One more website: Ubu.

Here is a good website if you want to watch independent and avant-garde films in streaming. Enjoy !

http://www.ubu.com/film/

There are three films by Lipsett, some films by Dziga Vertov, which Deleuze talks a lot in his book, and many more.

I also think it could be interesting to give film's examples from this website since everybody could have access to them.

Vers une image-son ?

J’aimerais revenir sur le commentaire de Mathieu à propos de l’importance du son dans le cinéma d’animation. Bien sûr, il est évident que le son et l'image sont deux entités séparées. Par contre, au niveau de la perception, elles ne forment qu'un. Bien qu’il soit encore trop tôt pour moi de parler d'une image-son, je crois que l’image possède la force de s'approprier le son. Par exemple, les petits écarts entre le visuel et le sonore dans Synchrony passent inaperçus étant donné que le tout bouge si rapidement. Aussitôt le concept du film compris, on ne se pose plus de question sur le synchronisme entre les deux. Alors le rythme, causé par le mouvement des images, entraîne l‘impression que l’un va automatiquement avec l’autre même si ce n’est pas toujours le cas. Nous prenons pour acquis que pour chaque forme ou mouvement il y aura un bruit, ce qui donne le sentiment que le son provient directement de l’image.

C’est autre chose dans les films de Lipsett. À première vue, il n’y a aucun lien entre ce qu’on voit et ce que l’on entend. Les enregistrements radio, les voix, la musique et les bruits forment une bande sonore indépendante. Cependant, cette bande sonore transforme les images. Ainsi, les images fixes semblent émettre des sons (ou une ambiance sonore) qui donnent à leur tour un effet de mouvement aux images, ce qui donne ensuite l’impression que le son provient directement de ce que l’on voit. Le son appartient maintenant aux images et une signification (ou l’affect qui peut mener à une signification ou une interprétation) résulte de leur addition. De cette manière, lorsqu’on voit, en image fixe, un gros plan de quelqu’un d’horrifié avec la bouche ouverte en même temps que l’on entend un coup de gong, nous percevons un seul événement au lieu de deux : un cri. Le son et l’image ne forment qu’une signification, malgré leur provenance. C’est un peu le constat qu’a fait Eisenstein dans ses écrits sur le son en additionnant l’image et le son sous forme de dialectique. Bien sûr, la théorie d’Eisenstein est limitative et pas entièrement développée. Il s’agit plutôt d’un point de départ pour une image-son qui comportera sans doute autant de variétés qu’une image-mouvement.

intervals...

Would we be able to describe an interval as a continuous trace, or the in-between stop of any continuity? A hesitation, a gap, a break, a moment (in time..?) a reason for any relation? If an interval is necessary for a movement to be realized, then it becomes essential for any conscious or unconscious perception, it becomes essential for the related image.

Analyzing the close-up

When we are talking about the potential range of meanings that can be assigned to a close-up, (and in particular the close-up of the face) what are the methods (if any) for understanding the significance of each of the key concepts Deleuze is making? Is it really possible to completely shed preconceived notions of the aesthetic implications of a close-up and replace them with new ideas for analysis? Deleuze argues that the juxtaposition of 'power and quality are intertwined and at any moment the two poles can pass from one to the next' (p.95).  If this is the case then what are the signifiers or clues for making this assessment? Furthermore what happens when we combine the analysis of two poles with a discussion of light and shadows? From what I gathered the face reflects light, retains emotion, and becomes intensive rather then reflexive. But can the effect of light and shadow really be reduced to that? I guess I am just looking for some clarification on how Deleuze reached these conclusions, and whether or not they hold up consistently, or only in these certain instances. 

Where we could be...

If the interval can be described as a break down of perception: a point where ‘volumes emerge from surfaces’ (Manning), where from a purely perceptual level things become a moving blur, a continuous trace, a tonal vibration, where matter seems to be expanding, then here we may have located a vector where two states of perception merge.
There is the perception of what we know, who we are, where we are going, etc. We could call this a conscious perception, which is continually working in relation to a more prescient or unconscious perception, defined as, where we could be.
Where we could be, is perhaps the slightest glimpse into a potential of prescience, a glimpse, a yearning, an attachment to a greater metaphysical system, or what is referred to as the Plane of Immanence. From the physical perspective, our thoughts process perception, make sense of the physicality of the world around us. Yet during the interval, as perception breaks down, does it also expand, infinitely, and during this expansion, it’s potential is also infinite, even if it only for a fraction of a second.
What I am trying to relate is that as physical movement has a quantum counterpart, realized by the waves it displaces, as a natural behaviour of molecular systems, do thoughts also have a similar quantum counterpart? Are thoughts themselves defined by a quantum relationship to the perception of space?

Articulating cinema as an apparatus that “reaches to the genetic element of all possible perception” (83) Deleuze highlights that film at a larger scale can be the source of a new experience for the audience. His treatment of the movement-image fundamentally reorganizes film history according to prominent types of images. In this regard, German Expressionism is linked to elaboration of subjective perception, and the French school – to “spiritual totality”, expressed through the use of “liquid images”. Furthermore, Soviet Montage is focused around movement which “goes beyond itself, but to its material, energetic element” (84) that seems to be also relevant to the American School promoting the idea of “pure perception as it is in things or in matter” (Ibid). Such classification, which is somewhat reminiscent of the Bazanian model in terms of its rejection of linear evolution in the cinematic language due to exclusively technological developments, drastically reshapes the methodological basis of film history as a discipline. Perhaps, the analysis of the cinematic image is a sufficient reason to talk about film as a source of knowledge that blurs the borders between art and academia.

Puisqu’on semble s’éloigner un peu de l’animation, j’aimerais y revenir, suite au commentaire de Charlie. ..
Je me demande si des films expérimentaux ou d’animation tels que, par exemple, Dance Squared, -ne mettant pas en scène des personnages –sont handicapés dès le départ vu leur incapacité à communiquer des émotions, si, comme le disait Eisenstein, le gros plan donne une lecture affective de tout le film. (Car par gros plan, on ne veut pas dire « insert », un plan rapproché d’une chose ou d’un objet inanimé. Les plans des lions en marbre dans Le Cuirassé Potemkine sont-ils gros plans ou inserts?)
Comment, par la seule et simple mise en mouvement de formes animées peut-on faire ressentir au spectateur une émotion? Des carrés dansants émeuvent-ils certains alors que d’autres restent de glace? La réponse semble se trouver dans le montage, qui, lui seul, réussit à créer de la tension, des émotions, en liant des plans. Les exemples seraient trop nombreux… Il serait intéressant de porter une attention toute particulière aux films au programme aujourd’hui.

La multiplicité distincte et le temps

La difficulté de saisir l’idée d’un œil qui n’est pas soumis au temps, l’œil dans la matière dont parle Deleuze dans le chapitre « l’Image-perception » de L’Image-mouvement, nous vient peut-être justement du fait, par lui exprimé, que toute image-vivante forme un centre autour duquel l'univers s'incurve et s'organise. Elle exprime peut-être tout à fait l’idée que la durée soit une affaire d’abord absolument qualitative qui, lorsque nous parlons de mouvement, place le trait transformatif avant celui de déplacement.

Tout en permettant un décentrement du soi par rapport au Tout, elle explicite justement le fait que toute durée ne peut être vécue qu’en tant que qualité et que le temps est absolument relié au sujet qui le vit. Une expérience de temps est donc toujours cadrée par une juxtaposition des faits parallèlement à l’interpénétration beaucoup plus folle et désorganisée d’états internes comme des sensations et des émotions, impliqués dans l’expérience à différents niveaux de conscience.

De nous sortir de « notre expérience » du temps, nous permet alors de concevoir que des faits émergent ici et là dans le cadre d’un plan d’immanence qui les englobe tous sans distinction et c’est pourquoi Deleuze parle du « Ciné-œil » de Vertov en tant qu’entité ayant « vaincu le temps » et accédant à un « négatif du temps ». Par extrapolation, nous pourrions imaginer que tout le passé et le futur convergent dans ce « négatif du temps », donc que la veille et le lendemain existent déjà dans un virtuel qui ne demande pas plus que d’être manifesté à travers l’expérience d’une conscience.

« Il en résulte de cette analyse que l’espace seul est homogène,
que les choses situées dans l’espace constituent une multiplicité distincte, et
que toute multiplicité distincte s’obtient par un déroulement dans l’espace.
Il en résulte également
qu’il n’y a dans l’espace ni durée ni même succession,
au sens où la conscience prend ces mots :

chacun des états dits successifs du monde extérieur existe seul,

et leur multiplicité n’a de réalité
que pour une conscience capable
de les conserver d’abord,
de les juxtaposer ensuite
en les extériorisant les uns par rapport aux autres. »

Henri Bergson, Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience,
chapitre II – De la multiplicité des états de conscience,
p. 80 dans Œuvres, PUF, 1963.

Gros Plan et espace quelconque

En traitant de l’image-affection, Deleuze mentionne qu’il n’est pas nécessaire d’avoir un cadrage très rapproché de son sujet pour créer un gros plan. Il est possible de créer une image-affection tout en capturant l’étendue d’un paysage dans la mesure où l’affect demeure le sujet dominant. Dans ce cas, Même si chaque détail du décor a été soigneusement positionné dans le cadre, il n’y a plus que l'exprimé qui domine.
Quelle est alors l’utilité de filmer un plan d’ensemble si sa fonction est la même que celle d’un gros plan? Pourquoi filmer en plan large s’il n’y a qu’un seul élément précis qui compte dans le cadre, le reste n’étant qu’espace quelconque? C’est que la mise en relation du sujet avec l’espace quelconque crée une signification nouvelle. Cette forme de gros plan constitue à sa manière une forme de montage à l’intérieur d’un seul et même plan dans lequel les éléments sont mis en relation de sorte à produire un sens.

nice tools for your comprehension

Here's a nice website to help you understand in a different way Deleuze.

http://www.webdeleuze.com/php/index.html

Also, I found this Journal of Film Studies from UdeM who concentrated on Deleuze on two numbers from their periodic CINéMAS.  It's in french and in english

vo.16/no 2-3 Deleuze et le cinéma.  Prolégomènes à une esthétique future?

It did help me a lot.  

Trying to get my head (& writing) around something

Traditional thinking would have us believe that perception is something that takes place in our brain as the part of consciousness that processes sensorial data without actually engaging memory: the stream of sensorial data is transformed by the brain into imagery that the audio-visual center in our heads plays back to us live as consciousness. Supposedly, the brain takes sensorial raw material, processes it and provides us with an on-going sound and light show that is dubbed reality. This line of thinking creates the perennial divide between the unitary I that does the processing and the other that is processed. The me and the not-me, the me-subject and the it-object that exist as definite, static, stand-alone entities.

A different way of thinking has thought focusing on the infinite extensive reticulation of the shimmering succession of subjectivity and objectivity where progression moves in the any which way of relation and happens as quickly or as slowly as it needs to. In this conception, perception is the realization of the relation. It is not something that happens within us, but within the becoming relation bounded by a ceasing to become and a coming of becoming. Within this discontinuity, perception happens as the affirmation of participation in the unceasing creative process of relation. Any instance of affirmation of becoming is an image, and the succession of these images is consciousness. Reality becomes any instance whatever within the process of all possible creation, a subset of the infinite possibilities of relation. And what constitutes me or you or it is the self-consciousness of the endurance of subsets of relations where affect is the residual afterglow of relation. The me-whatever or the you-whatever: sugar in hot coffee!

L'image-perception et le discours indirect libre

Les concepts de subjectivité et d’objectivité sont déjà assez compliqués lorsqu’il s’agit de l’existence humaine, reprendre ces mêmes concepts au niveau de la création artistique est loin de simplifier le tout.

Premièrement, l’art naît toujours d’un choix, d’un point de vue. L’objectivité n’est alors qu’une illusion. Au cinéma, il y a le réalisateur qui décide ce qu’il y a à l’intérieur d’un plan et l’ordre dans lequel les plans seront présentés aux spectateurs. Le Tout, l’œuvre en elle-même, est donc le résultat de la subjectivité de l’artiste (j’inclus en « l’artiste » tous ceux qui exercent une influence de près ou de loin sur le film, le cinéma étant un art collectif). Il est donc nécessaire de revoir la dichotomie entre l’objectivité et la subjectivité.

Dans le chapitre « l’image-perception», Deleuze, en reprenant des concepts de linguistique ainsi que de Pasolini, explique qu’une « image-perception subjective est un discours direct; et; d’une manière plus compliquée, qu’une image-perception objective est comme un discours indirect (Deleuze, 106) » avant d’avancer que selon Pasolini « l’image cinématographique ne correspondait ni à un discours direct ni à un discours indirect, mais à un discours indirect libre ». Ce « discours indirect libre » est la capacité de l’auteur à transformer le point de vue du personnage à l’aide de la conscience-caméra et de ses procédés stylistiques. De cette manière, la vision du personnage devient celle du créateur. C’est ce qui caractérise le « cinéma de la poésie ».

Par contre, est-ce que ce « discours indirect libre » est présent dans toutes les images cinématographiques ou uniquement dans celles où la caméra se fait sentir? Advenant que c’est le deuxième cas, comme Pasolini semble le croire en limitant les exemples à Antonioni et Godard, comment peut-on qualifier la perception opposée (lorsque la présence de la caméra est effacée)?

Everything is connected...

While reading Full Metal Jacket Diary (by Matthew Modine), I felt on a description that made me thought about our class. About movements and images connected together in the notion of "all".
It goes like this: I take one of the cigars and put it away in the box that it came in. I take another and smoke it. The Indians says that when you smoke, you partake of three elements: the earth, fire, and wind. Tobacco grows in the earth and is therefore born of the mother and is her child. Fire is used to burn the tobacco. Air is used to bring the fire into our lungs. The smoke we exhale rises up and disappears into the sky, home to the celestial beings. Everything is connected. (p.144)

Language as a limit

In last week’s class, I believe it was made obvious that the potential to understand the writings of Deleuze are directly related to our ability to decode the meanings of the words he uses. A task that, at first glance, may seem simple due to the fact that the majority of words are commonly known and defined already. But, Deleuze does not use words as they have always been defined. He recreates words as he recreates ideas. The inherent limit of language is made apparent when we realize that the meanings of words are based on lived experience and creative constructions and not on official dictionaries.

A definition of a word is not a concrete thing. It is a concept. And whereas things can exist in the world, ideas can only exist in the mind. Nietzcshe states, “A word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases” and follows with, “every concept arises from the equation of unequal things.1” What a word is can be summed up as an analogy or metaphor that attempts to translate a virtual idea into a physical code that allows a thought to be passed from person to person.

Even clearly defined words hold within them the potential to be many things and not specific things. The word “leaf” can create two very different ideas in the minds of two different people, and all the words in existence follow that same mold. By eliminating the details, we create metaphors and analogies that at best convey a general idea of the thought and at worst convey gross distortions of them, if anything at all.

To demonstrate this, we just have to look at Deleuze’s use of the word Image within his writings. Though the dictionary definition is so obvious I have no need to quote it here, when we attempted to clearly define it in class we where faced with a much greater challenge. The best we could do at the time was Stamatia’s great attempt “Though it can’t exactly tell you what it is, I can tell you what it is not ...” 

1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s notebooks of the early 1870’s, Amherst, N.Y: Humanity Books, 1999

voir l'ensemble par l'extérieur du cadre

Je trouve intéressant la direction que prend le commentaire d'Ana à la fin de son récent post. Il est vrai que chacun des éléments d'un film sont reliés les uns aux autres. Mais en rester là revient à contruire un ensemble fermé, à ne considérer que ce qui est pris dans le cadre. En fait, tout ce qui comporte un film inclut les éléments de ce qu'on ne voit pas (le hors-champ) ou n'entend pas mais qui existe dans une réalité qui nous est aussi invisible que de voir chaque mouvement en place autour de nous, ce qui n'enlève en rien la réalité de leurs présences. Pourquoi restreindre l'existence à la simple vision que notre oeil (cerveau, caméra interne) nous offre sur le monde? L'on ne peut physiquement être conscient de tout ce qui nous entoure avec le même niveau d'attention -- l'humain n'est pas conçu ainsi. Malgré cela, chacun de nous est inconsciemment conscient de ce qui se passe sans qu'on ne le voit ou l'entende. Le tout est plus important que les ensembles sujets ou objets car il ne possède pas les limites de la conscience. Si l'on renvoie à une image philosophique de Dieu, il ne peut être qu'un élément du tout, suivant les mouvements qui caractérisent la totalité infini de l'univers.

Does this sound familiar?

Since I'm reading Whitehead's Process and Reality at the same time, I am struck by similarities, and these distract me to the point that I must share it with you. The first following quote is from Whitehead, the second is Deleuze talking about Bergson:

"Consciousness is only the last and greatest of ... elements by which the selective character of the individual obscures the eternal totality from which it originates and which it embodies."

and

"...further study of consciousness lead him [Bergson] to demonstrate that it only existed in so far as it opened itself upon a whole, by coinciding with the opening up of a whole."

Deleuze goes on to explain how closed systems are discernible as separate objects, but movement, which changes the relation of these separate objects, actually reflects qualitative change in the entire open system of the whole. Thus consciousness seems to take the place of one of these apparently separate objects (it is why we feel so separate!) but in fact, it exists separately only insofar that it is open to the whole - a by-product, if you will, of the whole and its internal, immanent movement. If we are to follow this train of thought diligently, I believe we would come to the insight that every consciousness is indeed indivisible from the whole - to divide it into a subject ('your' conscious subject, or 'my' conscious subject) actually makes a false cut in duration. Changing a method of selection to a concrete object: something Whitehead might refer to as "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness."

Le plan d'immanence

Le plan d’immanence est absolu en lui-même, il n’est ni intérieur ni extérieur à un autre quelconque plan, ne dépend pas d’un sujet ni d’un objet. Il est donc un système ouvert où l’ensemble de toutes les images qui le composent sont en perpétuel mouvement. Et chaque image dans ce système est mouvement. Image-mouvement/espace-temps. Un composé de croisements, de relations qui se font et se défont au gré de conjonctions et disjonctions. Puisque le mouvement s’étale en durée, cette dernière permet que tout ne soit donné tout de suite. Sans mouvement, il n’y aurait pas de changement, d’action possible, rien n’arriverait, tout ne serait que fixité. Ainsi, c’est le mouvement qui confère possibilité d’évolution infinie à toutes les images et, par conséquent, au plan d’immanence. Le possible, c’est l’ouverture suprême sur un virtuel toujours en devenir. Le mouvement est donc ce passage du virtuel au plan de matière, qui le définit tout en ne jamais l’enfermant dans un état quelconque car l’image est mouvement. Le plan d’immanence est, de ce fait, incommensurablement illimité. On y entre et on en sort par n’importe quelle relation ; il n’y a pas de début ni fin, mais seulement un infini clapotis qui s’écoule en ondulations.

L’univers en tant que métacinéma m'amène à l’idée que - tout comme chaque élément à l’intérieur d’un film est judicieusement relié à tous les autres - tout ce qui existe dans cette toile, ici appelée le plan d’immanence, est intrinsèquement relié. En conséquence, le plan d’immanence pourrait-il être considéré comme ce qui relie les nuages au ciel et la pluie à la Terre et au mouvement des vagues dans la Mer ? Si nous pouvons ici voir un terme philosophique pour « Dieu », il faudrait croire que Dieu n’est pas en dehors de l’univers, mais bien à l’intérieur même de cet univers dont chaque minuscule particule compose le tout. Ainsi, la philosophie ramène le divin à l’intérieur de chacun de nous et le fait vivre à travers chaque pierre, chaque goutte de pluie, chaque bloc d’espace-temps.

« …ce n’est pas la conscience qui est lumière [phénoménologie], c’est l’ensemble des images, ou la lumière, qui est conscience, immanente à la matière. »
(Deleuze, L’image-mouvement, Les éditions de Minuit, p. 90.)

Illusion of Movement

In my view, it makes sense to underline the illusion of absent movement that cinema offers us. The intermediate images which we perceive at the rate of 24 frames per second make us experience just as if they were real although they do not exist on the material level. However, it is impossible to separate the cinematic movement from the larger concept of screen-time that might be articulated as a kind of meta-time. In this relationship, the Deleuzian term movement-image appears adequate to describe its ambiguous nature shaping our perception of time as an artistic (artificial) image of reality, which Andrei Tarkovsky calls a metaphor of reality.

pile-up

It seems to me that the non-linear coming into being that Ryan mentions is also Deleuze’s second aspect of time; no longer a succession of movements and their units, but time as simultaneism and simultaneity (46). This second aspect of time is the fundamentally open whole in which the indivisibility of movement is understood as continuous and limitless, always giving rise to something new. I think of this open whole as the plane of immanence, which Deleuze tells us is both the movement established between sets and the movement which keeps them open, allowing them to move and change and get messed up with us as bodies, too

Stones and Cinema

Sub-atomic theory visualizes motion in stillness: A stone has a lifespan at a molecular level, and it moves very slowly even though one would need eons to perceive these motions. In terms of cinema, change the duration (at any level) and the reality attached to it changes with it! The notion between duration, movement and perception become skewed. Here I can fully appreciate the works of  Douglas Gordon, where the imperceptible becomes visceral, as the notion of movement-image challenges our perception. 

Sets and Domains

"We may therefor say that the plane of immanence or the plane of matter is: a set of movement-images; a collection of lines or figures of light; a series of blocs of space-time" (Deleuze, 61)

This formulation put forth by Delueze in order to clarify the relations between light, image and space-time could perhaps be seen as paralleling (or being derivations of) Einstein's concept of relativity, which originally lead to the definition of the space-time model. 

Einstein's theory allows that nothing can be considered to exist outside of an event's (observer's) future or past light cone as defined by the expanding light energy traveling from said event (observer). This is due to the limit of all moving phenomena as being necessarily slower than the speed of light. And, if nothing can move faster than light then reality needs to be contained within a light-event. What can potentially exist outside the light cones can not affect or be affected by the event; they for all intents and purposes do not exist.

Is it possible that the "set movement-images" referred to by Delueze and contained within its domain, as defined by the plane of immanence, is synonymous with the "set of all perception and matter" as contained in the future and past light cones of an event? And, if so, in how many ways can the event be defined?

la perception difficile du mouvement

Comme Mathieu le mentionne, un cinéaste d'animation regardant les mouvements qu'il a créés dans son film ne peut faire le lien avec les motions qui y furent associées. Ce qui me fait réfléchir à la difficulté, lors du visionage d'un film d'animation, à y dénoter les mouvements de caméra (je parle ici bien sûr que d'un type d'animation). Le problème survient, je crois, de la constante mouvance des objets/personnages à l'écran. Où commence le mouvement des corps à l'écran, où finit celui de la caméra qui les filme? Il me semble parfois être incapable de les dissocier, voire de les diviser. Comme, lorsqu'assis dans un wagon de métro, nous pensons bouger alors que le métro parallèle se met en mouvement. Ce qui est quand même un phénomène fascinant: la difficulté à percevoir le mouvement.

Conceal, reveal, revisit

“We know that things and people are always forced to conceal themselves, have to conceal themselves when they begin. What else could they do? They come into being within a set which no longer includes them and, in order not to be rejected, have to project the characteristics which they retain in common with the set. The essence of a thing never appears at the outset, but in the middle, in the course of its development, when its strength is assured” (3).

At first glance, the quote above seems to suggest a progression characterized by linearity. There is an initial “coming into being” that leads to an intermediary state marked by the appearance of an essence. What would follow “the middle” as the course of “development” extends? One could imagine a sort of “regression/development,” where the thing or person turns to attend to the initial stage and probes the nature of the “coming into being within a set which no longer includes them” with acquired knowledge of the essence at its disposal, in a sense, causing the trajectory to stray from what initially appeared to be a sense of linearity. The stages of this “development” would appear able to converse with and translate each other. I am not sure that there is any direct way of mapping this concept onto the nature of the linkages inherent in the three levels discussed by Deleuze (sets and closed systems, the movement of translation, the duration or the whole), but it is not surprising that his discussion of these three levels would lead one to dwell on the quote above. In moving past the notion of simple linearity – in the mind, if not in time – one is enticed by the idea of oscillations between “divisions and reunions,” which may be sensed in the quote above, and is certainly present elsewhere in Deleuze’s exploration of the cinema…

“Given that it is a consciousness which carries out these divisions and reunions, we can say of the shot that it acts like a consciousness. But the sole cinematographic consciousness is not us, the spectator, not the hero; it is the camera – sometimes human, sometimes inhuman or superhuman” (20).

Feeling the movement

When I think of movement, which senses do I use? When I 'see' a movement-image, is it my eyes that address it? Do I feel the aura on my body, smell the wind of movement? Is it an action-reaction to my own movement? My brain records it, my senses are re-constructing it... Movement-images address other movement images which contain other images...

Mouvement et fixité

Pierre Hébert définit une différence indéniable entre le dessin/peinture et le dessin animé.  Certes, nous avons, quelques uns d'entre nous, affirmés à l'intérieur de ce blogue que la peinture est le prolongement de notre mouvement corporel.  En observant bien une toile on perçoit les traits rapides ou lents, leurs trajectoires en lien direct avec les gestes de l'artiste et même ses quelques hésitations.  Toutefois, lorsqu'un cinéaste d'animation regarde les mouvements représentés dans le film, il ne peut faire le lien avec ses motions physiques reliés à son oeuvre.  «Autant les traits du dessin fixe sont, sans conteste, les traces de mon corps, autant les mouvements que vous voyez là sur l'écran ne sont les mouvements de personne.» (Hébert,30).

Sommes-nous pas ici en trait de constater encore une fois que le cinéma offre l'illusion d'un mouvement absent?  Quels seraient les points de repère du mouvement animé?

METAMORPHOSES VERNISSAGE

I just got this in the mail.... thought that maybe some of you might be interested. Wed. Sept 17 at 17:30 at the Cinematheque Quebecoise. If you want to read the info on the card, you can double click on the image and the invitation should pop up in another window. You can get a preview of the show at:

http://stefan-n.ca/meta-f.html

Cheers, Felix

Break down of a stillness illusion

If I enter in Catherine's museum, I see still image with moving life. Sometimes the stillness comes from people staring at representation of movement. Sometimes the living move around fix image of other times. If I walk through the space and stand in front of a painting, I'm a moving creature look at a past movement on a wall. The image itself can show -- represent -- movement, like a ocean storm made of colored oil. But in fact, the paint have been made from a moving brush attached to the moving arm of a living man (or woman). Every parts of it are a witness of the painting action trying to recreate a subjective representation of a nature in motion. My eyes are looking at it, going from corner to corner, details and back to an overall view. And the cells of my brain are connecting elements together. It could happen that my soul feel in love with what I see. So I'm moving in many senses, just like the painting in front of me is in constant movement. There is nothing still in this world, only the illusion of it.

Toute perception est bonne à vivre

La perception du mouvement est à la fois personnelle et culturelle.
Ce que notre oeil observe et renvoie au cerveau comme étant un mouvement
n'est jamais l'image de la réalité. La réalité est subjective aux sens, à la culture
et aux expériences de chacun.

La durée est un concept tout aussi subjectif. Comme le mouvement, ou la représentation
cinématographique d'un mouvement, ce que nous sommes transforme notre perception
du temps qui passe.

Le temps ne change pas, c'est la manière dont nous y réagissons qui crée une illusion.
Le cinéma est un outil qui fait apparaître l'illusion de la durée et du mouvement. Il est le
porteur du questionnement subjectif de l'esprit humain sur ce qui l'entoure (visible ou non).

À la base, ce principe est simple mais le quotidien l'efface. Nous l'oublions tous un jour ou l'autre devant un écran ou devant notre propre réalité. Chaque moment que nous prenons pour raviver cet idée, nous nous rapprochons de la réponse. Nous ne pouvons pas l'atteindre de manière concrète, nous ne pouvons que penser et nous réjouir de cette pensée.

Folding on the dotted line...

The shot unfolding is not the same as the unfolding of the shot. The first assumes a pre-supposed objective entity as determinant of the progression whereas the second presupposes processes that may or may not entail satisfaction. Imposing duration on these processes concretizes the event and the positioning of the duration (whether as synchronic intensity or diachronic extension) conditions and determines the subjective extent of the objective outcome.

Indivisibilité/Malléabilité

Deleuze nous dit que le mouvement est indivisible. Cette idée est difficile à réconcilier avec la malléabilité, ou l'ouverture, que Deleuze semble pourtant supposer au mouvement. Comment peut-on jouer avec le mouvement si l'on ne peut le diviser, le compartimenter, le disséquer? Et, si l'on met en rapport, comme le fait Deleuze, notre façon de concevoir le mouvement plus strictement physique avec le mouvement plus abstrait de la pensée, comment peut-on penser de façon plus libre et résister à la tentation de découper notre réflexion en moments se rapportant sur un continuum, se rapportant à un tout, qui sans être donné, est envisagé comme donnable?

La métaphore du fil m'apparaît comme une façon de réconcilier cette indivisibilité/malléabilité du mouvement. Ce fil, ténu ou épais, qui se promène entre des ensembles (ou des moments?) artificiellement clos, qui les lie et les ouvre en même temps à un tout changeant, permet de penser l'apparent paradoxe du mouvement à la fois irréductible et ouvert. Après tout, si le fil est une matière concrète avec un début et une fin assurant un lien spatial entre des éléments (qu'on peut diviser sans en changer la nature, d'une certaine façon...), on peut néanmoins voir dans ce même fil une substance malléable, étirable, qui peut revenir en arrière, composer, décomposer, recomposer, lier, délier et relier encore ces éléments pour les inscrire dans la durée et le changement.

Duration

I think an important aspect of the movement-image in cinema is that it happens in duration. Deleuze says that duration is change, that it changes and does not stop changing. Cinema gives us a movement-image because it expresses a duration which changes, producing a qualitative change in the (open) whole. Such a qualitative change suggests to me something made new – a newness that is its own movement, not simply a reconstituted movement reproduced on a screen. In this way I also think that the movement of a film is never trapped but is always in relation between the various sets, objects, the viewer, etc. I have trouble with the idea of duration though, because I don’t know where to find its end. A film has an identifiable length, but it also continues with me after the reel has stopped. But what continues? Does the movement-image of cinema occur only in specific duration outside of myself or can the duration be stretched out beyond the identifiable time-length of the film?

La vision surhumaine

La fonction du cinéma est-elle de recréer l’imagination humaine en proposant une vision pouvant se fragmenter, se déformer et voyager à travers le temps?

Le processus de reproduction et d’enregistrement du mouvement que nous propose le cinéma a été élaboré en raison d’un désir éprouvé par l’homme de voir la réalité se recréer devant ses yeux. Si l’homme a poussé plus loin la découverte de la photographie en cherchant à créer des images en mouvement, c’est qu’il poursuivait un désir de reproduire le monde tel qu’il le perçoit.

Deleuze considère que les mouvements de caméra les plus complexes permettent au cinéma de proposer une vision « surhumaine ». Par son simple mouvement, la caméra ne peut pourtant surpasser la vision de l’homme puisqu’elle se doit d’être guidée par ce dernier. Sur une plate-forme mouvante, l’homme peut être en mesure de percevoir les mêmes mouvements que toute caméra placé sur une grue. Le passage de la caméra fixe à la caméra amovible constitue davantage une façon de se rapprocher de la vision humaine qu’une manière de la dépasser. La caméra mobile et l’émancipation de la prise de vue ne sont pas nécessairement des moyens de dépasser la perception naturelle, comme le suggère Deleuze, mais plutôt des méthodes servant à modifier la réalité en la représentant de façon plus attrayante.

Ce qui permet réellement à la vision cinématographique de se distinguer de celle l’homme est son aptitude à interrompre le mouvement, à sauter d’un lieu à l’autre par le biais du montage, à offrir une limitation précise par son cadrage et à modifier sa profondeur de champ. Il est vrai que le cinéma offre une représentation pouvant dépasser la réalité de l’homme, mais il ne parvient pourtant jamais à dépasser son imagination. L’homme cherche-t-il vraiment à recréer sa réalité?Ne cherche-t-il pas plutôt à illustrer son imaginaire?

More questions

« … the essence of the cinematographic movement-image lies in extracting from vehicles or moving bodies the movement which is their common substance, or extracting from movements the mobility which is their essence » (Deleuze 23).

Reading Deleuze raises more questions than it provides answers… Is the “extracted or pure movement” akin to human imagination, which is itself able to move freely from one thought (image) to another, effortlessly crossing the borders of time and space? Does this mechanism of memories and rêveries simply become a technological externalization of what was going in psyche since the very beginning of human existence? When watching a film, why are we feeling profoundly affected by particular images and movements which were artificially created by the authors?

In Steve's post, he touches upon the subject of imagination, a concept that is constantly moving. Very rarely (or ever?) does our imagination produce images of stillness... Which makes me think about museums, and their propensity to imagination. For in museums, stillness is everywhere, yet when you are standing in front of an oeuvre, you see (or you imagine) movement, movements that have already begin or that haven't yet ended, movements in time, through time, through space, movements of the artist or of the subject of the piece. Museums are, just like cinema, a great mise-en-abîme of movement: what exactly is movement? What moves? The apparatus, or the subject, or our vision of it? Movements can't stand in front of us like ouevres in a museum, for movement is around us, happening behind our backs, while our eyes are closed, in us. It takes only our imagination to structure it, to give it a beginning, an end, a goal.

Deleuze asks: "How are the production and appearance of something new possible?" I'd answer, "through imagination".

L'art en mouvement

 Len Lye qualifiait son art de cinétique (c'est-à-dire qui relève du mouvement ou est causé par lui).  Il créait ses oeuvres de façon   kinesthésique (c'est-à-dire à partir des sensations de mouvement dans les muscles, les tendons et les articulations).  Il semble intéressant d'analyser le cinéma d'animation sous une optique de la kinesthésie esthétique (tel que décrite par Lye).  Avec Deleuze nous avons compris qu'il est impossible de (re)constituer le mouvement présent.   Le cinéma d'animation permettrait-il, de façon kinesthésique, de constituer la perception du mouvement présent?   

Does the cinematic image have substance?

First identify the substance of space as a single homogenous space, for example, an Ether or catchall for electromagnetic waves.  Is movement impressed into this homogenous space by a continuous series of waves that are always leaving a trace, while prehending the potential of its next position?  Even movement emanated from subtle bodily circulations sustain our immersion in this Ether, for these are waves we continually disturb by simply being alive. This constant impression in space maps our passage, and the waves we produce intermingle with other waves to create the most abstract of associations. 

Besides the mechanisms that allow moving images to be humanly perceived, the cinematic image itself, as it moves, disturbs no waves. Or does it?

The light that emanates from the screen, (without perception, a flickering dance in the electromagnetic spectrum) is actually communicating with this Ether: an ephemeral conversation made up of waves. But the image itself is not disturbing waves in this spectrum.

What if we replace Ether with substrate?

Philosophically, a substrate is the “dark side of substance”.

If I contend that the cinematic image itself, as it moves, in relation to the electromagnetic spectrum disturbs no waves, is it void of substance as well and thus cannot be included in the nomenclature of a given substrate? 

The "Lost Movements" of a Frame

A lot of things have been said about the movement itself, but what happen when this movement is trapped into a closed system like a frame.

During the process of shooting a movie, movements occur everywhere, onscreen and offscreen. But, on the exposed celluloid, only what is on the frame will remain moving. So, what happens when a character goes in and out the frame? We know that the movement continues, we can imagine it, but we lost it in the concrete and visual sense.

Is it a division of movements by the limits of the frame? And are the "lost movements" a part of the art work or do they only live through the imagination of the viewer?

TAGS

Erin was talking in class the other day about mapping the relations of the various postings on the blog. Keeping that in mind, it might be smart to include labels with each post. When you post a comment, you will see a small box at the botom of the window that looks like a search box... you can type in the various tags or labels for the post. They will serve the function of connectors or conjunctions between entries when they are all linked together down the line.

Movement and dimensionality

Some thoughts...

Movement happens in duration. We could say that movement happens in time. But, then, any movement is change which happens in time that never stops. Time has length and as we know it is directional and sequential. There is always the now, which we could say that it has no dimension, but it then becomes the past awaiting for the future. But, then, again, to realize the past-present-future we must have memory of it. Or memory and imagination (imagination being the memory of the future? - I am sorry, cannot remember who said that...)

But movement happens also in space. Space also has dimensions - at least 3. And remembering a line from John Ralston Saul book 'On Equilibrium': "Memory is not the past. It is the water you swim trough, the words you speak,  your gestures, your expectations. This suggests that memory has a shape. We use it every day. From it we grasp a context - for our thoughts, our questions, our actions. For our lives. "

So... the way I happen to "see" movement is a continuous multi-dimensional entity...

Reading Deleuze

We should not be surprised to find that different academic disciplines dealing with the concept of time (or any other concept, for that matter) in a variety of contexts would color or nuance the words they use as a part of their specialist vocabularies: the shift in the use of language is a demonstration of the adaptation of words to the variety of environments in which they function and this is akin to the process of adaptation in biological speciation—a sign of movement and change i.e. animation—in language.

Animating Catalonia (Cont'd)

As you've likely seen from Crina's posting, she posted a link to YouSendIt in order to download the English versions of Cinema 1&2. Simply copy paste it into your browser and press download. I know I said I had the French versions as well, but I think I spoke too soon; the file I had was a zip file called Deleuze Cinéma 1 & 2 and when I opened it on Saturday I saw that it was only a transcript of a talk Deleuze gave on the book(s). So, I'm sorry for the unastisfied expectation.

I think I mentioned that I had tried to link up with the bestiario.org folks about getting their software to animate our concept collection... and I just heard from them today. Here's the response from Santiago Ortiz...

Thank you very much for your interest on 6pli!
Sounds really interesting what you want to do.
Do you have published all those concepts somewhere? Are they tagged?...
Otherwise an interesting option is to create a blog, and create a post for each concepts. Then you create a delicious account and link and tag each post (And finally we create a 6pli space).
I´m looking forward on your project, because this is the kind of utilization that 6pli was made for!
Thanks,
Santiago Ortiz
http://bestiario.org

Division is creation (of a kind)!

The concept of constant movement could be conceived in two ways. It could mean that the movement is occurring continuously over a period of time or it could equally mean that it is remains unchanging over over a period of time. In either case, the mention of the word "period" situates the movement (which is constant) as a divided movement. The word period, has as a definition, "a length or portion of time" or "an interval of time". The definition presupposes a cut or division.

"... movement is indivisible, or cannot be divided without changing qualitatively each time it is divided."

– Gilles Delueze (reiterating Bergson's first thesis on movement)

 Yet, if movement can't be divided then how could we define a unique or particular movement, as opposed to the whole of movement in general? There would only be one eternal movement that would be in the process of moving at all times. From the expanding universe through to its galaxies, stars, planets and all dependent life and matter, every movement would be dependent on another and could in fact be seen as one. Perhaps movement, as we use it conceptually, needs to be definable from a point of view and a division; a cut, that isolates it from the greater whole. A movement, encompassed within a beginning and end, that defines it as an object of our own subjective phenomenological creation.

Movement pass through me but I don't see it

My body is in constant movement but I don't see it like you do.
I see yours, and everything around, and every kind of movement there is
in this world.
Physical, mental, spiritual, social, industrial or natural, I see them all.
Movement live inside me, I can feel it more than I can see.
Without the movement, my body and my soul are in a silent state.
A state without life, because life is always moving somewhere.
So if life is moving, the representation of life is moving too.
Maybe not for real, maybe just in my mind but it still move all the time.
Animation is a creation of movement just like a butterfly create a poem while
moving his wings.

Cinema One and Two English Text

Hi folks, here is a link from Felix for the Cinema texts. Unfortunately, he only has the English ones, and not the French ones as he had previously thought. Also, he has no internet at home, and thats why I'm posting this for him now...

CBA

  

https://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=batch_download&send_id=603840398&email=656253c44d5943803595a6203b4d64a0

Joe P. Bear

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for having me on this blog. I thought I would post a pretty amazing work I recently came across, that combines found footage with animation - with a letter written by a (Joe) Polar Bear. It's by (an unfortunately not Quebecois) Matt McCormick from: 

http://www.rodeofilmco.com/films/video_joe_p_bear.php

Kind of like driving with no rear view mirrors

movement, if you miss it, is always happening behind you. "...you miss the movement in two ways. On the one hand, you can bring two instants or two positions together to infinity; but movement will always occur behind your back" (in the second paragraph).

Which reminds me of Walter Benjamin's Angel of History, who is always looking in front, but is always looking behind, because in front is behind and paradise a long time ago before your eyes. 

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/shadowtime/wb-thesis.html

Which reminds me of a tangent, as Felix was explaining to me, that is at the point at which two points on a slope have been brought together to infinity: a tangent is not a slope, but it expresses it at one point that is not in movement. Describes a point that was never in movement, but that expresses the slope that is in movement.

So if movement is present, as in present-passing, does it make sense to ask in which time a tangent 'occurs'? Does it make sense to say that a tangent is the attempt to divide movement - which fails because movement is indivisible - but serves a different purpose? A purpose, namely,   

The present movement

Deleuze begins The Movement-Image with a key bergsonian thesis on movement: movement is present in an experience of present-passing.  There is no subject that pre-dates movement. Movement creates the conditions for experience, and this experience is infinitely heterogeneous. Each quality of movement is absolutely irreducible to each other quality of movement. This is why movement as such is not divisible. To suggest that movement is divisible is to posit a subject (an experiential spacetime) that predates movement. For Deleuze/Bergson  there can be no "objective" movement: spacetimes of experience are created, not moved into. Already in the first paragraph of The Movement-Image, two things seem to be at stake: movement is indivisible and movement is not something that happens "to us." There is no subject for movement. And movement cannot be reconstituted.

Animating Catalonia

Hello all and merci for the invitation to contribute to the blog.

Finally, the perfect opportunity to post this link!
http://www.bestiario.org/
I think that it has been a part of animating Catalonia....
Enjoy!
Felix

Concept Animations

Consider this a networking of concepts that animate thought. Our main concern is to create conceptual hyperlinks to thought in the making. With a focus on the cinematic, we turn toward articulations of experience. All experience is perception in movement.