Tarkovsky Example of Plot Movement Becoming Time

If you've read some of my other posts you know that I've been doing some research on the potential for the movement-images described by Deleuze in Cinema 1 to become time-images within respective shots and montages. I believe one example in film that accomplishes this blend is the pool sequence which occurs towards the end of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. In one shot we get sustained voiceover (which actually begins in a previous shot) while the camera slowly moves from a close-up of the main character to a tracking shot peering straight down over a shallow pool. The voice over eventually fazes out and we hear a symphonic blend of eastern meditative music fade in as the shot eventually ends with the camera making its way back to an inanimate hand half-submerged in the pool. Through this shot we are partially made privy to the true nature of “The Zone”, which is what the characters in the film (and the audience) are eager to uncover.

Here's a clip of the sequence (shot starts at :57):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfowVslQBQk&feature=related

By combining this narrative reveal with the superbly executed long take and flow of visuals, music, sounds, and dialogue, Tarkovsky achieves that ebb and flow of action-oriented plot, pure contemplation and reflection, but also formless movement through the motif of the water. In examples like this it is more of a challenge to connect action and perception with time and sensation because the two extremes naturally remove one from the other. By condensing these opposing forces into small sequences/shots a filmmaker can really induce powerful affects in the viewer.

--Jonathan Masino

Long Take Experiment Two (Movement Becoming Time)

http://vimeo.com/11953460
Password is deleuze

Here is the full video of what I showed in class regarding my project attempting to depict examples of movement-images becoming time-images and vise versa. This particular experiment is a collection of 9 frames arranged next to each other in a grid. Six of the frames I chose are examples of classical movement-images that are related not only to mobility, but also to modern transportation. I wanted to use the earliest known infatuations with movement such as distinct POV shots that embodied movement of character. In these types of shots the sense of movement is easily achieved through the changing scenery as it relates to the mobile unit; however, it can also be accomplished by showing a mobile object approaching the stationary viewer as is the case in the classical example of a distant train gradually approaching a station. These would be considered forms of perception-image, which is a subset of the movement-image.

Two of the other frames I utilized are images of household chores: a laundry machine and a sink of dirty dishes being washed. While these aren’t conventional action-images they do create a feeling of movement in the sense that the viewer/character is moving towards the completion of something (i.e. the finished load of laundry and the clean sink respectively). The final frame I used is the one most closely resembling a time-image. It begins with a close-up of leaves on a tree blowing in the wind and gradually zooms out to reveal a larger environment. Later on in the shot we see a character walk through the space where we get a sense of body as it relates to environment (a-la Antonioni), which again is a form of perception-image.

With this collection of movement-image frames I tried to morph them into one whole time-image. The key for me was to transpose the affection of the images into a cumulative experience. With the movement-images we are more concerned with perception, specifically optical perception, while with the time-image we are more concerned with sensation; a more tactile and visceral response from the viewer that evokes a feeling of time and duration.

As the piece develops and we introduce more frames I think the collection of familiar images creates a “new” image when viewed together as one. By doing this we do indeed take the movement-images of everyday perception (which we can relate to the narrative of our daily lives) and mold it into a future image (or the potential and the virtual) that allows the audience to construct some sort of meaning from them (which can be a more poetic interpretation of our routine existence).

Despite some success there were several problems with this experiment. To begin, the captured sounds required an investment of more time in the mastering of the sound to artificially smooth out the soundscape. The main problem was that some of the sounds stood out more than others and even though their audio levels were lowered accordingly, they still managed to pierce through the collective orchestra of clicking and clanging by nature of their unique timbre and high familiarity (the subway sounds were difficult to assimilate). The experiment also required more diverse environments/sounds. I think I overly used cars and trains in the different frames. I should’ve thought about using footage of boats, planes, and bicycles to provide more variation in the images.

In addition, this juxtaposition of movement-images would’ve been more successful had they been in context of a greater whole or narrative. If all the frames depicted a group a characters en route to rendezvous somewhere, I think this collection of images would’ve successfully taken the audience from an image of a sensory-motor schema to an image of pure optical and sonic sensation that lends itself to reflection and contemplation, which would’ve take the audience from an action-image to a time-image.

--Jonathan Masino

Long Take Experiment One (Character Becoming Viewer)

http://vimeo.com/11952416
Password is deleuze

This is an example of one of the long take experiments I conducted for my project suggesting the interchangeability between action-image and time-image in a filmic setting. In this example I attempted to achieve this feat by seamlessly altering the audience's perspective from a vicarious viewer (through the eyes of the onscreen character) to an independent viewer. Deleuze mentions in Cinema 2 that in the time-image "the character within the film becomes a viewer".(1) This long take attempted to emphasize the vacillating perceptions/contemplations between both the viewer and the character (acting as both viewer and non-viewer). The main idea was to morph this continuous shot from a time-image (e.g. disjointed images, a contemplative character/viewer, etc.) to an action-image (e.g. the character reacting to a noise, eye line matches, etc.).

I think this particular experiment accomplishes the movement from POV perception to character perception within the space affectively. We get that sensation when the camera moves from the close-up of the book to a close-up of the character’s face looking off in the distance, which is then followed by a slow motion pan to scenery that is out of focus. I was trying to move from a action-image that directly reflects the perception of the character to a time-image where we see the character perceiving the space and also contemplating. The movement back to a quasi-POV by way of the pan was designed to visually display the change of perception as a result of the contemplative character. When our minds are meandering (or in a smooth state) we are less perceptive to detail; hence, the images become out of focus (both literally and figuratively in this case).

I think we also get a good sense of action-image becoming time-image when the character’s reading session is suddenly interrupted by the off screen noise of a car skidding. This aural disturbance triggers an action in the character that demands a different viewing experience from the viewer. Furthermore, the noise is sandwiched between two moments of reflection as the character views text and images evoking nature, while at the same time experiencing nature firsthand through time, duration, and perception.

--Jonathan Masino

(1) Deleuze, Gilles Cinema 2 p.3

Digital Art vs. Video Games

In class, we briefly talked about Hansen's problematic omission of the subject of video games in his book, New Philosophy For New Media. I believe the big question is: what is the difference between digital art and video game images? Hansen explains that in the digital image the body creates the image; the image cannot exist without the body. Our bodies serve as a filter of the data that the digital interface supplies and through our filtration, we create an image. Video games have allowed players to create different digital material as an effect of their bodily intervention since the early 1980's. The comparison is even more compelling now with the rise of new video game consoles and arcades that involve the human body to higher and more active degree such as the Nintendo Wii, the Rock Band games, and Dance Revolution.

So if both of these mediums engage the body, then what really sets them apart? For me, the answer is pretty straightforward. With video games, there is always an objective involved (as with all games). While the player is indeed creating and manipulating digital images by way of their bodily input, the manipulation of the image is only a byproduct of the objective of the player, and that is to complete the game, advance to the next level, save the princess, etc. The digital art that Hansen writes about is "objectiveless" for the viewer. Everyone can interact with these pieces in their own unique way and there is no prize for the viewer who completes the interaction in the best way. I think this simple difference separates the two mediums enough for Hansen that he feels it is not even necessary to mention. If there was a video game where the player merely just controlled a character through a digital space, but there was no other goal beyond that set forth for them, then I think the digital interface would cease to be a video game.

--Jonathan Masino

Crisis of the Historical-Image

One of the things that struck me in Andrei Tarkovsky's book Sculpting In Time, was his theories on films embedded in specific time periods. He spends a small section of the essay talking about the challenges his crew faced when filming Andrei Rublyov, which takes place in the fifteenth century. He makes the bold claim that by focusing too much on "how everything was" the filmmaker actually does the cinema a disservice [1]. In virtually every big production period piece we see today, the primary emphasis is put on historical accuracy: Do the costumes match the period? Are the actor's speaking in correct accents? Do the props and the scenery evoke the proper time? These obsessions with period and detail only detract from the emotion, the rhythm, and the character of the film. Asking these questions will only kill time, which Tarkovsky tries so hard to sustain. The image becomes completely historical, but for Tarkovsky, history is not time; it is only a consequence of it [2].

Tarkovsky would probably argue that when making a period piece, the filmmaker should be emphasizing the likeness between the film and the viewer instead of the difference. This would be the only way to enable the audience to endure time through the cinema. By magnifying the minute details of the period, the cinema becomes more of a museum hall than a proper theater. The material is instantly frozen in time and made into a relic, inaccessible by the audience. The viewer is distanced from anything the filmmaker might be trying to convey.

In Andrei Rublyov, while the art direction is appropriate for the times, it isn't beaten over the viewer's head. The audience is able to experience the characters more closely and the long takes become more contemplative and visceral as opposed to simply visual. I'm actually trying to achieve the same thing in my graduate film, which takes place in an unspecified time and place circa war torn Europe in the early twentieth century. I was undaunted by the difficulty in shooting a period piece on a low student budget, because of the notion that I could establish a better sense of time without emphasizing the era, but how I believe that time was experienced by the characters. Just because a film is made in a classical period does not mean it must be made classically; one can make full use of the more modern time-image, which Deleuze speaks of. As he also states, the time-image creates a sense of present/pastness. The films that focus on capturing historically accurate details are only considering the past, and are not merging it with the present viewing, which is necessary for the time-image. This historical-image is fully crystallized in that it has already achieved everything it can; there is no more virtual and there is no more connection to the body. The historical-image has become all it can before it is even viewed by an audience. The affect for the viewer would only be one of an academic appreciation at best, but not new though process would be generated. With the time-image, the image is still alive and can continue to become.

(1) Tarkovsky, Andrei Sculpting in Time, p.78
(2) Tarkovsky, Andrei Sculpting in Time, p.57

--Jonathan Masino

Time Image Striation

My final project is going to be a series of long take video experiments that attempt to evoke the link between action image and time image as well as suggesting their interchangeability. In Gilles Deleuze’s two books on cinema (Cinema 1 and Cinema 2) he talks about the evolution of the film medium by nature of its frames and especially of the images it produces. In Cinema 1 Deleuze describes the images of the classical era as action images. That is to say that they are predicated by cause and effect. Every shot, every movement, every piece of dialogue is motivated in some way, shape or form. The characters in these classical films were always active, never passive. There is always a goal for the protagonist to aspire to and there is always an obstacle that must be overcome. These images remain constant in film until the aftermath of World War II where we see an emergence of a new kind of image. This time image, as Deleuze refers to it as, represents the movement towards modern cinema where characters are reflective instead of active. We see them observe through the frame and as a consequence, the audience thinks and perceives with the character.

I would liken the time-image described in Cinema 2, as a manifestation of another Deleuzian concept, smooth space, which Deleuze discusses in detail along with collaborator, Felix Guattari, in A Thousand Plateaus. For Delueze, smooth space is defined by its unlimited variation and its vast realm of possibility. In the time-image, the viewer and the character(s) are both in an ineffable space absent of any provocation. According to Deleuze, we become a new breed of character in this space because we are contemplative and unsure in lieu of being reactive and physically or emotionally active. This a-centered mental capacity brings the viewer and the character into a state of smoothness where the trajectory of our perception is boundless and our tactile acuity is heightened. Our collective minds become a smooth nomad wandering from thought to thought with no anticipated direction in sight.

On the contrary, the action-image would be of the same ilk as striated space. The formulaic structure of action-oriented plots and movement changes at pre-defined junctures is a form of striation that regulates the delivery and construction of cinema. The viewer was to be ensconced in the narrative so that any other elements of the filmmaking apparatus (i.e. music, soundtrack, camera movement, etc.) were only to be used to enhance the narrative and if they couldn't, they were to be downplayed so as to go unnoticed by the viewer (e.g. cuts in the middle of actions).

So if we can come to the conclusion that the action-image is a form a striation and the time-image a form of smoothness, then we should also be lead to the conclusion that the time-image and the action-image can become each other and reach a point of interchangeability just as it is so for smooth and striated space (e.g. the naturally smooth dessert being segmented and striated by mapmakers) as Deleuze asserts. For Deleuze, neither smooth nor the striated spaces are permanent and impervious to change and becoming. Once again, the goal of my project is to display this interchangeability and constant evolution between the action-image and time-image relationship through the film media itself. This will be done through a series of long take experimental shots that look to alter perception from the haptic to the optic within the same continuous shot. I hope to achieve an affection that is not static, but continuously emerging. Although I’m sure (in true Deleuze fashion) the process of developing these short projects will reveal even more ideas about morphing viewing experience within shots, which can be further explored in future endeavors.

--Jonathan Masino

Max Neuhaus and Sound Installation

When dealing with Relational Art and Relational Form one artist that immediately comes to mind is the American composer, and later sound artist, Max Neuhaus. Neuhaus was a pioneer in the realm of contemporary art and his innovative Sound Installations echo many of Bourriaud's theories on form and aesthetics. In Relational Art the viewer (or listener in this case) is a collaborator in the artist's creative process. The ongoing collective response of the audience is necessary for the artwork to exist. It's meaning is achieved through the new social environment that is manufactured by the dynamic between the artwork and the receiver.

Neauhaus' Sound Installations were designed to perpetually produce sound in public spaces without a visual component to draw attention to it. There were no commemorative plaques or labels; even the source of the sound was often hidden to public view. By doing this Neuhaus created artwork that is not only extremely accessible to the average citizen, but also accessible in most cases oblivious to the viewer.

A great example is Neuhaus’ Sound Installation piece in the heart of Times Square, New York City. A series of bell-like drones is emitted from a large speaker underneath a grid of subway grating. In the midst of the frenzy that is Times Square, one will seldom see a bystander stop to enjoy or even acknowledge the work. To Bourriaud’s point, the piece literally does not exist until someone responds to it. The sound is produced 24 hours a day and is always accessible to those willing to hear it. It is also a true social artwork in that its effect immeasurably changes with the changing environment surrounding it.

– Jonathan Masino