Opening Ceremonies

Many of the concepts from Erin’s ‘Animation’s Dance’ piece reminded me of how movement was expressed during this year’s Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing. Thousands of bodies worked in unison to convey a range of thoughts, emotions and symbolism.  Our perception was toyed with and tested by the range of bodies as they manipulated time, rhythm and space, and their movements constructed and deconstructed various positions and forms.  Similar to McLaren’s work, “We do not actually see the interval but we do feel its force as it unfolds into the perception of movement moving” (Manning, 1). During the performances of the opening ceremonies movement was experienced like a ripple in a wave, the viewer was unable to process the meaning in its entirety until every body had contributed to shaping the virtual idea.  Watching these performers was to experience the interval take form, which in turn expressed a thought in motion. Like Pas de Deux, movement in the opening ceremonies, “is felt not in a pose but in its experiential taking form across time and space” (Manning, 2). Often times the amazing part of the performance wasn’t the final position or thought but how they were able to create it through their range of motion. The choreography was simply unfathomable, and despite of its enormous scale I felt they were able to use extremely complex movements to convey an inviting and visually stunning display of beauty and tranquility.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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?