“The function of the image, as Gogol said, is to express life itself, not ideas or arguments about life. It does not signify life or symbolise it, but embodies it, expressing its uniqueness” (Tarkovsky 11). Borrowing this definition from Gogol, it seems that Tarkovsky attempts at rearticulating the Deleuzian ultimate delineation of cinema from the system of language. That is why I feel always uneasy about interpreting his films. In fact, I always limit myself to a precise summary of the plot and a stylistic analysis while avoiding discussion about meaning. For example, reading Stalker simply in terms of political allegory in the Soviet context of the 1970s will leave so many other themes aside that are, nonetheless, there. Every time I pick up just one meaning from his film, it makes me feel like I deny millions of others because his images “stretches out into infinity, and leads to the absolute” (Tarkovky 104). How can I describe the absolute in this case? My guess is that the essay about Tarkovky’s images should also bring up something that “stretches out into infinity”, so the critic is bound to create something and not criticize or demolish anything in itself. Art cinema at large is a unique chance for film studies scholars to become an artist by leaving behind the bookkeeping of formal analysis.

plan-séquence en animation

«the essential nature of the filmed material comes out in the character of the editing»  Tarkovsky (116)

Cette citation me pousse à revenir au plan-séquence.  Un montage dans la mise-en-scène et dans le choix des cadrages est orchestré dans le plan-séquence.  Bref, par sa composition dans l'espace, le montage est présent dans un tel plan.  Plusieurs théoriciens du cinéma ont prouvé que même à l'époque des frères Lumières, le montage avait lieu, de par certains montage in-caméra.  

Je me demandais ce que serait le plan-séquence en cinéma d'animation.  J'ai tout suite pensé aux performances live de Pierre Hébert.  La gravure en direct faite par Hébert peut s'apparenter au plan-séquence.  Dans la mesure où l'image transmet simultanément le mouvement direct sur la pellicule.  Le rythme est capté à même le présent.  Certes, certains diront que le montage est encore présent de par ses choix du trait et des images dans le cadre, mais reste le seul exemple de plan-séquence en cinéma d'animation qui m'est venu à l'esprit.

Readings for Last Two Weeks of November

Re-visiting Tarkovsky

I am re-visiting Tarkovsky after many years and I am reminded of the reasons I appreciated him as much as I did. He is not just an  artist, or just a cinematographer, or just a poet, or just a theologian. He is someone who is very concerned with the "big" questions regarding the human predicament and uses film to articulate his philosophical and spiritual musings. I am moved by his tender look at the human condition in all its expressions, and his attention to the quest for meaning, beauty, integrity, wholesomeness. 

To that effect, he challenges orthodox cinema by introducing his own rhythmic, poetic sculpting of time (against the logic of linear unfolding) which, he thinks, does greater justice to the complexity of conscious life and,by the same token, engages his audiences in a more constructive and involved way, so much so that they are " on a par with the artist in their perception of the film".

Nier le concret

Comme l’a souligné Charlie, L’Année Dernière à Marienbad est un très bon exemple pour illustrer la puissance du faux.

« La passion devient l’élément essentiel de ce cinéma parce que, à l’inverse de l’action, elle noue des narrations falsifiantes à des descriptions pures » (Deleuze, p.177).

Cette phrase de Deleuze énonce un paradoxe cinématographique: comment tromper le concret d’une image? D’un coté, l’image est concrète, elle est ce qu’elle est. Nous voyons des couleurs, des formes, des mouvements, de l’espace, le temps passer, etc. En ce sens, le cinéma est très fréquemment constitué de descriptions pures. Par contre, cette image visuelle n’est pas uniquement ce qui forme l’image cinématographique. La narration (autant le développement de l’histoire que la voix off) peut confronter ces images, nier le concret, ce que l’on voit. Je crois que c’est ce que Resnais et Robbe-Grillet ont réussit à accomplir avec le film. Nous voyons des descriptions pures après d’autres descriptions pures et chacune nie la précédente. Dans chaque plan, il y a de l’addition et/ou de la soustraction qui change le souvenir d’une image. Cette image, qui est vraie parce qu’elle est elle-même, devient alors fausse dans un contexte narratif. Toutefois, je crois que ce qui est exprimé dans le film de Resnais n’est pas unique à ce film, mais bien une exagération de ce qui se trouve dans la grande majorité des films (avec l’apport du montage, etc.). C’est peut-être aussi contre cela que Tarkovski se rebelle dans Le temps scellé, lorsqu’il veut retrouver la vérité de l’image ou lorsqu’il privilégie le plan-séquence au montage.

Still Orang-Outans

Au risque de casser un peu le rythme des dernières posts, j'aimerais revenir à l'essentiel du discours de Deleuze -le mouvement et le temps. J'ai récemment vu un film brésilien intitulé Still Orang-Outans, dont la prouesse était de tenir en un seul plan-séquence de 80 minutes. Jamais au cinéma n'avons-nous vu pareille relation entre temps et mouvement: alors que la caméra bouge -avance- continuellement, le temps se déroule dans le réel, et les deux concepts se joignent de façon parallèle. Tel un train qui avance sur ses rails, le temps et le mouvement vont dans la même direction, se déroulent, et l'un et l'autre semblent concorder.
Mais concordent-ils vraiment?
Lorsqu'il m'arrive de réfléchir à la temporalité au cinéma, il est automatique pour moi de penser au plan-séquence. Pourquoi en est-ce ainsi? J'imagine que pour moi, c'est dans ces moments si fluides que le temps devient important, que j'y prête alors une grande attention. Le concept du plan-séquence au cinéma m'obsède, je vais donc essayer d'y dédier mes prochaines posts, étant en retard de quelques-unes.

Le Souvenir des illusions

Dans son chapitre sur la puissance du faux, Deleuze décrit l’existence d’une narration falsifiante. Dans certains films, la narration ne fait qu’unir des présents incompossibles, des potentiels de réalités qui ne s’actualisent jamais concrètement. L’image se retient de laisser transparaître sa réalité et son origine, elle n’est que représentation picturale ne pouvant être totalement décodée puisque la fausseté qui la constitue ne peut se détacher de ses composantes véritables.
C’est ce type de narration qui constitue L’Année Dernière à Marienbad d’Alain Resnais. Les deux principaux personnages de ce film s’y contredisent, l’un mentionnant des souvenirs de moments vécus à Marienbad l’année précédente, l’autre affirmant n’avoir aucune réminiscence de ces instants. Chaque personnage devient faussaire et jamais la narration ne permet au spectateur de déceler la vérité. Les images de souvenirs sont introduites par le personnage masculin, puis reniées par la femme. Les contradictions s’affichant à l’intérieur de chaque image telles que les ombres infidèles soulignent l’impossibilité des souvenirs décrits et la défaillance de la mémoire de chaque personnage, mais suggèrent aussi l’irréalité de leur présent. Le film parvient à reconstituer un amas de souvenirs falsifiés par la mémoire, proposant par le fait même que la vérité s’est effacée avec le temps et qu’elle ne pourra jamais être vécue à nouveau. Les défauts de la mémoire trahissent chaque personnage en lui-même.
Deleuze mentionne également que « la passion devient l’élément essentiel de ce cinéma parce que, à l’inverse de l’action, elle noue des narrations falsifiantes à des descriptions pures » (Deleuze, p.177). Dans L’Année Dernière à Marienbad, les personnages sont animés par un désir de faire resurgir une passion éteinte, qu’elle soit véritable ou qu’elle n’ait été que rêvée. Ils ont le désir de ramener à la surface des souvenirs purs, mais l’inconstance de leur mémoire les retient de se faire confiance à eux-mêmes et empêche le spectateur de déceler toute forme de vérité.

digital>analog>digital>analog>digital...ad infinitum

Continuing the discussion of the analog and the digital, I figured I would raise a few questions that could perhaps allow us to see the creative process that exists within the translation of one to the other.

It easy to imagine that the digital is a weak and limiting impression of the infinity of qualitative phenomena inherent in the analog. The traditional way of seeing this relationship is that the digital samples the analog and creates an approximation of the real "object" in bits, 1's and 0's, on and off. But in this has always been the case in the way perception works, and is especially true of the film.

In effect, the process of filming has been traditionally seen as analog because it translates light (electro-magnetic energy) through a chemical process into an image that then uses light to project it. It would appear that the analog is preserved and not sampled in the way a computer will take light and sample it at a pre-defined degree and store an approximation of the continuous light into a grid of pixels. but, this is if we only consider the material aspect of light and ignore the temporal.

Film can capture light continuously, but doesn't treat time the same way. In this case it samples at 24 frames per second; the same way a digital interpretation of a sound wave (electro-acoustic energy) is sampled at 44,100 times a second (common sampling rate for CD quality sound). The time element of a film requires the limits of human perception to re-interpret the sampled images into an analog continuum. 24 frames a second passes the threshold of our visual digital perception well enough that we see continuos movement where there isn't really one. If we where to film at 2 frames a second and play it back at that speed we would notice the lack of interstitial movement.

In the digital capture of light the same phenomena is present, but now it samples the materiality of the light as well as the time. Again, a high sampling rate (high-resolution) will not be obvious to us since it may pass the threshold – due to the mechanism of light-perception in the cone-cells of our eyes, the light diffraction due to the humidity in the air between the projector-screen or screen-eyes – we would see continuous light. Whereas a low-resolution image would make it appear as though we are seeing the digital sample. This is just an illusion as the requirement of light in order to see, is always analog. What you would be seeing are little squares (pixels). But the little squares are perceived as analog image.

If we say that the digital image is not a true copy it is because we are pre-supposing an objective original model of which we are trying to replace with a copy. But, instead we could use the term simulacrum to represent a copy that does not stand in for its object, but exists as an object on its own. As Brian Massumi states, "The terms copy and model bind us to the world of representation and objective (re)production"(The Simulacrum According to Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). And, he mentions in an interpretation of a simulacrum;

The thrust of the process is not to become the equivalent of the "model" but to turn against it and its world in order to open up a new space for the simulacrum's own mad proliferation. The simulacrum affirms its own difference. (ibid.)

Can all art not be seen as a simulacrum instead of a copy? Do people really still think that a photograph (analog or digital)  captures "true" reality?

The process of translating from the analog to the digital creates new "objects"every time and it when we try to equate them to the "original" object that we end up in a process of judgment. Can we still speak in these terms without reverting to outdated notions of objective reality and absolute truths? Shall we go back to a Platonic world view where the artist is seen as a mere copier of reality?

The Digital Passion of Resolution

I felt compelled to rent and watch Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc after reading everyone's comments and Deleuze's references to it and it was fun to feel the close-ups in a new way. It's great how Dreyer lets the subtleties of expression run the full course of their complexities as they cross the actors' faces like slow motion lightning forcing a retracing of the rethinking of the sequence that has just transpired. It's 1928 and it shows... Silent film has fully developed its story-telling potential and is now ready to go beyond the action-image. It's now ready to accept the dimension of the "internal", except that it gets hijacked by sound for another 20 years. Dreyer's Joan of Arc seems to go that extra push into the inside by giving time to allow the full modulation of feeling on each face as expression of feeling-thought in motion. And even if we can't see the forces that generate the thought, we can definitely see the results as cues as to how to read and summarize what precedes it while colouring our intuition and expectations as to that which is coming. We could call the beautiful b&w images hyper-real due to the overall look of the film created by superior optics, incredible amounts of light, a super-fine grain stock, the filtration of the light to offer preferential treatment to select parts of the light spectrum during shooting and the colour palette used in the art-direction to keep everything within grey midtones. But in contrast to the hyper-reality of HD TV, I wonder if the heightened sense of reality and the crispness of the resolution of the image in HD is not because there is more but because there is less, a "subtraction" of sorts, the contrast between the fine-grain resolution of the retina vs. the fine coarseness (or the coarse fineness?) of the HD chips. What I mean by this is a sampling/representation that lacks continuity in the spectrum of representation (or a too coarse a sampling to define the spectrum of presentation) and we feel that it is hyper-real because there is not as much fuzziness to figure out in the making sense of the image. We feel the choppiness of digital sampling as crispness and the smooth continuity of the analog as fuzzy and out of focus. The "fattiness" of listening to vinyl is so much more satisfying than the lack of presence and dry crispness of a CD and as Brian Massumi says it's perhaps because fat (gras) indiscriminately affects all your taste buds--it provides broad-band satisfaction to the full-spectrum resolution of your (gustatory) sensoria. Perhaps the sensorial pleasure of roundness and smoothness of film lies in the continuous full-spectrum depth and complexity of the analog? Perhaps we are being sold on the super-crispness of the digital as a positive when in fact it is a negative and a shortcoming dictated by the imperatives or limitations of the technology and their marketing strategies? 0 or 1 vs 0>x<1? Bonjour Zeno, comment tu vas?

Deleuze's Cinema 1 & 2

Hi all,

You can download a zipped file of Deleuze's Cinema 1 & 2 at the following link.
Simply click on the link and press on the button that says download.

Enjoy,
Felix

https://www.yousendit.com/download/Y2o5UXVqVEhiR0kwTVE9PQ

Fabulation

«Jamais le mot de Nietzsche, ‘supprimez vos vénérations’, n’a été aussi bien entendu que par Perrault. Quand Perrault s’adresse à ses personnages réels du Québec, ce n’est pas seulement pour éliminer la fiction, mais pour la libérer d’un modèle de vérité qui la pénètre, et retrouver au contraire la pure et simple fonction de fabulation qui s’oppose à ce modèle.» (Deleuze, L’image-temps, 196)
Deleuze réussit ici encore une fois à briser une dichotomie facile, celle entre cinéma de fiction et cinéma documentaire, une séparation dont tout le monde reconnaît les apories et problèmes fondamentaux mais qui est quand même persistante et dont il est difficile de se défaire complètement. Le cinéma de Perrault, dont on a si souvent dit qu’il était un cinéma du réel, devient ainsi sous la plume de Deleuze un cinéma de fabulation; un des grands maîtres du documentaire devient l’artisan exemplaire portant les puissances du faux au cœur du récit cinématographique. Pour la suite du monde : Nietzsche aurait probablement dit pour la suite de la vie. Ce film nous offre bel et bien, non pas un regard nostalgique sur des fragments d’une réalité en voie de disparition, mais une véritable ode sur le pouvoir de fabulation et de création qui peut jaillir de la parole et de l’action de gens simples. Nietzsche n’aurait peut-être pas cherché, ni espéré trouver, son surhomme à l’Ile-Aux-Coudres, mais je ne peux m’empêcher de voir en Alexis un de ces généreux personnages, un «bon [qui] se laisse épuiser par la vie plutôt qu’il ne l’épuise, se mettant toujours au service de ce qui renaît de la vie, de ce qui métamorphose et crée.» (Deleuze, 185)

An experiment with time

Anyone can experience the linearity of time break down. This comes from the fact that our subconscious often leaves our physical dependency on linear time behind when our minds meander in a thoughtful way.

This simple experiment allows anyone with patience to experience how objective time can be momentarily replaced with subjective time.

You will need a clock with a second hand to try this for yourselves.

1/ Place the clock on a table in front of you so you can clearly see the second moving without any effort, through half closed eyes.

2/ Look at the clock and follow the movement and rhythm of the second hand in a thoughtful way. Continue this until you feel completely absorbed by this movement.

3/ Close your eyes and visualize yourself in a place you are familiar with and would like to be.
Fill this visualization with as much sensation as possible.
A good example would be lying on a familiar beach, the sun warming your skin, the sand soft beneath your back, the sound of the tide lapping the shore in the background.

4/ When you feel that you are fully immersed in this visualization, fully relaxed, slowly open your eyes halfway. Don't focus. Just let your eyes find the clock that you had placed on the table in front of you.

- This is the point where the second hand on the clock will appear to stick or hover. If you are used to meditating, you can see the second hand stop completely, especially during that instant before you break out of this semi-meditative state.

Paraphrased from
Stalking the Wild Pendulum by Itzhak Bentov. pages 60-61

If we were to ask the brain how it would like to be treated, whether shaken at a random, irregular rate, or in a rhythmic, harmonious fashion, we can be sure that the brain, or for that matter the whole body, would prefer the latter. -Bentov

Silent train...

Just one more comment about the senses and sound and image in films. About Steven Woloshen's  film, in particular, I know how important the roll of sound is to him and how he starts by listening over and over again to a musical piece, while in his car, playing the rhythm with his fingers, trying to understand and feel the sound before starting visualizing and animating it... 

Do the sound-train and image-train go together? How different an experience would be looking at a train coming towards us without its sound?

Any small change in image or sound bring out a totally different result. I remember Erin's comment when she showed in class a short video I made -Movements II- (trying different ways to show it I made a version with one screen and another one with two): How different the one with the two screens was because the eye would concentrate on the  in-between black space created by the two screens one next to the other and how the ominous and rhythmic sound specifies the experience...

I guess that  the senses collaborate and they "lend" their specificities to one another even when some of them are absent.

The Powers of the False and Malkovich

As I was going over the section in Deleuze about the powers of the false a film came to mind and I couldn't shake the feeling that the writer/director had to have been at least vaguely familiar with this philosophy when creating it. The film is Being John Malkovich in which I would say the role of the forger is played by John Cusack. In the film he transcends time through a portal which takes him into the body of another man (John Malkovich) where he proceeds to experience this other man's life in fifteen minute intervals before again traveling back through time to the present and his own existence.  As the narrative progresses Cusack and others begin to interfere with Malkovich's actions and emotions all the while manipulating time and truths in both the present and the future. Deleuze's discussion of the power of the false seems more than relevant... "It is the power of the false which replaces and supersedes the form of the true, because it poses the simultaneity of incompossible presents, or the coexistence of not-necessarily true pasts" (131). Not only does Cusack's character infiltrate the body and the mind of another man but he embarks on a temporal and spatial journey that is established on a lie. He soon shares this forgery with coworkers and his wife and the forgery in  turn multiplies to others etc. and it soon becomes clear that, "the powers of the false cannot be separated from an irreducible multiplicity" (133). In this regard the forgery gains momentum (which reaches a melting point when John Malkovich enters the portal into himself) until there is a complete malfunction between the true present and the false past. Ultimately I think that Being John Malkovich has a lot do with what Deleuze is discussing (but maybe I'm thinking too literally). I know some people have expressed frustration with Deleuze's classical/outdated film references and associating his concepts with this recent film helped me to better understand what he meant in this chapter. 

Les situations pures

« Maintenant suposez qu'un personnage se trouve dans une situation, quotidienne ou extraordinaire, qui déborde toute action possible ou le laisse sans réaction. C'est trop fort, ou trop douloureux, trop beau. Le lien sensori-moteur est brisé. Il n'est plus dans une situation sensori-motrice, mais dans une situation optique et sonore pure. C'est un autre type d'image. Soit l'étrangère dans Stromboli : elle passe par la pêche au thon, l'agonie du thon, puis l'éruption du volcan.
Elle n'a pas de réaction pour cela, pas de réponse, c'est trop intense :

"Je suis finie, j'ai peur, quel mystère, quelle beauté, mon Dieu..." (...)

C'est cela, je crois, la grande invention du néo-réalisme : on ne croit plus tellement aux possibilités d'agir sur des situations, ou de réagir à des situations, et pourtant on n'est pas du tout passif, on saisit ou on révèle quelque chose d'intolérable, d'insupportable, même dans la vie la plus quotidienne.

C'est un cinéma de Voyant. »

Gilles Deleuze, Pourparlers, Éd. de Minuit, Paris, 1990, p. 74.

L’expression « cinéma de voyant » dont parle Deleuze est intéressante compte tenu du fait qu’elle s'appuie sur une modalité du « sentir » que le cinéma pose par une esthétique de l'événement. Ce qu’elle permet est d’abord de repérer une alternative à la perception du temps calquée sur la juxtaposition. Ainsi, l’accent est mis non pas sur le défilement des plans, mais plutôt sur des des plans spécifiques desquelles le mouvement découle : des « images-temps directes », présentations directes du temps. Le mouvement va alors non seulement dans une seule direction, mais plutôt tous azimuts à partir du plan, à travers celui-ci.

Cette conception est utile pour nous faire pénétrer les dimensions profondes de notre « être dans le temps » car cette esthétique de l'événement dévoile subtilement des ramifications virtuelles du possible. Alors que dans le présent tout est possible, le futur ne peut marcher que sur une seule voie. Contrairement au déterminisme de la logique de la juxtaposition, dans l’immédiateté de l’événement se dévoile un spectre relationnel illimité, le virtuel étant essentiellement infini. Le présent ne va plus alors vers une résolution de conflit, mais se suffit à lui-même par l'absence de réaction. L'action devient implosive plutôt qu'expansive. Elle rentre toute dans le présent.

Si le présent ne rend visiblement compte que d’une partie de la réalité pour laisser inaperçu tout plein d’autres possibilités, c’est dans la « sensation » de l’événement que crient et sautillent et sommeillent tout plein de relations non localisables.

Voir ce qu'on entends

Les réflexions de Félix et de Anne-Lou m'ont fait penser à un truc.  Qu'est-ce que voit une personne non-voyante lorsqu'elle entend des sons?  Je sais, ça peut paraître idiot comme question, mais que voit-on lorsqu'on ferme ses yeux?  Les personnes aveugles peuvent-elles se former des images dans leur esprit?  Ça j'en ai aucune idée, mais je sais, que la musique révèle plusieurs images dans mon esprit.  Les différents sons que nous entendons quotidiennement seraient certainement bien différents si nous les vivions les yeux fermés.  Les ondulations sonores semblent être davantage perceptives les yeux fermés.  Serait-ce seulement parce que l'un de nos sens est inactif ?  Du moins il n'en reste pas moins que le flux d'images sonores qui se forment dans mon esprit est bien différents que celui que je regarde.  Grossièrement, tous les micro-mouvements et les intervalles définis par Deleuze, se forment dans mon esprit lorsque je prends le temps de fermer mes yeux.

I hear what my hand is seeing....

In reaction to Felix commentary (Sight for sore ears?), I will first start to say that: "It is true, there is no stupid question, just uneasy way to express oneself questioning." Secondly, I would like to try to give an answer to the problematic you invoked in your post.

I'm a true believer that the way we use (or not) our senses (see, ear, touch, smell and taste) changes the way we react (physically, emotionally and philosophically) toward arts. A film like we saw last week, even if it is made to create a unison between visual and audio, don't mean it is the only way that it could take form. In fact, seen this film without the sound (or just hearing the sound without seeing the images) could bring out something else that what happened on screen before. Cinema is a particular medium because it work with the visual and the auditory, but we often give more importance to the visual. What we hear pass in us in a more subtle way than what we see. The human brain is mostly functioning like that.

If you think of other kind of art, you will naturally tend to separate them between the visual and the auditory category, but they are not just limited to one. When you react with one sense, you just don't acknowledge the participation of the others on a conscious level. But without knowing it, the sensation that you feels will each time require the involvement of more than one sense. When you perceive the sensation brought to you by an experience (film, art, emotion, moment, etc), if you try to consciously acknowledge how each of your senses reacts, you will feel each one separately and together in the same time. At this moment, you will experience more than what you can imagine possible -- you'll know the perception that each brings out, and the similarities they share.

For my experience, the senses can be made perceived in the mode of the other specificity because even if they are traveling through different canal, they are link to one another. They work for one another and they are far more one living under separate aspect than divided tools of perception.

Father Time: The Liar

In “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense” Nietzsche puts forward the idea that, considering the non-linear and multiple nature of language, the very desire for truth is in fact astounding. Nietzsche explains that the best-suited activity for the evolved human intellect is lying, since this assures the survival of weaker-bodied but intellectually stronger people in face of stronger-bodied but intellectually weaker forces. The powers of deceit – of hiding, of fooling, of the illusion – guarantees the life of the thinking agent more than any desire to express truth about a situation. This shocking appraisal of human language and intellect (the beautiful parallel brought between vitality and illusion) brings Nietzsche to conclude that truth is something supported by the powerful in a society and used in order to pass judgment on, and thus lessen the vitality of, their fellow creatures. This is a far cry from the idea that truth is liberating (the truth will set you free!) and noble. “The truth is the illusion that we have forgotten is an illusion – it is a used and senselessly powerless metaphor, like coins used too well, it has lost the image stamped on it and so we forget where it came from and from where it receives its value” – namely from the State, “society,” the policy-makers, the structure of capitalism – whatever you want to call it, the truth in Nietzsche’s sense is nothing encompassing or non-human or, well, true.
Deleuze takes up what Nietzsche begins in his own sober way. Narration is often deemed the truthful retelling of a story ‘as it was’, or, in terms of fictitious narration, the telling of a story in such a manner that the mode of telling gives the impression that it ‘could be true’ – the minimum conditions for truth are fulfilled – chronology, non-contradiction, etc. Deleuze, however, picks up on methods of narration that “[falsify] narration…[which] frees itself from this system [of judgment]; it shatters the system of judgment because the power of the false…affects the investigator and the witness as much as the person presumed guilty,” (133). Narration is no longer about passing judgment about what it true (i.e. who is guilty of non-conformity), but rather can tap into the creative, artistic power of the false, and its intimate relationship with “irreducible multiplicity,” (ibid). The power of the false is to allow for incompossible worlds and, in so doing, to display a direct image of time. Time in its directness, says Deleuze, is exactly what disallows truth – what today may be a battle tomorrow, tomorrow will indeed be no battle and the once-possibility of that battle becomes a lie (see 130). Time makes liars of us all.

les cristaux de temps et le Sri Yantra

http://www.sriyantraresearch.com/index.htm

Dans le concept des « cristaux de temps » de Deleuze, nous avons un point d'indiscernabilité où se rencontrent l'image actuelle d'un présent qui passe et l'image virtuelle d'un passé qui se conserve. Nous avons ici affaire à un point préalable à toute distinction entre activité ou passivité. Un point préalable à toute différenciation entre passé, présent, futur, où le virtuel et le l’actuel se renvoient l’un à l’autre symétriquement, systématiquement et simultanément.

Mais le renvoi de l’actuel au virtuel en tant que cercle fermé, en tant que point d’indiscernabilité, est voué à un éventuel éclatement : « Il n'y a jamais, en effet, de cristal achevé ; tout cristal est infini en droit, en train de se faire, et se fait avec un germe qui s'incorpore le milieu et la force à cristalliser. » (Gilles Deleuze, L’image-temps, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1985, p. 117) . Chaque instant, pris séparément, enfermerait multiples directions autour d’un noyau et le cristal ne demande qu’à exploser pour s’épanouir librement dans un futur inespéré, bien que déjà inscrit dans le cristal de temps.

À partir du point d’indiscernabilité, le passé latent moule le futur. Tel le bindu, point central du mandala Sri Yantra, c'est un point qui possède une force d'impulsion créatrice. Suite à la cristallisation initiale des principes de l'actuel et du virtuel, le cristal – disons peut-être même qui sait tout simplement : un instant quelconque - fait son apparition pour altérer - affecter - le cours des choses.

Le Sri Yantra représente toutes les parties du Tout : c'est une représentation où la multiplicité est soutenue par l'unité primordiale du bindu au centre. Arriver à une compréhension de l'unité à partir de la multiplicité où nous nous situons implique le mouvement contraire au courant de la vie qui pourrait correspondre à la question de Deleuze : comment entrer dans le cristal ? Voir le cristal de temps en tant que « multiplicité temporelle » autour d'un point d’indiscernabilité implique ainsi la possibilité de tracer des lignes virtuelles à partir d’un instant quelconque et de voir comment cet instant fleurit : « le visionnaire, le voyant, c’est celui qui voit dans le cristal, et, ce qu’il voit, c’est le jaillissement du temps comme dédoublement, comme scission. » (Gilles Deleuze, L’image-temps, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1985, p. 109).

The Passion and the Affection

I know we are way past the affection-image in our readings, but after watching the Carl Th. Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), I couldn't help but be reminded of those readings. It helps, that perhaps, the idea of the affection image has impressed itself on me in a greater way than many of Deleuze's other concepts. 

On first viewing of the The Passion I was hit by the sheer volume of close-up shots contained within it. It almost feels like the films contains nothing but close-ups and therefor affection-images by Deleuze's definition, "there is no close-up of the face, the face is in itself a close-up, the close-up is by itself face and both are affect, affection image." (88)

Without speech, and even if there where no intertitles, I believe the affect would still make the entire film "felt". The heavy reliance on this particular part of the movement-image makes the affective power of the cinema obvious. 

I mentioned once before, that David Lynch, relies heavily on the affection-image in order to create films, that baring a logical narrative, can still draw the viewer along a line – between logic and overt emotionality – of affection. Similarly, a film that carries forward a pretty simple and logical narrative, such as The Passion of Joan of Arc contains within its use of the affection-image the ability to move beyond its narrative into something more powerful and primal. Something that, regardless of interest in the story itself, can carry the entire film.

* Copyrighted material used under Fair Use license. 

Analogies of the crystal-image

From the way language works and as a learned instinct, we continually refer to a linear way of thinking and how we perceive the world around us. We are in a sense always trapped by a single, actualized second followed by another. (Time at its slowest!)
The time-image is non-linear as it relates to both the virtual and the actual. We spend too much time focusing on the present, as it entails only a fraction of the future and the past combined.

The present is at its most interesting when its potential to the future is in a flux, or just before the virtual has manifested itself in the actual.

In some respects, Synchronicity refers to why one potential of the virtual is actualized over another. The dynamic of time is not just an unfolding (linear), but an expansion as well.

What is expanding? I tried to explain this in my last class with Erin in a gift of writing to another student. And here in this class, we encounter the crystal-image and my immediate reaction to this is the model of a hologram, where every piece contains an image of the whole.

A space-structure that defies linear thinking, or that even undermines it, because the crystal-image (or the Hologram) contain both the virtual and the actual simutaneously.
This is where the fusion between the two takes place. Linear time as we know it is suspended (within the crystal-image or Hologram) and thus change can occur.

Physicist Michio Kaku (http://mkaku.org/) in his book Hyperspace, imagines how the 4th dimension would appear to us if we were thrust into it: All would appear as blobs of form/ light floating around us, perhaps passing through us, without definition. Our faculties are simply not designed to perceive in such a space. Kaku uses the analogy of pulling a carp from water, for a fish cannot perceive our three-dimensional world, and would probably see blobs of form/ light floating around it, perhaps appearing to pass through it, without definition.

Sight for Sore Ears?

During class last week I asked Steve if he ever played back the Brubeck Take 5 animation without the music track and he seemed to answer that there was no point to it as the visual and the audio worked in tandem. Having asked it, I kinda felt stupid about the Duh! dud but being a firm believer (for obvious reasons) in the "No such thing as a stupid question" I strove to find the silver lining to the sow's ear and came up with the corollary "But a question may be stupidly posed."

With hindsight I guess what I was trying to ask was, "If the visuals are super tight with the music, when you turn off the music does the eye respond to the visuals the same way that the ear responds to sound? Can sight acquire the sensorial specificity of hearing when the visual stimuli requires it to do so? Do we see differently when we ask sight to perform the task of hearing visually?" The question comes from reading Bergson's Matter & Memory p. 50 "[As per Lotze,] 'sound waves which should give to the eye the sensation of light or luminous vibrations which should give to the ear a sound.' The truth is that all the facts alleged can be brought back to a single type: the one stymulus capable of inducing the same sensation, are either an electric current or a mechanical cause capable of determining in the organ a modification of electrical equilibrium." I kinda feel that the aural circuit is different, from the visual circuit, or the olfactory circuit... but can they be made to "perceive" in the mode of the other 's specificity?

Another thing that didn't come up (but should've) in reading B. was the translated term "sensitive nerve" in Deleuze is nowhere to be found (up to the end of Chap.1), what did come up was sensorial nerve. I don't have the French Cinema 1 & 2 so I've never checked it... Does D. say nerf sensible?

CLASS CANCELLED Thursday October 16

Tarkovski, l’image-caractère et l’animation

Dans « Le temps scellé », Tarkovski décrit un autre type d’image : l’image-caractère. « Voilà le paradoxe : l’image-caractère est l’expression la plus complète de ce qui est typique, mais le mieux elle l’exprime, le plus elle devient individuelle et unique (p.133) ». Je sais très bien que Tarkovski est un grand fervent du réalisme et de la simplicité, mais je me demande ce qui en est de cette affirmation pour une animation plus abstraite. Une animation dessinée ne sera jamais la chose représentée, mais le caractère exprimé par l’image-mouvement et l’image-son peut lui proférer un caractère plus vrai que la chose elle-même. Par exemple, un animateur dessine des courbes et des lignes sous une musique jazz de manière que les dessins deviennent des notes. Il est évident que ce ne sont pas des notes réelles, mais si l’alliance entre l’image et le son est bien effectuée, le tout devient identifiable. Serait-ce cette fameuse image-caractère qui exprime le typique de cette image afin de la rendre individuelle et unique?

La Zone du temps

Comme le mentionnait Anne-Louise plus tôt cette semaine, il est difficile de ne pas penser à l’image-temps et à l’image-mouvement en écoutant Stalker. Le cinéma de Tarkovski a la particularité de donner la chance au spectateur d’expérimenter le temps à travers de longs plans de caméra capturant le passage de la vie et de l’homme dans son environnement. À l’intérieur de la Zone dans Stalker, chaque plan permet de savourer le moment présent, mais aussi de mettre en relation passé, présent et futur.
Cette connexion entre les trois temporalités se distingue particulièrement dans la scène de la traversée du tunnel dans la Zone. Les personnages progressent lentement dans l’espoir de parvenir au bout du tunnel, toujours dans la peur de mourir, dans le soulagement d’être parvenu jusqu’à ce point et dans l’angoisse de n’être en mesure de se rendre jusqu’à bout. La limite du tunnel leur permet d’envisager une fin heureuse, mais le point où ils se trouvent à l’instant les maintient dans un état de frayeur constant. Ils sont dans le présent, tout en étant tiraillés entre le passé et l’avenir.

When we watch films as an audience we all follow different motives. Some of us search for an entertainment that helps to escape reality, others look for drama that allows to go through a fictionalized catharsis. Nonetheless, in both cases we deal with the time we spend, waste or gain in cinema. At some point, the reception process drastically resembles the reversible circuit between actual and virtual images. The audience sees on the screen a picture that is actualized, “a pure fiction of reality” according to Deleuze (85), but all our readings or perceptions are, in fact, virtual. Therefore, for the spectator in cinema the current moment already includes his/her interaction with different plans of time, so being in the present we reach a fictionalized past or future. It is perhaps our simultaneous coexistence with regions of time that makes us love films.

look at this

just for those who can be interested, this music video make me feel a weird sensation that always make me think of Deleuze theories.
See for you self at this address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPJJSCFdVd0

la Zone, ou le lieu que décrit Deleuze

En revoyant le film Stalker de A. Tarkovski, j'y ai reconnu une représentation cinématographique de l'image-mouvement et l'image-temps de Gilles Deleuze. Lorsque les personnages entrent dans la "zone", le lieu est rapidement identifier par sa capacité de mouvement. En fait, la zone est en constante transformation; on en repart toujours par des chemins différents. Ce lieu est à l'image de la description du monde que faisait Deleuze; là où le mouvement est une transformation perpétuelle, là où chaque éléments n'a d'immobile que l'illusion de sa fixité. Le temps qui s'écoule dans la zone n'est pas comptabilisé mais vécu à travers les transformations ambiantes. Puisque tout est en mouvement constant, le présent n'est qu'un mirage entre le passé et l'avenir. Sa vie est si brève qu'il apparait déformé, il semble lent mais est rarement visible. Stalker demande de prendre une pose et de vivre un instant sans penser plus loin que la beauté énigmatique de la transformation, et donc du mouvement dans une temporalité qui s'évapore indéfiniment. Si vous ne l'avez jamais vu, regarder et écouter. Puis reliser Deleuze, et vous verrez la poésie de la philosophie perpétuelle de ce qui nous entoure mais dont on oublie l'existence.

The vernacular and the visceral

The vernacular and the visceral are two of my favourite concepts in relation to the creative process. Both side-step established vision.
Both hark back to a certain cultural rawness (of language, of interior being ).

Aesthetics have a relationship to these words when we see something that is not following particular or predictable patterns. We are drawn into the nuances of a visual language that may be only coming into being, and that birth has its origin in these two words. Doesn't everything?

(re)voir

Les post de Catherine et de Janita soulèvent de bonnes réflexions concernant la mémoire et la perception.  En regardant et en écoutant un film certaines images et certains sons font références à diverses images de notre souvenir et notre mémoire.  Ils sont une autre forme de perception d'images et de sons que nous avions auparavant vécues et senties.  Sommes-nous pas en train de revoir des images lorsque nous regardons un film pour la première fois?  Les images-temps prennent leur sens - notre compréhensions de celles-ci - à travers nos perceptions passées.  La pureté d'une première fois, n'est-elle pas biaisé pas notre mémoire?   

Interacting with McLaren

The handling of Norm McLaren's interview in Cinema de Notre Temps was entirely appropriate to what we've been discussing and looking at these past few weeks. It was my first time seeing it and I was really blown away with how they incorporated intervals of McLaren's own imagery and sounds into the piece. The filmmakers decision to abandon the traditional sound format and framing engaged my senses on both a conscious and a subconscious level. For most of the film McLaren's head is framed within a circle that floats around almost as if it is enticing other colors and images to interact with him. In some parts it looked to me like a cell or microorganism under a microscope growing and reacting to the other particles around it. The movement of McLaren's bubble then triggered an exterior action that the viewer is forced to process while still paying attention to the interview within the bubble. Another plateau intersects when little animated circles begin to dance around McLaren's head, and these tiny circles of motion explore the space and playfully interact with McLaren as our levels of perception continue to be challenged. This happens again when the outline of McLaren's shape freezes and the image of the man is replaced by dancing animations and sounds, while the library interview room remains as if to reassure us we haven't completely lost our sense of normality within this spectrum. Suddenly a title will confront us, "CAMERA MAKES WHOOPEE" and its forceful interruption demands we take it seriously (much like a Godard film). I thought the way the filmmakers constantly toyed with our senses was quite effective and engaging. Sound also played an enormous role in this film and it is also worth discussing in its own right. At one point in the interview McLaren says, "emotion has to be expressed through the quality of motion" and I think both Cinema de Notre Temps and McLaren's entire body of work are active representations of this statement. 

La Jetée... some scattered thoughts

Though, Chris Marker's La Jetée (1962) would at first appear to be comprised of still images the amount of movement present within it is quite surprising. Instead of being limited, the "apparent" lack of movement brings the concept into the foreground and opens up the actual range of movement present. Each frame moves slightly even if the image is still, each image vibrates on screen. Each transition from one "shot" to the next is a movement in time and space. The constant play of intervals between each transition creates and redefines time through its movement. I would argue that in removing the most obvious dimension of cinematic movement has in fact opened up the concept to a greater degree. Not that these concepts are absent in more traditional films, but perhaps they are glossed over in favor of the obvious.

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Deleuze states, "no longer coexistence of sheets of past, but the simultaneity of peaks of present." (101) Could we reach and claim, after reading Deleuze, that the protagonist's moments relived in the past could be seen as "peaks of the present" in reference to the time-image?  

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Even Traditional 24 frames per second projected cinema is comprised of still images. Our perception transitions them so quickly that we "perceive" movement. It is a physical perception, perhaps made possible by the limitations of our eyes and mind working together. But, when the fps is reduced, to 1 or 2 frames per second - sometimes even 1 frame per 2 or 3 seconds - in La Jetée, it would seem the mind has to create instead of perceive, or perhaps be more active in the participation that is required to transverse that space-time of the film. Perhaps, creation and perception are the same thing, or elements of the same function? 

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I am not sure how this all works, but the questions opened up by this film on what constitutes cinematic movement make it almost seem like this film was created as an example to be included in the Deleuze's Cinema 1 and 2. I should have watched it before starting this weeks readings!

watching again...and again

En Film Studies, l'étudiant devant analyser un film est confronté à devoir le revoir (ou simplement le "voir"?) de nombreuses fois, et de toutes les façons. Comment dénaturer un film?! En devenant étudiant en Film Studies! Nous nous retrouvons à le décortiquer par scènes, plan par plan, par "average shot length", en recherchant les plans qui ont des similarités, les associer, les dissocier, les comparer, les lier. Après avoir vu un film plus de 6, 7, 8 fois, nous pouvons souvent nous vanter... de ne plus nous en souvenir. Comment se fait-il que notre cerveau -qui aurait dû enregistrer le film par coeur- nous fasse soudainement défaut? Comment se fait-il que sur 3 personnes ayant vu un même film (par exemple, Solaris) 1 de ces personnes ne se rappelle pas d'une scène précise que les 2 autres se rappellent vividement?
Également: comment lire entre les lignes?! En devenant étudiant en Film Studies, bien sûr. Combien de fois prêtons-nous des intentions au réalisateur qui était à cent lieues d'avoir imaginé une scène telle que nous la percevions? La perception au cinéma, la perception et le cinéma, semblent être des sujets primordiaux, certes, mais relatifs à chacun. Le post de Janita en rend merveilleusement compte.

VENOM & ETERNITY (Traité de bave et d'éternité)

Jean-Isadore Isou sought to revolutionize art and cinema.

Part of this revolution had to do with how sound was used to disrupt the moving image.
Or from another perspective, how the concepts of the Lettrist Movement, translated to film, disrupted the secure notions of the viewer as being outside the film.

During the third sequence of this film, titled, The Proof, angry male voices become a dissonant background. This underlying vocal layer, like an unseen canvas of chaotic sound, becomes a moving unseen image, behind the cinematic.

Can this purposeful use of disturbing, chaotic sound be seen in itself as an unseen image.

Isou writes: In this work, I was more excited about the schism of image than about satisfying the demands of convention."

This schism of image is perhaps an early attempt to see between the frames , where four trajectories: art, philosophy, cinema, and sound crash in the viewer's subconscious.

Watch: Eternity and Venom 2hrs

watching again

I’m still thinking about the object also being an image, a perception, and how this relates to repetition. Ever since I was young I have liked most of all to watch movies that I have already seen. Negotiating the world around the images is such a task and still leaves so much out, that the same movie can be seen again and again, and each time it is something slightly different than what it was before. Maybe this is appealing because watching again allows for habits of perception to form so that new aspects of the encounter may be perceived. But have I ever actually watched the same movie twice? Each time a film is encountered it is in concert with a new constellation of events, and the film I see is only one film of many, subtracted out of the whole of the film through my subjective perception. Watching a film again is not proof that a pre-constituted film exists and is now being presented to me again, but rather that the remembered version of the film is activated by the second showing and through this memory the present film becomes as a new relation. My impulse to watch a movie I have already seen is in fact a desire to revisit a becoming-with the present moment which is activated by residues of the past.

Animating Up and Down the Street.

Most of us get beaten down by life every day. Your immortality is hammered out of you day by day, where little by little you’re cut down to size to a mere mortal. Where you get to feel that you don’t matter, that if someone else was occupying the space your life occupies, there would not be any difference. And as this happens, our desire grows to be a part of something that affirms who we are as part of a group. The only problem is that in joining the group we often lose ourselves and degrade our individuality, that which is essential about us. In the desire to join the group we forget who we are in order to meet the exigencies of the group. So how can we become oneself with a group that requires homogeneity and similarity in order for it to exist? I feel that the answer lies within us all but in a strange place. It lies in the affirmation of the awkwardness and tentativeness of becoming, because within that alienating feeling of awkwardness and tentativeness is the moment when we are truly being, when we are improvising our unfolding, walking on the tightrope of our becoming without a net. And this awkwardness and tentativeness is always part of the creative process. It is a constant companion on the path of creativity. And this is not the studied preciousness of an affected tentativeness, but the insecurity and uncertainty that accompanies becoming. Some of us thrive on it, some of us disregard it as par for the course. It’s the feeling you get in trying to express yourself in a new way, where you are not sure of what you’re doing but you feel compelled to keep on going. It usually entails exposing your self, with all the attendant awkwardness of a seedling sprouting towards the light.

And it is in this awkward and tentative becoming that something extraordinary happens that Erin calls moving the relation. As soon as you move the relation, you engage the micropolitical. It’s an interesting way of thinking about what constitutes the political and how to participate in the political process by incorporating its aesthetics. These ideas surround principles of heightened subjectivity, relation and process. For me, what I’ve taken out of it is and what I’m sure is a cliché for you all, is that you can make a difference by participating in any activity, in any process. However, the way that I understand their process of participation is by fomenting subjectivity. It’s not a question of a right approach or the right direction, but one of embarking on a process, any process and letting it develop, mutate, unfold, change you.

The idea is to make things happen, to celebrate becomings, to inflect anything that moves with your subjectivity, personality, character or whatever you want to call it. We all do this more or less as a matter of course on a daily basis; most likely the people you interact with on a regular basis would likely miss you if you suddenly went missing. But I think that what constitutes the micropolitical difference is to make a conscious effort to inflect some activity in your life with a gesture that will generate animation, movement to subjectivity. To give it spin. We hear the word spin all the time applied to sports and obviously to politics. But the kind of spin I’m talking about is a lot smaller than that. It consists of dropping a seed, a nugget of possibility, a germ of potential and to let it grow, let it germinate. It’s not a question of doing the grand-geste afin d’épatter les bourgeois. The micropolitical activist is a political Johny Appleseed, or if you prefer un Homme qui plantait des arbres—like the character in Frederic Bach’s animated film. You plant the seed and walk on to plant others. It doesn’t matter where the seed falls, or whether it germinates, or becomes a huge tree. What matters is the process and not the outcome; you’ve changed in some minor and perhaps imperceptible way the unfolding of the universe of potential. You break a strand in what would have been the inevitable becoming of a future becoming past and spin the future into a something ever so slightly different that is tinged with more of your subjectivity. The key is not to get ego-involved with the seeding: don’t look back, move on to the next animation, to the next movement relation.

If you don’t like what's going on, make signs on 8 ½ x 11 paper right out of your computer with what you want to say and put it up on bulletin boards and telephone poles in your neighbourhood. Make copies and stuff them in people’s mail boxes on your street. Do it without asking anyone or telling anyone, just do it. Just thinking about this should make you feel awkward and stupid. Simply acknowledge that it is creativity and your self-becoming. Your $6 campaign will result in change, perhaps ever so slightly and imperceptibly. Any kind of small change to the intuition of the future is a micropolitical move of the relation. Who knows what it will bring, who cares? Move on!

The Stuff of Time

"Memory is not in us; it is we who move in a Being-memory, world-memory" (98).
I also watched Chris Marker's La Jetée recently, and while I was reading the text for this week, I was struck by some passages that could be read fruitfully with aspects of the movie. A man who has survived the 3rd World War is asked by his captors to allow them to conduct experiments on him. Since humanity is doomed, he agrees. Space has been made off-limits through radioactivity, and so there is only time through which humans may move. This man is asked to focus on an image from his childhood in order to experiment with the movement through time. After he succeeds in moving through time to the past, he then attempts to move through to the future.
I won't tell you anything more about the photo-novel, in case you haven't seen it. But the thought experiment gave me ways to sense what is at stake when Deleuze (with the help of Bergson) links movement to time in terms of memory. When it is no longer possible to subscribe to the illusion that we move through space (like when we are stuck underground because of radioactivity) we perhaps become aware of the movement of (in!) time and that it is not linear, that is, it is not chronological. It is not we as subjects who "feel" time pass, but rather "the only subjectivity is time, non-chronological time grasped in its foundation, and it is we who are internal to time," (82). Memory is no longer considered as the constitutive moment of a person or subject (ie. you are what you remember), but rather it is the world of experience through which everything moves - rephrased again: it is not a subject that remembers (no Weltgeist here!) but rather memory is the matter of the world. Hence Bergson's book title: Matière et Mémoire?

Interestingly enough, the Deleuzian argument of a narrative rooted in images rather than in language (29) was also articulated by Carl Dreyer almost half a century earlier while discussing the specificity of the film medium in his writings “Réflection sur mon métier”. According to Dreyer, “C’est normal car les gens pensent par images, et les images sont la principale composante du film” (105). Dreyer’s works such as Jeanne d’Arc (1928), Vampire(1932), Days of Wrath (1943) appear consistently focused on the aspect of faceity constructing a specific affection-image that explores perhaps people’s strongest feeling - the fear of death. That is why the formalist treatment of the narrative in his film inevitably raises the ‘problem’ of “disunity” and “obscurity”. Image of death in Dreyer’s films becomes not only predominant visual motifs but also, and most importantly, unfolds as an intrinsic element of the narrative.

Movement as Language by Len Lye

Here's a lovely quotation from Len Lye :

"Movement is the result of a feeling in one thing of strong difference from other things.  Movement is always one thing moving away from other things - not toward.  And the result of movement is to be distinct from other things : the result of movement is form.  The history of any definite form is the movement of which the form is the result.  When we look at something and see the particular shape of it we are only looking at its after-life.  Its real life is the movement by which it got to be that shape.  The danger of thinking of physical things in terms of form rather than of movement is that a shape can easily seem more harmonious, more sympathetic with other shapes than its historical individuality justifies : there is a literary temptation to give it too much meaning, to read truth-signs where there are only life-signs.  But if we think of physical things in terms of movement we avoid the confusion of "life" with "truth".  Movement is strickly the language of life.  It expresses nothing but the initial, living connotations of life.  It is earliest language."  LEN LYE AND LAURA RIDING (1935)

Image-son, Lipsett et Hébert

Steve offre une formulation intéressante de l'image-son, de l'articulation entre l'image et le son à l'écran en soulignant que «l'image possède la force de s'approprier le son.» Les films de Lipsett, entre autres, nous forcent en effet à questionner l'image-son et sa capacité à créer des évènements qui ne sont plus ni uniquement visuels ni uniquement sonores mais audiovisuels. J'ai fait l'exercice de regarder Very Nice Very Nice (1961) de Lipsett une première fois avec le son et une seconde fois en coupant le son. La bande sonore pourtant hétéroclite (dans la même veine que celle de Free Fall et A Trip Down Memory Lane que nous avons vu en classe) semble vraiment avoir cet effet que mentionne Steve de donner du mouvement aux images fixes, d'intersecter avec les images et de créer des évènements audiovisuels où l'on ne peut plus distinguer l'effet spécifique du son de celui de l'image. Les films de Lipsett gardent néanmoins un grand potentiel de déstabilisation. Les évènements audiovisuels auxquels ils nous confrontent ne sont pas intégrés à un déroulement unifié ou à un flot continu de mouvement mais se forment, se déforment et se reforment de façon plus ou moins imprévisible.

Le second visionnage de Very Nice Very Nice, sans le son, m'a évidemment permis de porter une attention accrue à certains détails et qualités de l'image. Le mouvement semblait ici provenir de la différence, de l'écart, entre la texture et le grain des images, et non plus du rythme 'imposé' par la bande sonore. Ce mouvement subtil me semble être proche de «l'imperturbable» que Pierre Hébert considère, au début de son essai «Éloge de la fixité», comme la perte (presque) inévitable et inverse résultant de l'ajout du mouvement au dessin fixe. Si les techniques de prédilection respectives de Lipsett et Hébert ont peu à voir les unes avec les autres, j'ai toutefois l'impression que l'on peut rapporter leur démarche à cette possibilité, évoquée par Hébert, «d'animer l'imperturbable» en essayant d'échapper à l'empire de l'indubitable et à l'hégémonie du mouvement sur l'image (p. 17). Sans le son, les images de Very Nice Very Nice m'ont permis de voir comment le mouvement pouvait être retenu tout en se déployant. Cela étant dit, je ne veux pas insinué que la bande sonore gâche cet effet ou range le film dans le domaine de l'indubitable. L'image-son et ses différentes articulations me semblent cependant, à ce stade-ci, encore trop complexes pour être capable de cerner l'effet de la bande sonore sur cette sensation «d'imperturbable».

Une Variété de perceptions

Chacun extrait un élément précis face à une œuvre d’art. En discutant de Solaris, j’ai du réfléchir plusieurs instants avant de me remémorer quelle était la scène de l’autoroute. Pourtant, cette scène m’avait profondément émue. J’ai réalisé par la suite que l’autoroute n’a jamais été ce qui avait le plus d’importance à mes yeux dans cette scène. Cette voie n’est pour moi qu’un élément de décor présenté entre les gros plans de l’homme dans la voiture. À mes yeux, cette scène est un exemple parfait d’image-affection en raison des plans chargés d’émotion qu’elle contient. C’est avant tout l’intensité émotive véhiculée par le visage du personnage qui me foudroie.

La perception d’une œuvre d’art ne varie pas seulement d’un individu à l’autre, mais aussi selon notre propre expérience. En écoutant le documentaire sur Norman McLaren, je suis parvenue à avoir une toute nouvelle vision d’un film que je connaissais pourtant très bien. Jusqu’à aujourd’hui, le mouvement des formes dans Mosaïque était pour moi un agencement de carrés se rapprochant et se repoussant continuellement. Pourtant, après avoir écouté McLaren expliquer qu’il s’agissait de points entre les intersections de lignes verticales et horizontales, le film semble désormais prendre à mes yeux une forme nouvelle. Ce ne sont plus les points qui s’animent, mais plutôt les lignes invisibles que je perçois. Ce qui est fascinant avec une œuvre d’art aussi captivante, c’est qu’il semblerait possible de la regarder indéfiniment et en comprendre une signification nouvelle et plus profonde à chaque fois. J'en déduis aussi que notre perception naturelle se renouvelle selon l'évolution de notre mode de pensée.

Reawakening Perception

In looking at Le Jetee I could not help but feel like I was experiencing a sensory overload as the images flashed by on the screen. Intervals play into each other as the viewer is consistently confronted with a metamorphosis of lightness and darkness, in addition to words, noises, and silence. Depth and perception are distorted by shadows that clearly constitute an example of Deleuze's any-space-whatevers. "Depth is the location of the struggle, which sometimes draws space into the bottomlessness of a black hole, and sometimes draws it towards a light" (p.111) The characters emerge from and disappear into shadows while the protagonist emerges in and out of consciousness. Our own perception is effected as we must use both the diegetic and non-diegetic clues to piece together the relationships between movement and images. The sounds can be broken down into parts that work to either guide us as the narration does, or distort our perception (which is the reaction I had to the unintelligible whispering sounds).  

The powerful scene where the girl comes alive was what challenged me the most. At this point my perception was more relaxed, my brain had figured out what was going on... in the foreground still images were dissolving into one another on the screen, and I had become accustom to hearing the words spoken by the narrator (as well as sounds from other sources) in the background. I was busy processing these frozen images as individual moments and as part of the whole. The scene is comprised of several close-ups of the girl sleeping which dissolve into each other, each image is slightly different then the previous, creating the effect of movement.  The interplay of light and shadow dance together to reinforce the sense of movement.  There is a subtle shift in the lighting  and suddenly the girl begins to move within the image and by simply blinking her eyes a few times she throws our sense of perception into complete chaos. I immediately questioned whether or not what I saw was real. I think this scene really encapsulates many of Deleuze's ideas and it really helped me to understand the meaning of the affective-image as well as several other Deleuzian concepts (there are obviously an infinite amount of relevant examples in Le Jetee). I'd be curious to hear what the rest of you thought about this film in relation to our class. 

L’image-temps directe

Dans Mille Plateaux, Deleuze et Guattari donnent l’exemple du rhizome pour établir une conception non-hiérarchique dans laquelle on entre par n’importe quel côté et où chaque point se connecte à n’importe quel autre. Fidèle à ce concept rhizomique, le temps chez Deleuze est d’abord doté d’une ouverture infinie. Dans le cas du cinéma, par exemple, le temps n’est donc pas soumis au montage, mais ressort directement de l’image à travers le plan. Ce qui signifie qu’à l’intérieur même d’un plan se retrouve déjà un passé et un futur où les limites avec le présent seront toujours assez floues pour qu’en l’image soit contenue toute la structure qui d’elle en découle, tel les fractals.

Cette conception du temps se retrouve à avoir une double nature du temps, soit virtuelle et actuelle. Dans The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life, Daniel N. Stern développe un type spécifique d’entrevue qu’il appelle « micro- analytique ». À partir de cette dernière, est conçu un axe horizontal qui exprime le temps numérique, soit disant linéaire, et sur un axe vertical est apposée toute tentative d’exprimer ce qui se a trait au domaine de l’intensité comme sensations, sentiments, ce que la mémoire éveille, soit tout ce qui peut habiter virtuellement l’expérience. Dans ce lapse de temps qui peut durer tout au plus dix secondes, est compris le passé duquel découle le moment présent tout aussi bien que le futur vers lequel il se dirige. À l’intérieur de ce micro-instant, pourrait être compris tout le schéma d’action à travers lequel un individu se positionne dans le monde.

« Ce que nous appelons normalité, c’est l’existence de centres : centre de révolution du mouvement même, d’équilibre des forces, de gravité des mobiles, et d’observation pour un spectateur capable de connaître ou de percevoir le mobile, et d’assigner le mouvement. Un mouvement qui se dérobe au centrage, d’une manière ou d’une autre, est comme tel anormal, aberrant. (…) Or, le mouvement aberrant remet en question le statut du temps comme représentation indirecte ou nombre du mouvement, puisqu’il échappe aux rapports de nombre. Mais, loin que le temps lui-même en soit ébranlé, il y trouve plutôt l’occasion de surgir directement, et de secouer sa subordination par rapport au mouvement, de renverser cette subordination. Inversement, donc, une présentation directe du temps n’implique pas l’arrêt du mouvement, mais plutôt la promotion du mouvement aberrant. »
Gilles Deleuze, L’image-temps, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1985, p. 53.

Analogy and utterance

Does the affection-image (or overall time-image) in the case of the animation below collapse the narrative as it collapses our expectations? The interval becomes the anticipation of what we know (of historic-narrative) to project these expectations into a future narrative structure.

In Deluzian terms the structure underlying these utterances is clearly an analogy and the
"... digitized structure of the utterance...But the very point the image is replaced by an utterance, the image is given a false appearance and...movement is taken away from it."

Erin: I see the associations Deleuze is making here. Could you comment in relation to this animation?




Please watch:
http://www.waliczky.com/pages/Wallada-Bioscop/Marionettes/Marionettes.htm

(Past) Present (Future)

“It is characteristic of cinema to seize this past and this future that coexist with the present image” (Deleuze, 37)

Is this particular point mentioned because it is solely within the providence of cinema and therefore merits mention or because the cinema makes it explicit whereas it may exist elsewhere implicitly? could this relationship of tenses, the past and the future, be found in other forms of art or generally within all perception?

What something “is” or appears to be, in my mind, should necessarily be intertwined with what it was and what it will be; or perhaps a what it could have been and what it can be. 

Perhaps, I am leading myself astray or off-topic with these questions or even willfully choosing to turn a small detail into a seed for another concept, but if so let it teach me something or open another conversation.

If you where to take Picasso’s Guernica (1937) as an example, could we not see that, in spite of its presentness – the depiction of the Nazi Bombing of Guernica painted at a time close to the event itself – its true “affect” is the result of its direct and tension filled relation to its past and future. The moment directly before and that directly following, as well as the historic past and future of spain and Europe. I, knowing almost nothing of the history of either Spain, the Spanish Civil War, or Nazi Germany’s relation to it, can simultaneously feel the moment depicted and those that came before and after. I cannot differentiate the experience even if I could articulate the time code involved.

When Deleuze quotes Godard, “That is what cinema is, the present never exists there, except in bad films” (38), I take it as a poetic and clear description and judgement of art in general. 

La pureté du mouvement ne peut être qu'entendu..

Lorsque l'on parle de l'effet de la musique et du son dans un film, animation ou non, on se réfère toujours au réalisme ou à la fantaisie que cela engendre. Mais bien avant les images, il y avaient les voix, les bruits et les mélodies. Tout ce qui influence l'auditif est fait de mouvements pures, on ne peut toucher ou voir les sons et la musique mais ils sont en permanence présent autour de nous. Un son bouge au-delà de notre capacité à le percevoir car sa nature le transforme constamment. À l'intérieur d'un film, il prend les limites du moment qu'on lui offre, il devient esclave d'un médium. Sa soeur la musique se déplace de modulation en modulation comme lui, et ensemble, ils façonnent notre perception des rythmes qui nous entourent. Tester vos sens, marcher en écoutant une mélodie de votre choix et prenez conscience du changement de perception que cela crée. Votre rythme et celui de ce que vous voyez autour va changer et prendre selon de la musique. C'est du pure mouvement, une continuité de transformation invisible mais présente. Avec le temps, on oublie l'influence des sons. On oublie qu'avant de voir le jour, on entendait la voix d'un environnement extérieur, la mélodie de notre future entourage. Lorsqu'on s'y attarde, les films nous font parfois repenser aux sons mais ce sont de minces représentations d'une réalité qui ne s'éteind jamais.

Weighing the interval

Deleuze perhaps provides a means of tracing a continuum of magnitude (be it a felt duration or some measure of intensity or of weight) capable of organizing the variability of the interval. “The more the reaction ceases to be immediate and becomes truly possible action, the more the perception becomes distant and anticipatory and extracts the virtual action of things” (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, 65). I doubt this “measure” of the interval can exhaust or encapsulate all approaches or ramifications of the interval itself, but it is useful for investigations of both cinema and thought. When Deleuze reintroduces the concept of “framing” as it relates to the interval (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, 62), one might be tempted to find an equation or ratio that relates the delay to the amount of analysis performed, or the fundamental potential for analysis. I would not hesitate in suggesting that this relationship would be insufficiently represented in a linear fashion, more often than not. Is the notion of “diminishing returns” relevant at some point in the extending of this relationship? The time-image, as well as the conditions that accompany it or bring it into focus, might assist one in creating hypotheses.

Close-up, continued.

Quand la caméra de Josef von Sternberg s'attarde sur le visage de Marlene Dietrich, c'est là toute la puissance du close-up qui ressort. Le mouvement frénétique de pupilles de Dietrich contraste avec le temps qui est soudainement suspendu. Éclairée à la perfection par la lumière et les ombres à la fois, tout spécialement dans Shanghai Express alors qu'adossée contre la porte elle lève la tête vers le ciel: là, alors, son visage "reflects light, retains emotion, and becomes intensive rather than reflexive" (Tara A.) Certains y verront l'icône de la Vierge, d'autres y verront plutôt l'amour de Sternberg pour Dietrich, et certains ne s'attarderont qu'à l'esthétique et non à l'émotion. Quoi qu'il en soit, dans des moments comme ceux-là, comment ne pas réduire notre pensée à l'effet que la lumière et l'ombre créent sur le visage? Car c'est là l'essentiel: un intervalle visible, un temps suspendu où la beauté (plastique et émotionnelle) prend toute la place dans l'écran et dans les yeux du spectateur.