Dorsky thoughts

I was expecting the essay to be more concerned with the similarities between something like faith, or belief in the unseen, and the manner in which one experiences or creates cinema. It seemed to me that this was only briefly addressed in the beginning of the essay, and it kept me wondering how a very strong word like "devotion" was pertinent.
Within Dorsky's writing there is a lot of talk about the materiality of film; it's relationship with light, intermittence, space, and time. I noticed allusions to a lot of other literature on the subject - mainly while he was speaking about film-craft as "alchemy", and discussing "the act of seeing" in terms of it's presence in film- the former being a topic we've been given another specific reading on, and the latter, very brakhage-esque. I also enjoyed his uses of the term single-mindedness, though I can't say for certain to what degree Keirkegaard was an influence. I would like to know more about how he sees film as "the spirit or experience of religion". I often wonder about peoples devotion to cinema/art and the creative process, and where that comes from. There can be something fulfilling or rewarding about it that goes beyond almost any type of experience and that's what I imagine a close relationship with God is similar to. ….. In a way I suppose a lot of art is doing what something like religion does in the sense that its giving form to the unseen, in an attempt to understand it on a deeper level, or make a certain meaning more apparent. Why is that so important to us - to give face or explanation, or symbol to something ethereal and elusive? I'm not sure I have any sort of answer but I think Mr. Dorsky has probably spent quite a bit of time with that question, and I'd like to know his thoughts on the matter.

Metaphors on Vision: Man with a movie camera

"This experimental film is really three in one: a documentary of a day in the life of the Soviet Union, a documentary of the filming of that documentary and a depiction of an audience watching that documentary. We see the cameraman and the editing of the film, but what we don't see is any of the film itself. With English subtitles."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op2sOtF113M

Educational Store for Kodak

http://motion.kodak.com/motion/Education/US_Online_Store/index.htm

Surprisingly, UNT is in the list of participating schools

16mm developing tank

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/63619-REG/Yankee_YARFC15T_Clipper_II_Roll_Film.html

an artists life

The Artist's Life: Vito Acconci from NYFA on Vimeo.

Alchemy Reading_Bowling

What I gathered from the reading is that like alchemy, the process of videography and photography is an obscure, solitary practice. This is often a ritual for the practitioner. Like the alchemists, the practitioner of these arts is a bit of a mystic in search of an intangible and perhaps they are working against a societal norm too.

The closest thing to alchemy I can think of is the practice of liquid light show. http://vimeo.com/12074566

I'm pretty sure most of you have seen this movie, but just in case you haven't here is an excerpt of it.
Its called Decasia.  The movies consists of old damaged found footage.  If you have not seen it you must.  I found most of the movie on You Tube.

Bring STuff to class Thursday

Hey guys,

I should have mentioned this in class today, but for the demo we'll be doing Thursday, it would be useful if you would bring some things to lay on the film surface to make cinegrams. This is the same concept as making photograms, which is to say the shape and texture of what you lay on the film will be etched into the film surface as an image. So bring something with you that will look interesting or provide an interesting texture. Some nice things might include: old photo negatives, buttons, leaves, tinsel, loose fabric, string, other pieces of film, etc. This will help make Thursday a bit more interesting. Thanks! See you then.

Mike

A video called "We've Got Time" by Moray McLaren is an example of some of the points made in Dorsky's Article.

Exposure...

Found this cool stop motion animation short that plays with long exposure... pretty neat concept.

Yup here it is

Animation

Here is a very detailed tutorial from Terry Gilliam on how to make a stop motion film.

This is a commercial by Hans Fischerkoesen from 1933.  I thought of his work while reading Dorsky. 

Handmade Film Resources

Hey everyone, I want to share a couple of resources with you. There are a couple pdf documents available online that can help you with some handmade film techniques. Much of this will be covered in class, but you might want these for ideas or future reference.

The first is Helen Hill's Recipes for Disaster. This is an important zine-style resource that features lots of different people's techniques rolled into one little package. You definitely need to flip through this for some direct animation tips and other assorted fun stuff. We'll watch some of Helen Hill's animations later in class.

The other is from a website called http://www.filmlabs.org/. They are an online resource for people who might be setting up their own co-operative film lab (which you guys should totally do!) They have several different resources, many of which are in french, but one valuable one is this DIY lab guide. http://www.filmlabs.org/docs/toboldlygo.pdf

I enjoyed reading Dorsky's metaphor of cinema and it's association with illusion, alchemy, and materiality.
This video is a datamoshed version of Brakhage's "Window Water Moving Baby". What is the materiality of (digital) media and how is this film viewed differently from your desktop computer compared to a movie theater. I also found Dorksy's analysis of "post-film experience" to be correct with the transfigurative quality of the medium (regarding both the materiality of the film but also the metaphysical aspects of spectatorship (ontology of film viewing)


Window ater aby oving, 2010, Danny Snelson

Window ater aby oving [DATAMOSH, 2010, Danny Snelson] from danny snelson on Vimeo.

Recent Post Film Experience- which elements?

These two are some of my most + recent post film experiences. So much I've wondered and questioned after watching them. So many scenes from the two still stuck in my head. Parts I'm not sure what to think of yet. I think reading Dorsky's article made me re-think so many of the elements that exist in these two films/videos. Especially the ideas of "illuminated room" and representation of the world or in general life/ our perspectives/experience, etc. Since this is a "moving image" class I thought animation could be included? More to talk about tomorrow!

1. Dogtooth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLOy4_tzXHY


2. The External World

http://www.theexternalworld.com/

Dorsky_Andrew_Bowling

Reading this I hit a point where I read under all his embellishments to the underlying fascination. His underlying fascination is with the psychological effects of sensory deprivation and also over-stimulus. Religion uses this effect in its rituals and so do films, as he states. The effects of attending a film showing and emerging back into the real world has happened to me in many other situations like movies, and concerts. It is a unifying force when a group of people experience the same phenomena and realize they are not alone in their experience. In part this is a driving force in religious practices or cult rituals. By controlling what stimulus people received you can change the impact it has on them. A "persuasive" tactic like this is used in many ways in our entertainment forms by way of cinematic tropes, musical motifs for certain characters or situations and in the lighting used. It is recognizable, but often overlooked because it is nothing new to the audience after growing up seeing these methods over and over again.

The closest combo clip I have to illustrate my point is: http://youtu.be/IovKwhJ00GY

Bazin_PeterRand (...Late to the game)

I enjoyed how Bazin detailed the extent to which photography altered the plastic arts, while managing to find a place for it, as well as for painting. Often, especially in new media, we find ourselves confronted with the fact that our artistic mediums subsist off the reproducible image, and it becomes inevitable to question the degree to which we're neglecting what can be considered, "the genuine article" - this 'genuine article' nought be confused with the 'realism' that Bazin spoke to in the Ontology of the Photographic Image though, but to the materiality in art fashioned exclusively by the artist. Noting the "obsession" we have with realism, I like how Bazin points out that with the advent of photography it became no longer the job, or responsibility of the painter as artist, to create something "realistic" - allowing painting to be able to exist and be appreciated as it's own thing. At the same time, he has quite a respectful outlook on how photography treats this same role from which it is inseparable. Instead of, harbinger of the reproducible image, photography is the "embalmer of time", "rescuing it simply from it's proper corruption" (whoa dude.) - also noting that photography has an effect similar to nature, where the object is inseparable from it's beauty....

Again, I think it's impressive how well Bazin finds room for both mediums that are often put into ideological competition with one another. My personal feeling though, and i hope it to be correct someday, is that something else will come along exposing the falseness of even the photograph, and it too will become appreciated as it's own thing. I think if our awareness continues to grow and expand, than one day the photograph will have nothing to do with a singular, present, real moment - it will be an imitation of that, like the portrait painting is to it's model.

Response to Dorsky

Reading the Dorsky article I was constantly reminded of Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960). It's a silly Hitchcockian murder drama that tells the story of Mark, who kills women by stabbing them with a little blade the end of his tripod. He films the murders as they happen in order to document his victims' fear, giving the audience a voyeuristic view of his psychopathic tendencies. The clip below is near the end, when his blind neighbor approaches Mark in the darkness as he begins to review a strip of film.The neighbor is protected by her disability. She cannot see the film, so she cannot be afraid of it.
Dorsky says, "We sit in darkness and watch an illuminated world, the world of the screen. This situation is a metaphor for the nature of our own vision. In the very process of seeing, our own skull is like a dark theater, and the world we see in front of us is in a sense a screen."

Start at 2:42

On a slightly unrelated note, this film trashed Michael Powell's career because critics and audiences thought the content was atrocious. It's a pretty goofy movie that later got a decent cult following, but Powell had a hard time working in Hollywood again.

1. Andre Bazin

I agree with Bazin in that photography does in some way portray realism and satisfies a need in humans to capture history and preserve the reality of any given culture or time. It is true that photography captures what is set in front of the lens, but how true this is to the reality of the people taking the picture is relative. Photography and cinema can be manipulated and is manipulated in similar ways to painting. It may prefer the ideal as opposed to the gritty truth, particularly in today's world where photography and cinima are influenced by a larger market.

-- Lij

Link

Was just watching this video and I find it related to some of the points that were made here -on this blog-. This is more of a critique to Bazin's theories. Thought some of you might as well find it useful/interesting/challenging ----> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAfteINYl2k

http://blog.art21.org/2011/06/27/a-better-ghost-interview-wevan-meaney/

Evan Meaney, a moving image artist associated with the development within/around new media known as glitch, has been exploring the metaphorical and conceptual possibilities of work being made with the process and aesthetics of data failure/hacking. One of the movements or chapters of his serial exploration of these ideas entitled "the ceibas cycle" has a lot of overlap with this weeks essay by Andre Bazin. In highlighting photography's psychological residue of ontological identification invested in images by ancient societies, Bazin proposes a way of thinking about how different image making technologies preserve or embalm a moment (or person) beyond the duration of their passing. Meaney, in his series of glitched video portraits entitled "To Hold a Future Body So Close to One's Own", brings this thinking about resistance to mortality into the digital age, drawing attention to its failures.

1st Response

The Ontology of the Photographic Image defines what photography has come to mean to us throughout time. It is a way to capture a moment but it can also be a way to show a replicated and sustained subject. In other words, "the image helps to preserve" the subject "from a second spiritual death" meaning, not to be forgotten. Photographs can help us build a remembrance, remind us of important people or past events. For example the use of mummification to describe photography was a way to explain the idea of preservation. In turn Cinema, being a relative or evolution of photography, is a medium that "mummifies change" as well.

--Kristin L.

Andre Bazin Reading_Andrew_Bowling

Somewhere about page 12, Bazin, got into realism and pseudo-realism. He prepares an argument that photography is what finally satisfies our insatiable need for realism and liberates painting from having to do so. I've heard this argument before and in some ways, it does seem true. But may I offer a thought that both mediums play more off the exploitation of realism, or our perception of it. For instance, advertising photography had a trend shortly after color became mainstream in the industry for "hyper-realism". Each photograph took realism to a hyperbolic state.

Flavorings of Walter Benjamin are also present. The statement on pg. 13 about the originality of a photograph relying on the objective nature of the lens, hints at the thoughts Benjamin had regarding an original works aura as it is reproduced. I do not feel that originality in photography is served by the objective nature of the lens because the originality is actually in the composition as the photographer chooses it, in addition to, how the photographer develops their film with the objective camera. It would be like saying the originality of digging a hole relies on the shovel when clearly there is a man operating the shovel and he has the choice to use it in a manner of his choosing. Either way you'll have a hole, but it will not be identical to another because the subject is temporal, just how photographs capture the temporal moments of life.

Which takes me back to the beginning of Bazin's essay, where he speaks of how the medium of art has been a way for man to preserve himself throughout time in lieu of death. He continues to state how traditional art forms are preserving life with a representation of it, but these days we are freed from that practice. He states now it is used to create an ideal version of the real. I do see how now, with the way which most of the world treats image making, primarily photography, that the practice has become flippant and at times, seeking the ideal. But in the early days of photography, the goal was not the ideal, but the preservation of someone's image for posterity in order to grant them importance because they have an image of themselves which may survive time.

His statement on pg 15 that cinema is an image of duration, and a mummificaiton of change is still valid even in the digital age. With video sites like Youtube have a cap on the duration of its videos at one time, the subjective choice of what to "mummify" was on the user's mind as they prepared to make a video. Sam Taylor Wood in her artwork, A Little Death, takes Bazin's idea inside out by "mummifying" an image of duration wherein a rabbit decomposes thereby keeping the temporal decay of the flesh stowed away in time. http://www.ubu.com/film/tw_death.html

Overall, he has some valid points. Clearly writing before the digital wash of all things having a camera, but still interesting in the way he forms his opinions and which ones still apply.

Readings Page Posted

Hey guys,

I'm still working on scanning and uploading (and in some cases, deciding on) the readings for the rest of this semester, but here is a beginning for that. From now on, when you are assigned a reading, you will go to this webpage to download the pdfs, which I will continue to upload: http://michaelalexandermorris.com/readings1.html