photographs all titled Equivalent, it is just part of a larger project that initiates a new kind of photography, departing from a tradition that includes the chronophotography Edweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey, and the photodynamism of Anton Bragaglia. As a composition in both time and space, Stieglitz’s project bridges the gap between poetry and painting that Lessing explored in Laocoon. And, with a subject matter peculiarly between form and movement, this photography of clouds seems to embody and challenge Henri Bergson’s opposition between the creative flux of duration and the “snapshot” views with which we capture and represent it.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, instantaneous photography seemed to offer new possibilities for representing time and motion. Anticipating the invention of cinema, Edweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey developed techniques of chronophotography, attempting to inscribe the trace of movement within a rapid series of photographic images. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, however, Alfred Stieglitz explored a different kind of serial photography, producing a body of work with a different representation of time. Photographing clouds over a span of about ten years, he created a uniquely delayed series collected under the general title “Equivalent.” While each photograph captures only one particular instant, the relationship between these photographs and the moments that they instantiate suggest that photography can represent multiple and complex temporalities.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Pine Flat
Pine Flat was extremely different from any film I had viewed up to this point in my life. Due to my past viewing experiences, I typically go into films expecting: action, dialogue, interaction of humans, plot, and editing ‘personality’ (cuts, different points of view, panning), amongst other things. For most of this 2+ hour film I did not get what I anticipated.
It was a different way of watching/seeing than I am used to. I felt like I kept noticing little things and looking for similarities and differences because the action wasn’t brought/ presented to me. Since the film seemed so tedious, every little detail became a big event.
An example of this is the clip with the boy playing the harmonica. Since the nature within which he is placed is calm/ tranquil/ repetitive we don’t recognize its movement as action (as much at least); we are not surprised when the river keeps running or the grass keeps swaying in the wind. Human movements are also expected by us, yet not as systematically; we notice when the motions occur. The boy adjusts the way he is sitting. These are not simply motions like: up, down, up, down. He puts one leg up, stands, sits, itches his head, etc. Each motion is unique and new and at random intervals of time (not systematic) so each is noticed.
Throughout the film I closed eyes every once and a while to listen to what was occurring (trying to use my different senses to see if I could pick up anything else that was going on). Both with my eyes open and with them closed, there was no real sense of anticipation. This is, in part, because nothing was really happening (in an action sense); the only real sense of anticipation or anxiety I felt was waiting for/ hoping that something would occur.
In fact, there was only one time throughout the 2+ hours where I actually felt involved. This was when the boy in the forest pointed the gun at the camera. This scene provoked emotion within me and therefore made me pay attention to it. The rest of the film appeared to be more interested in our own thoughts of what is occurring in each scene. I think this is true because the author doesn’t really sway our opinions but changing the point of view or framing of the shots.
The frame for each clip was a set distance from the people and it was placed at a particular angle. The director did not zoom, scan, create different angles, or create cuts (within each 10 minute clip at least). There was not only very little action within the clips (done by nature or the individuals), there was also no ‘action’ or motion of the camera. All of these things, in my view, added to tediousness of the film.
The still, framed, character of the clips made them more like photographs than what we think of, at least today, as film. Closer yet, the clips are like a photo shoot, in which the artist studies a subject, focuses in on it, and waits to capture the pregnant moment or best frame. However, we (the audience) experience the whole “action” or duration of the subject (or the entire photo shoot) rather than just getting the pregnant moment that is captured and released by the photographer.
Part one was about individual kids. Each of these six clips has similarities. Each child was placed in the center of the screen while they were filmed. They were the focus of the shot and of the audience’s attention (for the most part). The centering of the child stresses their importance to the piece of work. They are thus seen as the central part of the work. Each child is also within a nature scene. Within this tranquil nature, however, there are unnatural elements (things that are not from nature, but rather man-made with technology and by mechanical means). These creations of mankind catch the attention of the audience because of their direct contrast with the peaceful sounds and sights of nature. Examples of these inventions that are seen within the film are: harmonica, book, gun, car, and airplane.
The six clips from part 2, about groups of kids, also have similarities amongst them. For one, they are more “typical” of what people expect from a film. There was: dialogue, interaction with humans, and some action (ex. shooting of each other with guns). All in all, the scenes from part 2 had more motion and far more variety in the kinds of motion. The ‘characters’ within these clips had interaction with humans rather than just nature. The clips appeared less tedious due to these additions.
There are many different forms of time within this piece. Some of them are: the time it took to film (and if the had to re-film), the time it too to edit, and the time it took for it to play (while we watched). These types of time are all mechanical and clock regulated, like in the Chaplin films. Each shot has duration and they are all the same. Ten minutes, the same amount of repetitive, aggravating time. On the other hand, the time is not mechanical. In this way, we don’t realize how much time has elapsed while watching it. There are no real indicators or references to time throughout besides the fact that we logically realize that time is passing.
There are also different spaces in which these times took place. There was the space/ location where it was filmed, the space where it was edited, and the space where it was screened, amongst others.
All in all I found this film tedious and would not like to see it again. On the other hand, (to give it some credit) it was a creative idea and it really made the viewer think while watching.
Laura Wood
It was a different way of watching/seeing than I am used to. I felt like I kept noticing little things and looking for similarities and differences because the action wasn’t brought/ presented to me. Since the film seemed so tedious, every little detail became a big event.
An example of this is the clip with the boy playing the harmonica. Since the nature within which he is placed is calm/ tranquil/ repetitive we don’t recognize its movement as action (as much at least); we are not surprised when the river keeps running or the grass keeps swaying in the wind. Human movements are also expected by us, yet not as systematically; we notice when the motions occur. The boy adjusts the way he is sitting. These are not simply motions like: up, down, up, down. He puts one leg up, stands, sits, itches his head, etc. Each motion is unique and new and at random intervals of time (not systematic) so each is noticed.
Throughout the film I closed eyes every once and a while to listen to what was occurring (trying to use my different senses to see if I could pick up anything else that was going on). Both with my eyes open and with them closed, there was no real sense of anticipation. This is, in part, because nothing was really happening (in an action sense); the only real sense of anticipation or anxiety I felt was waiting for/ hoping that something would occur.
In fact, there was only one time throughout the 2+ hours where I actually felt involved. This was when the boy in the forest pointed the gun at the camera. This scene provoked emotion within me and therefore made me pay attention to it. The rest of the film appeared to be more interested in our own thoughts of what is occurring in each scene. I think this is true because the author doesn’t really sway our opinions but changing the point of view or framing of the shots.
The frame for each clip was a set distance from the people and it was placed at a particular angle. The director did not zoom, scan, create different angles, or create cuts (within each 10 minute clip at least). There was not only very little action within the clips (done by nature or the individuals), there was also no ‘action’ or motion of the camera. All of these things, in my view, added to tediousness of the film.
The still, framed, character of the clips made them more like photographs than what we think of, at least today, as film. Closer yet, the clips are like a photo shoot, in which the artist studies a subject, focuses in on it, and waits to capture the pregnant moment or best frame. However, we (the audience) experience the whole “action” or duration of the subject (or the entire photo shoot) rather than just getting the pregnant moment that is captured and released by the photographer.
Part one was about individual kids. Each of these six clips has similarities. Each child was placed in the center of the screen while they were filmed. They were the focus of the shot and of the audience’s attention (for the most part). The centering of the child stresses their importance to the piece of work. They are thus seen as the central part of the work. Each child is also within a nature scene. Within this tranquil nature, however, there are unnatural elements (things that are not from nature, but rather man-made with technology and by mechanical means). These creations of mankind catch the attention of the audience because of their direct contrast with the peaceful sounds and sights of nature. Examples of these inventions that are seen within the film are: harmonica, book, gun, car, and airplane.
The six clips from part 2, about groups of kids, also have similarities amongst them. For one, they are more “typical” of what people expect from a film. There was: dialogue, interaction with humans, and some action (ex. shooting of each other with guns). All in all, the scenes from part 2 had more motion and far more variety in the kinds of motion. The ‘characters’ within these clips had interaction with humans rather than just nature. The clips appeared less tedious due to these additions.
There are many different forms of time within this piece. Some of them are: the time it took to film (and if the had to re-film), the time it too to edit, and the time it took for it to play (while we watched). These types of time are all mechanical and clock regulated, like in the Chaplin films. Each shot has duration and they are all the same. Ten minutes, the same amount of repetitive, aggravating time. On the other hand, the time is not mechanical. In this way, we don’t realize how much time has elapsed while watching it. There are no real indicators or references to time throughout besides the fact that we logically realize that time is passing.
There are also different spaces in which these times took place. There was the space/ location where it was filmed, the space where it was edited, and the space where it was screened, amongst others.
All in all I found this film tedious and would not like to see it again. On the other hand, (to give it some credit) it was a creative idea and it really made the viewer think while watching.
Laura Wood
Deleuze Cinema
1. The first section of the text deals primarily with neo-realism and what it is exactly. Deleuze begins with the subject of the ASA and the SAS, saying that different parts of space are separated now. “The small form ASA is therefore no less compromised than the large form SAS.” The main point here is that actions and situations have become more disconnected from each other and actions do not necessarily belong to a specific person. Deleuze use the term “white events” referring to events which have no effect on the bearer of the action because he is “internally dead.” He compares this to the driver in Taxi Driver because the driver has not decided what he is going to do, but no matter what happens, it essentially is going to have the same effect on him.
2. Clichés are the answer to the linkage between everything in this world according to Deleuze. He says, “what forms the set are clichés, nothing else. Nothing but clichés, clichés everywhere. . . .” These clichés have to do with political or social events on the news dispersed within a movie or the voice-over that is common in most cinema. He refers to these as “actualities” and the “eye of the camera.” The unknown person behind the camera is cliché that penetrates each and every one of us because he somehow knows what is happening in the story. He is saying that clichés are important in making the connection between the viewer and the characters in a film. There are physical, optical, auditory, and psychic clichés, all of which contribute to the others, creating a vivid connection and adding to neo-realism.
3. In neo-realism, “the real is no longer represented or reproduced but ‘aimed at.’” Deleuze says that there is no motor extension anymore, but rather a “dreamlike connection.” This “dreamlike connection” could be looked at as something that does not really end but continues as an action in a situation. In neo-realism there is no sensory-motor situation but instead optical and sound situations. He uses the term “any-space-whatever” to talk about optical and sound situations in neo-realism that are disconnected. These situations in the “any-space-whatever” created opsigns and sonsigns that can deal with variable images from everyday life. In order to get to a pure optical and sound image, sensory-motor image is completely dissolved and the clichés are left behind.
-Danny Ponticello
2. Clichés are the answer to the linkage between everything in this world according to Deleuze. He says, “what forms the set are clichés, nothing else. Nothing but clichés, clichés everywhere. . . .” These clichés have to do with political or social events on the news dispersed within a movie or the voice-over that is common in most cinema. He refers to these as “actualities” and the “eye of the camera.” The unknown person behind the camera is cliché that penetrates each and every one of us because he somehow knows what is happening in the story. He is saying that clichés are important in making the connection between the viewer and the characters in a film. There are physical, optical, auditory, and psychic clichés, all of which contribute to the others, creating a vivid connection and adding to neo-realism.
3. In neo-realism, “the real is no longer represented or reproduced but ‘aimed at.’” Deleuze says that there is no motor extension anymore, but rather a “dreamlike connection.” This “dreamlike connection” could be looked at as something that does not really end but continues as an action in a situation. In neo-realism there is no sensory-motor situation but instead optical and sound situations. He uses the term “any-space-whatever” to talk about optical and sound situations in neo-realism that are disconnected. These situations in the “any-space-whatever” created opsigns and sonsigns that can deal with variable images from everyday life. In order to get to a pure optical and sound image, sensory-motor image is completely dissolved and the clichés are left behind.
-Danny Ponticello
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Deleuze part 3
1.Deleuze begins by explaining the cause of the need for change in cinema after the war. The war caused, “…unsteadiness of the ‘American Dream’ in all its aspects, the new consciousness of minorities, the rise and inflation of images both in the external world and in peoples’ minds…” (206). “The soul of the cinema” no longer makes ASA and SAS films, “the soul of the cinema demands increasing thought” (206). In my opinion, modern films seem to be a succession of sexy images. Not only in film, but television, advertising, and everywhere. We are certainly an image-based society. Being image-based requires a change to image literacy. A literacy that is able to follow a “dispersive” image that includes several characters, settings, and plots. Deleuze calls for a “new kind of image” to “identify in the post-war American cinema” (207).
2. The answer to Deleuze’s “new kind of image” is neo-realism, which is a “build-up of purely optical situations and sounds…which are fundamentally distinct from the sensory-motor situations of the action-image in the old realism” (2). The difference between neo-realism and realism is the setting. Realism has a sensory-motor setting that presumes an action. But the optical or sound situation of neo-realism takes place in an “any-space-whatever”. Again, Deleuze uses a phrase from Bergson and flips it upside down. Bergson uses the “any-whatever” to describe an instant, and Deleuze takes Bergson’s idea of an insignificant, “whatever” and applies it to space. I imagine this idea of an “any-space-whatever” to be an everyday situation.
3. Deleuze believes that we perceive clichés not the images for what they really are. The viewer does “not perceive everything, so that the cliché hides the image from us…” (21). This brings me back to the idea of not directly viewing the world, but viewing a representation in the mind. It is as if we do not see images for their reality but we see images as our mind represents them. To solve the problem Deleuze thinks it is “…necessary to make a division or make emptiness to find the whole again” (21). He thinks we should “rarify” the image and take away everything that is added on that makes us think we see everything. In general, there are many things happening in a scene, there are background actions and sounds that make it seem like we are seeing the scene in its entirety. But in order to really see each image we would, like Deleuze suggests, have to divide. We would have to take a close look at everything that is happening, then we would see each image for what it is.
2. The answer to Deleuze’s “new kind of image” is neo-realism, which is a “build-up of purely optical situations and sounds…which are fundamentally distinct from the sensory-motor situations of the action-image in the old realism” (2). The difference between neo-realism and realism is the setting. Realism has a sensory-motor setting that presumes an action. But the optical or sound situation of neo-realism takes place in an “any-space-whatever”. Again, Deleuze uses a phrase from Bergson and flips it upside down. Bergson uses the “any-whatever” to describe an instant, and Deleuze takes Bergson’s idea of an insignificant, “whatever” and applies it to space. I imagine this idea of an “any-space-whatever” to be an everyday situation.
3. Deleuze believes that we perceive clichés not the images for what they really are. The viewer does “not perceive everything, so that the cliché hides the image from us…” (21). This brings me back to the idea of not directly viewing the world, but viewing a representation in the mind. It is as if we do not see images for their reality but we see images as our mind represents them. To solve the problem Deleuze thinks it is “…necessary to make a division or make emptiness to find the whole again” (21). He thinks we should “rarify” the image and take away everything that is added on that makes us think we see everything. In general, there are many things happening in a scene, there are background actions and sounds that make it seem like we are seeing the scene in its entirety. But in order to really see each image we would, like Deleuze suggests, have to divide. We would have to take a close look at everything that is happening, then we would see each image for what it is.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Pine Flat
Pine Flat is a film by Sharon Lockhart comprised of twelve different shots divided by an intermission after the sixth shot. It is filmed in color and each shot is ten minutes long. The idea behind the film was to make a film with kids who live in a town called Pine Flat and record them doing everyday things kids might do. What is interesting about this film is that each shot is ten minutes long and there is no camera movement at all, only movement made by the kids in the frame and nature itself is apparent. However, even though there is no movement at all, the camera uses ump cuts to move between time (seasons) and space (locations). This is evident because there are shots with snow as well as shots that represent more of the summertime or spring seasons. Lockhart stated before the screening that the film was made over a period of three years so this implies that there is the possibility of great change to be seen between each shot.
The first set of six shots is comprised of a single child doing any random activity in nature. What I found interesting about these shots was that nature sounds primarily made up the sound of the shot, excluding the boy with the harmonica, but during each scene there would be some type of acousmatic sound that would draw the child’s attention. For example, the sound of the howl in the very first snowy scene, the sound of an airplane flying overhead in another scene, and the sound of gunshots in another scene. I thought it was interesting she chose these scenes in which something outside of the child and nature itself presented itself.
I will admit I did not stay for the entire second half of the film because I was not happy with the film. However, I found that the scenes in which the film had children interacting with each other were somewhat more bearable to watch for ten minutes straight. Watching them interact with each other seemed noteworthy yet I still cannot say I am happy with this type of filmmaking. I understand that experimental film is popular and unique. It also presents us with new aspects of film techniques but I do not like that people can praise a film such as this. I am not saying it is completely bad but had I known what the film was about I would not have gone to see it.
-Joey Ponticello
The first set of six shots is comprised of a single child doing any random activity in nature. What I found interesting about these shots was that nature sounds primarily made up the sound of the shot, excluding the boy with the harmonica, but during each scene there would be some type of acousmatic sound that would draw the child’s attention. For example, the sound of the howl in the very first snowy scene, the sound of an airplane flying overhead in another scene, and the sound of gunshots in another scene. I thought it was interesting she chose these scenes in which something outside of the child and nature itself presented itself.
I will admit I did not stay for the entire second half of the film because I was not happy with the film. However, I found that the scenes in which the film had children interacting with each other were somewhat more bearable to watch for ten minutes straight. Watching them interact with each other seemed noteworthy yet I still cannot say I am happy with this type of filmmaking. I understand that experimental film is popular and unique. It also presents us with new aspects of film techniques but I do not like that people can praise a film such as this. I am not saying it is completely bad but had I known what the film was about I would not have gone to see it.
-Joey Ponticello
Monday, March 12, 2007
Pine Flat
Each ten minute clip in the film Pine Flat were more like photographs than actual clips. One way to describe having to watch a boy sleep for ten minutes (or what felt like eternity) is boring. A film clip is supposed to encompass action and that is what differentiates it from the stillness of photography. However, there is no action at all in watching a boy sleep. In another clip, a boy is waiting for a bus in the country-side, but you never actually see the bus stop to pick the kid up. This again results in this clips lack of action, which makes this clip more about observing the nature around the boy as opposed to focusing on the boy’s character or problems—producing more of a photograph than an actual film.
These short clips also have to do with the human disruption of nature. One of the clips has a boy playing a harmonica, which disturbs the peaceful and natural scene of the creek. The sound of an airplane flying overhead also disturbs the peacefulness of the creek. This seems to be a reoccurring theme in these clips as shown by the clip of the two girls playing on a swing in an open field. The field itself feels very tranquil and calm, but the two girls start bickering and fighting.
-Christopher Melgaard
These short clips also have to do with the human disruption of nature. One of the clips has a boy playing a harmonica, which disturbs the peaceful and natural scene of the creek. The sound of an airplane flying overhead also disturbs the peacefulness of the creek. This seems to be a reoccurring theme in these clips as shown by the clip of the two girls playing on a swing in an open field. The field itself feels very tranquil and calm, but the two girls start bickering and fighting.
-Christopher Melgaard
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.
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.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
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
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
Thursday, March 8, 2007
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
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
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