What I am doing right now and plans for the future.

My two main objectives for the summer are writing my essay and experimenting with Processing and Action script. This is enough to keep me busy for a while I think.

Doing some art work of my own also, mostly filming and messing around with some sounds.

After two recent tutorials, one with Andy and one with Jonathon, I have managed to define my overall project somewhat and am ultimately thinking about software interfaces in relation to narrative.

I want my final piece to be a journey through an archive like body of my work, work that means something though not sure what, and not sure how it relates to each other and to me.

Basically I want to design a kind of software interface that will catch whatever work I choose to throw at it and will then re-member the material in an unpredictable way, viewing the results will be searching for some kind of associative order, I am hoping that once I have made the initial interface and fed it everything I have work wise (EVERYTHING … image, sound, text, video – this text for example will go into it) I will start to discover some kind of themes and concepts emerging, I will then react to these themes with new work and so a kind of feedback loop will incur. A bit uncomfortable with the idea of thinking of this as a mind map (insert long philosophical discussion about the problems of accurately representing cognitive processes here) I hope to realize what is more like an expressionistic landscape, dreamlike maybe, there is something fatalistic about my desire to do this. I am motivated by a Narcissistic impulse more than anything else a misconception that I will find myself through a material reflection, an interesting fantasy to play out theatrically through work I think, maybe I will be able to know myself better through this experiment, maybe I will drown in it. I think either one could be interesting .

What I need to do as quickly as possible is to program this interface, it does not need to be too complicated, something similar to the Manovich Soft Cinema project probably my basic plan so far is;

A program that generates a random number within a range of maybe 1 to 5 this determines the number of smaller screens within the bigger screen, the dimensions and position of each screen are then worked out randomly according to some programmatic rules that I am yet to figure out, the sound will be divided into stereo and mono and distributed randomly to an appropriate sound system with a pair of stereo speakers and some other isolated sounds through a certain number of mono speakers. The whole system will then ‘refresh’ it self at specific intervals (random within a definite range) and this pattern will continue indefinitely.

My aim for the summer is try and create this interface, since the sooner I have done this the sooner I can start a dialogue with it, it is this dialogue that Intend to use in order to propel my ongoing creative work.

Essay Plan: Screens within Screens

Introduction

My essay ‘Screens within Screens’ fundamentally considerers the usage of split screen and embedded screens as a formal device within narrative cinema. My initial study of the split screen device within narrative cinema has led me to conclude; There are three distinct effects that the usage of split screen in contemporary cinema is employed to create.

1) is associated with surveillance and the assumption that technology gives us a privileged power to be everywhere at once and to record the objective unfolding of events in multiple situations simultaneously, the privileged view of the control room.

2) The other is more expressionistic, the multi image composition can be used to convey a fractured personal reality whereby the subjective viewpoint provides the only form of government. Often psychological and emotional conflict are characterized through this more expressionistic usage of the split screen format, or sometimes the split screen can be used to represent a sense of authorship whereby the cinematic vision of the director is called into focus by drawing attention to the construct of the film in question. This expressionistic use of split screen then is to encourage an emphatic engagement with the film’s author and/or central character(s). It is ultimately subjective and/or immersive.

3) The third is harder to define, often it will sit comfortably within either of the above categories however the key principle that defines this third category is interactivity, the deductive powers of the viewer(s) are called into question, the viewer(s) is challenged to put together the little pieces and make the big picture. There is then a game like engagement that is instigated through the use of the split screen to encourage comparative and deductive analyses. While there is of course a dialogue between contemporary cinema and computer games, and many contemporary films could be seen as heavily derivative from gaming interfaces, it is cinema ultimately that introduced the use of split screen in this context notably through the Murder Mystery genre and titles from the 70s such as The Boston Strangler.

The first chapter of this essay will be split into three sections and will attempt to chronicle three independent history’s of the Split Screen within mainstream cinema or at least site some of the key moments in those history’s. I have deliberately chosen to keep these three histories isolated from each other. They will at times correspond and at times contradict with each other, but ultimately I want each of these histories to be self contained and independently resolved, while ignorant of each other (isolated histories). What I am trying to achieve by doing this is a structural introduction to my second chapter which is about ‘meta narrative’ my aim is to introduce the subject of meta narrative by creating an essay where the subject of meta narrative is introduced as a meta narrative in itself, I will return to this point later, first I will describe each of the independent sections within chapter one.

Chapter one three histories

of the Split screen within

Narrative Cinema.

This history of split screen cinema is relative to the introduction of psychology into mainstream culutre and how structure and architecture have been used to both communicate and to some extent instigate psychological conflict. The bulk of this section will be a study of the film Psycho which represents a good place to mediate between German Expressionist Cinema (Hitchcock having learnt his craft in Germany during the era of Expressionistic Cinema) and the split screen films of Brian De Palma (De Palma’s cinema being explicitly influenced and in continuous dialogue with Hitchcock). It has been observed how the architecture of Norman’s house in the film Psycho corresponds in some interesting ways with Freud’s model of the psyche  as divided by Ego, Id and Super Ego. The significance of this for me is as an introduction to a filmmaker using the technical structure of space within his film to assert a theme beyond the dramatic occurrences of narrative. I see Psycho as being a good introduction to expressionistic uses of split screen because of this empathies on structural space as a reference to psychological phenomena, thus it anticipates film makers such as De Palma who uses multiple screens and screens within screens as an expressionistic device to convey a fractured sense of self.

This next history of split screen cinema looks firstly at telecommunications, the split screen format was introduced into narrative cinema as a means of representing a phone conversation without cross cutting. The engagement with split screen in this history is in relation to technocratic power structures and an appeal to technology to provide government. Space and time become de-regulated and then re-regulated through technological innovation in this history and the medium becomes the message, while technology in it’s self becomes a symbol of governing power. Here the embedded screen represents location within a power structure, and through technology we are offered a privileged view, all seeing and god like, the man in the control room. I will look at the history of split screen cinema in relation to the history of telecommunications and compare Hollywood thrillers (many of which star Harrison Ford) in relation to news room reportage of the first gulf war. To consider how Technology and Authority have become synonymous in meaning, and how this presupposed authority has been created and then exploited for propaganda purposes. I will reference Foucault’s discourses about power structures and also theorists such as Theodore Roszak and Arthur Kroker who explore the notion of technocracy.

This third History of Split Screen Cinema is concerned with interactivity, and the split screen format that invites the viewer to make a choice between competing options, and by doing so to play an active part in resolving the narrative conflicts. I will follow the evolution of this mode of Split Screen cinema through the Murder Mystery genre and look at films such as the Boston Strangler where simultaneous abstract information is presented to the viewer, often in close up ‘clues’, I will follow the evolution of this interactivity within cinema through to contemporary cinema that has entered into a dialogue with computer gaming and the language/interfaces of Games. While also considering advertising and the appropriation of screens within screens in advertising contexts i.e ‘ugly woman before, beautiful woman afterwards’. I will thus identify the history of these interactive modes of split screen media, as being motivated by consumerist culture, the increasing demands of the consumer to be provided with an engaging experience rather than a simple product per-se. The main factors that communicate this engaging experience to the consumer are suggestions of choice, of their being options. I will thus follow this discussion of the evolution of interactive engagement within the split screen format from; the Murder Mystery genre through computer games and advertising and maybe conclude with a study of a contemporary product such as the series 24. What I want to define in this history is a relationship between interactivity and consumerist culture. I will conclude with some evaluation of contemporary politics, there is a conclusion I want to make, it starts with the murder mystery genre whereby though our choices we are able to identify and distinguish the villain, the murderer, by having options and being able to evaluate we are able to make the right decisions ultimately and the result of those decisions is justice’ thus there is a connection between democracy and justice and so a kind of association exists here between interactive engagement and democratic freedom, and I will identify this misconception as consumerist culture, and so this history of split screen cinema is relative to the history of consumerism.

Chapter two

Meta narrative.

The study of Meta Narrative is in many ways my real interest and by looking at screens within screens and presenting three isolated histories simultaneously I hope to be able to approach this subject.

What is a meta narrative? Simply put it’s kind of the bigger picture around the little picture, perhaps first introduced by Plato in his theory of ideal forms, an ideal form being an absolute value that is beyond the world of reason and logic, according to him there must be an ultimate beauty an ultimate truth etc against which all lesser examples of beauty and truth are quantified. In this context Meta Narrative is also transcendental and metaphysical, often spiritual or religious narratives appeal to the greater truth beyond the story.

Postmodernism uses split screen to both introduce and deny the idea of a meta-narrative one of the most resonant ideas among post modern thought is that culture is incapable of referencing beyond it’s self and thus the search for meaning just equates to containers within containers so to speak with in a fractured perception of reality. Postmodernism often acknowledges the fact that if there were an ultimate total narrative, a meta narrative, it would not be approachable through language and rational discourse, since by definition it would have to allude these containers, since the big picture can never fit within the little picture. Thus culture and philosophy in their search for enlightenment have inevitably become self obsessed and narcissistic and abandoned the exploration of metaphysics which once gave them meaning.

This section will then explore these discussions while referencing contemporary cinema and ways which it uses split screen in a paradoxical way to both suggest and deny potentialities of a meta narrative, the paradoxical logic of which can be compared to the famous liars paradox ‘this statement is false’. I will also reference relevant theories of post structuralism and post modernism from Lyotard and Baudrillard, through out this section.

Chapter 3

Soft Cinema

May not be necessary, though I would at some stage like to introduce a consideration of Soft Cinema (Manovitch) or software cinema, cinema which uses a program to randomly present different material from an archive or database, not sure how this relates to my overall subject other than through the split screen, but I have a feeling that there is something interesting about this which might be a means of concluding my essay.

Μέτρο Νόμος

Finally got round to uploading this . Here is a 10 min section,  the original is about 50mins.

‘Μέτρο Νόμος’ (Metro Nomos), means something like Unit, Law and is the result of my thinking about the following things; Pages, Containers, Landmarks, Places, Pulses, Moments, Events and our conscious experience that is fragmented by notions of; Past, Present, Future and the potential of a conscious experience that is not ‘affected’ in this way. Also The Perception of; Space/Time through ; Sound/Light. The relationship between the physical and meta-physical and thus the relationship between form and idea. And how all of these things might be seen as the foundations of a human experience that is realised through containers, comparitives, measurements and laws. But yet exists in relation to a natural organic world, that alludes every effort to standardise it.

Despite my efforts to contain and sychronise, the moments in this scene, the city and the life that I am concentrating on, exist in a random unpredictable, non conformist state, My finger chimes illustrate this perspective well I think; despite repeating the same action thousands of times, the sounds that are generated are each different. Just as the ambient soundscape contained in between each of the chimes contains infinite variation.

A Scanner Darkly – introducing Fred the vague blur.

“Gentlemen of the Anaheim Lions club” the man at the microphone  said, “we have a wonderful opportunity this afternoon, you see, the County of Orange has provided us with chance to hear from, and then put questions to and of, an undercover narcotics agent from the Orange county sheriffs Department” he beamed, this man wearing his pink waffle fiber suit will and wide plastic yellow tie and blue shirt and fake leather shoes, he was an over weight man,  overaged as well, over happy, even when there was little or nothing to be happy .

Watching him, the undercover narcotics agent felt nausea.

“Now, you will notice”, the lionclub host said, “that you can barely see this individual, who is seated directly to my right, because he is wearing what is called a scramble suit, which is the exact same suit he wears and in fact must wear during certain parts, in fact most, of his daily activities of law enforcement. Later he will explain why”

the audience, which mirrored the qualities of the host in every possible way regarded the individual in his scramble suit.

“This man,” the host declared, “whom we would all Fred, because this is the code name under which he reports the information he gathers, once with in the scramble suit,  he cannot be identified by voice, or by even technological voiceprint, or by appearance. He looks, does he not, like a vague blur and nothing more? Am I right? He let loose a great smile. But his audience appreciating that this was indeed funny, did a little smiling all of their own.

The scramble suit was an invention of the Bell laboratories, conjured up by accident by an employee named S. A. Powers . He had, a few years ago, been experimenting with disinhibiting substances affecting neural tissue, and one night, having administered to himself an IV injection considered safe and mildly euphoric, he experienced a disastrous drop in the GABA fluid of his brain. Subjectively, he had then witnessed lurid phospene activity projected on the far wall off his bedroom, a frantically progressing montage of what, at the time, he imagined to be modern day abstract paintings. –

basically his design consisted of a multi-face quartz lens hooked to a miniaturized computer whose memory banks held up to 1,000,000 1/2 physiognomic fracture representations of various people, men and women, children, with every variance encoded and then projected outward in all directions equally onto a super thin shroud like membrane large enough to fit around an average human.

As the computer looped through its banks, it projected every conceivable eye color, hair color, shape and type all the nose, formation of teeth,, configuration of a facial bone structure the entire shroud like membrane took on what ever physical characteristics were projected at any nanosecond and then switched to the next. Just to make his scramble suit more effective S. A Powers programmed to the computer to randomize the sequence of characteristics within each set.

- in any case, the wearer of the a scramble suit was every man and in every combination(up to combinations of 1,000,000 1/2 bits) during the coarse of each hour.

Hence, any description of him or her was meaningless. Needless to say S. A  Powers had fed his own personal physiognomic characteristics into the computer units,, so that, buried in the frantic permutation of qualities, his own surface and combined on an average, he had calculated, off once each 50 years per suit, served up and reassembled, given enough time per suit. It was his closest claim to immortality.

“Let’s hear it for the vague blur!”, the host said loudly, and there was mass clapping.

A Scanner Darkly

Philip K Dick pg 15 -16

Gollancz; New edition edition (14 Oct 1999)

Let’s hear it for the vague blur. Text from ‘A Scanner Darkly’ and images from Google Maps Street View

What am I actually? He asked himself. He wished momentarily for his scramble suit. Then, he thought, I could go on being a vague blur and passers by, street people in general, would applaud . Lets here it for the vague blur, he thought , doing a short rerun. What a way to get recognition . How, for instance could they be sure it wasn’t some other vague blur ? It could be somebody other than Fred inside or another Fred, and they’d never know, not even when Fred and his mouth started talked.

They wouldn’t really know then. They’d never know. It could be Al pretending to be Fred, for example. It could anyone in there, it could even be empty .

Down at Orange county GHQ they could be piping a voice to a scramble suit, animating it from the sheriff’s office. Fred could in that case be anybody who happened to be at his desk that day and happened to pick up the script and the Mike, or a composite of all sorts of guys at their desks.

But I guess what I said at the end, he thought, finishes off that.

That wasn’t anybody back in the office. The guys back in the office want to talk to me that, as a matter of fact.

He didn’t look forward to that, so he continued to loiter and delay, going nowhere, going everywhere. In southern California it didn’t make any difference anyhow where you went there was always the same Mac Donald burger place over and over, like a circular strip that turned past you as you pretended to go somewhere . And when finally you got hungry and went to the Mac Donald burger place and bought a Mac Donald’s hamburger, it was the one they sold you lost time and the time before that and so forth, back to before you were born, and in addition bad people- liars- said it was made out of Turkey gizzards anyhow.

They had by now, according to their sign, sold the same original burger 50 billion times. He wondered if it was to the same person.

Life in an Anaheim California was a commercial for itself, endlessly replayed. Nothing changed, it just spread out further and further in the form of neon ooze.

What there was always more of had been congealed into permanence long ago, as if. The automatic factory that cranked out these objects had jammed in the own position. How the land became plastic, he thought, it’ll be mandatory that the sea. became salt some day he thought, it will be mandatory that we all sell Mac Donald hamburger as well as bye it , we’ll sell it, back and forth to each other, forever from our living rooms. That way we won’t even have two go outside.

A Scanner Darkly.Philip K Dick

pg 21-22

Gollancz; New edition edition (14 Oct 1999)

An attempt to summarise the Surrealist perspective

The Lovers by Rene Magrette

The need for sincerity in literary expression, felt strongly in France during the first twenty years of the century, is really the belief that the conscious states of mans being are not sufficient to explain him to himself and to others. His subconscious contains a larger and especially a more authentic or accurate part of his being. It was found that our conscious speech and our daily actions are usually in contradiction with our true selves and our deeper desires. The neat patterns of Human behavior, set forth by the realists, and which our lives seem to follow, were found to be patterns formed by social forces rather than by our desires or temperaments or inner psychological selves. This discovery or conviction that we are more sincerely revealed in our dreams and in our purely instinctive actions than in our daily exterior habits of behavior (tea drinking or cocktailing etc) is of course basic to surrealism. It is admirably summarized in a sentence of Andre Gide’s autobiography, Si le grain ne meurt, when he speaks of the difficulty of our knowing the real motivation of any of our actions. ‘le motif secret de nos actes nous echappe’ pg 15 Age of Surrealism Wallace Fowle, Bloomington a London, Indiana University Press, fourth printing 1966

Waterloo Sunset

I positioned the camera next to a set of traffic lights, under a bridge in Waterloo. The idea was that motorists drive into the shot and become confronted by the presence of the camera/camera operative as they are trapped/jammed in the frame while waiting for the green light. The intention was to promote an enhanced awareness of the immediate that is a shared experience between myself and my subjects. The presentation of this work is then an effort to represent this meditative experience and extend it into piece of work that considers the act of watching and the ephemeral nature of video images in relation to the spaces/moments that they fill. The title refers to the time and location in the which the filming took place, the significance of which lies in the notion of transition and halfway points. Below is footage of an installation as part of the Feedback show at House Gallery based on this idea. I do not feel this was the best way to present this work finally, though it was a useful learning experience and made me think in new ways about what might be a better way to present this project. The idea behind the presentation at House gallery, was that I would position different motorists on different screens, one in front of the other. I think the main thing I was thinking about here; were the containers and barriers, that separate people from each other, how people can coexist in a close proximity without interacting, and often without even realizing each other’s presence, in some ways the only thing that connects people is their proximity or maybe the idea of the other as a witness. (which is where this piece starts to evovle out of my own production processes, into a potentially interesting public spectacle) I think this is o.k as a concept, but not ultimately what I was trying to explore with this work. Though I still believe that if; I were to extend the House Gallery model in a larger scale piece with maybe 10 or 20 screens extending down a long space, this could be a strong galley installation. (something I may still do!) However there is something else I am trying to touch upon with this work, which I feel is lost or at best taking second place, that being; the idea of a suspended moment, the idea of a mundane situations taking on iconic significance by their being jammed in to a frozen present, that deregulates conscious experience. (my blog entry on Martin Arnold perhaps expands this perspective quite well) So I feel the way I could pursue this idea within the presentation of this piece would be by, perhaps repeating the same situation and interrogating it, so rather than focusing on multiple captured moments and trying to re-create the order of the those separate moments, (as with the House installation which features several people on different screens) I could focus on one moment and repeat it and interrogate it to such an extend that it breaks apart and reforms and becomes expanded and in flux, while constant and eternal at the same time. I think repeating the same image, or maybe a large screen/projector that dominates and demands reverence, would be a better tactic. Here are some stills from two of the video sources.

voxpops

Made this as a T.V pilot, it uses a simple format to engage with the public, it’s also quite funny, you are invited to read as much or as little into it as you want.

Crumbs in the Bed

An illustration I made to try and describe a sense of being over stimulated and my brain short circuiting a little bit.

Working Title 3

This was the result of a violent attack upon my own work. I was experimenting within the structure of predesignated editoral rules and ‘cut up’ processes as a means of questioning my sense of self within a creative journey.