Pre-session text:
[20/2, 15:30] Emilio’s email:
Sorry for the raw material but I wanted start the process… Waiting for your observations, comments, modifications
The theme of perception is directly linked to the one of time, so it is the continuation of the discussion we started in our first AULab session.
My last comment before we ended our first session zoom call was “we need to be honest and upfront when we film (and watch)”. This sentence might seem obvious and a bit redundant, but it is not:
Stephen and Rob Kline, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, in an experiment, attached sensors to the skin, heart, and brain of a number of volunteers in order to assess their reactions to watching a number of television sequences in comparison (each sequence lasted no more than 10 to 15 seconds). Most of the volunteers expressed frustration at not having had time to figure out whether or not they liked a sequence. THE computer also recorded a series of unanticipated data that showed how any change (space, colour, frame, or object) present in each individual sequence was picked up by the sensors. It seems that a human being reacts both to stimuli occurring in a real context and to those occurring within a screen. We are not aware of our reaction because our bodies react instinctively and register such movements. These are automatisms related to Pavlov’s theory, which speaks of our survival strategy to adapt to environmental changes, as an ancient biological programming.
Derrick Dekercove concludes, “TV speaks to our body and not to our mind.” The more we are stimulated by things happening on the screen, the busier our nervous system is to process a survival strategy, without any involvement of consciousness and, consequently, our critical thinking. But this means that the processing of information and communication strategy is directly related to the potential of the technological tool.
We have always said that TV is only a tool, what matters is the ethical attitude of those who edit the programs. This is only partly true, because our perception is manipulated by the very structure of the technological media. Simply put, media tools are apt to produce an autonomous language. The possibility of speeding up and multiplying cuts in film editing produces our reaction automatically, with no possibility of conscious control. Our neuromuscular system follows the images even if our mind does not: this is called orienting response (OR).
Constant changes of images, rhythms, sounds and colours in the visual stream automatically cause our orientation response. We are completely swept along by the flow of images. Normally we have a “closure,” closure so called, which means a complete and finite relationship between a stimulus and our relative orientation response. If the flow of images is too fast, “closure” cannot be performed. Dr. Edward Resony Lapk says the cause is ER “interval collapse,” that is, the time that occurs between stimulus and our conscious response.
Interval collapse does not allow our need for communication to be met. Morris Wolfe created the concept of “jolts per minute”: meaning a precise number of cuts per scene, so as to avoid consciousness control. Viewers become addicted to these very powerful inputs and crave more and more of them. Even zapping, which might prospectively manifest the possibility of interacting and interrupting the flow of “jolts per minute,” paradoxically increases this addiction, because viewers seek out those programs that guarantee additional “jolts.”
Morris Wolfe dealt with this in 1976 !!! Now in this report we were talking about TV, but we can talk generally about expressive forms of dynamic imagery. The visual paradigm has moved from the realm of TV to the realm of computers. But the problem does not change, indeed it gets worse.
(Online text, missing source)
Watch the clips and count second by second the maximum of time for each cutting
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA by Andrew Adamson
BARRY LYNDON by Stanley Kubrick
LA BATTAGLIA DI ALGERI by Gillo Pontecorvo
Here are three examples of films: the first, Narnia adopts a very aggressive “shots per minute” technique, the second, Berry Lindon uses cutting to set the right pace, and the third The Battle of Algiers uses the cut in a more nuanced way, as if it were a documentary.
Speaking of Josh’s film, the cut is very fast, not aggressive, but poetic. He alternates music (violin player) with other scenes.
I mean, in general by filming even if there is a technological component (which works beyond our consciousness) we can balance our expression with other elements (such as voices, noises, music). It is important to have a frank approach (not taking advantage of the possible lack of consciousness) but to express ourselves with linguistic signs that accompany the technological aspect.
Said that I believe that if we agree with this analysis we should’t stop anyway our creativity. I think we can also use multiply cutting if we are able to create a thread (trough voices, music) which reconnects ourselves to our flux of consciousness.
This means (for example) using voices, sounds, or music, not exacerbating the flow of images (which normally happens) but doing exactly the opposite.Y7 2019
If the author will be able to change the rhythm of the sequences with voice or music to reconnect with the conscious streaming, the spectator will also be able to do so and will not be manipulated by the technological aspects. The human approach will outweigh technological effectiveness, but to do so we must be frank and honest. Simply put, instead choosing the most complacent and easy way to photograph (or watch), it is better using our intuition and creativity to reconnect us to the conscious stream.
[20/2, 19:49] Camilo’s email:
Great impulse Emilio! … It is exciting really, this Lab with you gives some pleasure consciousness in times of multitasking…
[21/2, 12:33] Emilio’s email:
Thank you Camilo
There is something special in every meeting, because people meet not by chance, but by recognition.
Each of us brings something special. What we can do is simply trust each other.
[8/3, 11:03] Marlene’s email:
Dear Emilio and dear Camilo,
Thank you for these valuable thoughts. I never thought “technically” or scientifically at what exactly means the number of cuts per second, we can definitely all sense that what you are talking about is real. Even, the pace increased a lot in the last 30 years, because if we look at films from the 90’s or the 80’s, even films or series that had some action or thrill, the cuts are not as fast as today (not to say that we are today overwhelmed too by strong effects, music, like in the Narnia video you showed us). I remember I was surprised with the pace of such films and series, seeing them now. Their rhythm is much more similar to the rhythm of real life, and sometimes they include details that today would be perceived as unnecessary by producers. Today we can certainly feel the effects of a media bombing, I am sure in the 70’s they were feeling that too, but certainly there has been a gradual increase in the quantity of audio-visual messages, their pace and their capillarity (as the number of technologies able to reproduce audio-visual materials increased, as well as the hours of exposition per day – first cinema maybe twice a week – then tv daily – then smartphone constantly).
It is impressive to think it this way, our minds go numb, critical thinking erased, many moments a day. The more we are stimulated by things happening on the screen, the busier our nervous system is to process a survival strategy, without any involvement of consciousness and, consequently, our critical thinking.
From the same period, even earlier as it was first published in 1967, is “The society of the spectacle” by Guy Debord that came back to my mind.
I quote a few passages here:
In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.
The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudo-world that can only be looked at. The specialization of images of the world has culminated in a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. The spectacle is a concrete inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the nonliving.
The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.
When the real world is transformed into mere images, mere images become real beings-figments that provide the direct motivations for a hypnotic behavior. Since the spectacle’s job is to use various specialized mediations in order to show us a world that can no longer be directly grasped, it naturally elevates the sense of sight to the special preeminence once occupied by touch: the most abstract and easily deceived sense is the most readily adaptable to the generalized abstraction of present-day society. But the spectacle is not merely a matter of images, nor even of images plus sounds. It is whatever escapes people’s activity, whatever eludes their practical reconsideration and correction. It is the opposite of dialogue. Wherever representation becomes independent, the spectacle regenerates itself.
You can find the english translation of the full text in pdf here (if you look online there is many different versions and translations):
Click to access The%20Society%20of%20the%20Spectacle%20Annotated%20Edition.pdf
I was thinking that instead images can work not to make us dumb but to make us more conscious. This is the case of Mumbasi and Angela’s film and of Josh’s film as well. I sensed in both that the videos helped shifting a “perception”. They actually act as a revelation.
Talking about augmented bodily perception, audio-visual images can extend our senses too, they can help us see things that are normally unperceived. If we talk at a perceptible level we could show these beautiful films by Painlevé who was one of the first to record images under water:
Hippocampe & Méduses by Jean Painlevé
Or I could show I a video I made with the artist group I was part of years ago, it was a playful action that had a critical insight: we were stacking animal skins used for industrial production and showing through a thermal camera how much they were retaining bodily heat, thus “revitalizing” them in a kind of “animistic” attempt that underlined the reification of life for consumption purposes.
Animismo Industriale by Anemoi
[8/3, 12:43] Emilio’s email:
Marlene your contribution broadens the view on the topic of perception. And thank you for the clips.
- Criticizing the bulimic use of cutting to control bodies and souls, we might also reason in your video, as in Josh’one, very fast sequences cut are used. This seems like a contradiction, but If the goal of purpose it is not for profit or manipulation, the faster sequences might help determine the pace and aesthetics of the film.
[8/3, 17:48] Camilo’s email:
wow Marlene! this text you bring: “(audiovisual images)… naturally elevates the sense of sight to the special preeminence once occupied by touch: the most abstract and easily deceived sense is the most readily adaptable to the generalized abstraction of present-day society.” … made me stop for a while to rethink what I had already worked on to send you from the thread Emilio started: It seems we are trying to decipher different perspectives of a mmm tension(?), between perception and the audiovisual medium that not only calls us to this laboratory, but that we might understand as the most used communication medium of our time.
If it has become such an overexposed medium, and if it is the most “easily deceived sense” we receptors use to perceive, clearly nowadays we are not achieving a consummate “dialogue”, or well, without talking about achievements, the message can simply be analyzed as distorted only from its projection, the purpose is “deceived” in its essence since the beginning. The image “is not enough perceived”(?) when the next one already appears, happens, arrives, and the next… and the next! … (linking to the conversation from the first session)… mmm rethink a rhythm for “satisfactory” dialogued perception, mmm nice…
Continuing with Emilio´s thread, I came to think of technical examples of cutting, of montage, that felt somehow more into perception inquiry, or even directly talking about perception traduced in/for an audiovisual exercise, for this or that purpose. I got back to a video presented in 2023´s GutiSan Festival that instantly “my body remembered”, a beautiful piece made by Ana Pura (Isadora Martins and Tarik Fraig) called “Attention-Eclipse“, inspired as referenced to Simone Weil´s “attention and will” … I want to present it and my overview through some extracts next (and an audio, that I preferred to do it just as an introspective tool then backup, so it’s in spanish for those who wants-can listen to my first “perceived thoughts”).
Attention-Eclipse by Ana Pura
1- Since the introduction, it invites you to connect-perceive breathing, closing “its eyes” with a full black out screen and a breathing companion. This invitation to connect with other senses rather just to the view is built in different sequences, sometimes just with a direct narrative-montage 1.jpeg that suggests “digestion” or a sequence that manages to achieve with a simple distortion technique to feel the “tension”, “the wrong view” from minute 3:34 to 4:11, when we can even see the author in a glimpse, “confused”.
2. But basically, the video seems intended, even in its clever montage, to talk about “perceiving of living”… wow a huge metaconcept. I might be wrong of what the author’s intention was, but having the audiovisual “perception” matter in my role as a receiver of the message, I also reflected its message towards the role of the audiovisual creator vs the audiovisual receiver´s role (spectator)… some exciting results from it can be interpreted: “you exist and I exist through you“, as we might say I exist through the video and viceversa, even as a viewer and even just the minutes my presence is overtaken by the images, “… perceiving is participating, what you perceive is what you become… we don´t see a stone without a part of us becoming… stony”!… Or “do not interpret; observe“… nice message for a creator of images, but also for the viewer that also brings expectatives to a film projection.
3. And deeping on the video´s montage, it’s poetry and how cutting was alternatively used and not just by a fast use of different shots, I especially appreciated inserting frames over frames in the same shot to get deeper in the narrative as in the tree sequence, or to connect poetic thoughts (“…and attention so full than the “I” disappears“). Finally, I landed with “is less filter and more sensitivity“
Continuing with other two audiovisual examples I had for comment, I have to agree with you both, Josh´s came to my thoughts, as his own perception view took my attention and I still feel ” the pipe insight” as a resonance… like a continuous image that made “a memory” alive in my body after the projection.
So not to extend more, that brings me to my third example, a frame from a sequence that is still in my mind since I watched “Parasite” by Bong Joon-ho. In this sequence when the characters are throwing water to a drunk, we see it through the window of its apartment, a window that works also as a usual poetic frame that explains their view of the outside world in the movie (world is up), but reframed also by a cellphone, recording it in “slow motion”… a beautiful result for the senses I think.
Ps: Looking for the exact frame of the movie, I arrived at this other analisis made by a youtuber: as it talks about rhythm in montage and counting frames of a sequence, I add his perspective of “Parasite” to this thread.
[10/3] Emilio’s comment on drive:
You say Marlene that your video is made with a technique similar to the “stop motion” technique, which is different from the “Jolts for minute” technique… this is an important issue because it makes us think about the meaning of “cut”.
If we take the meaning of “cut” to extremes, we could also say that any dynamic image consists of a number of fixed frames. This means that “cut” is implicit in the dynamic image, it is its very structure. It also means that the speed and quantity of the images stimulate our senses but, based on what we have assumed, consciousness cannot catch it.
This determines a complete difference if for example we look at the movement of ocean waves or we look at the same waves on a screen. What is different is our inner experience.
But this does not mean that our inner experience is absolutely denied by the screen, but rather, as Camilo made me think, that it all depends on the relationship between author and viewer. If both have the intention to explore human nature and delve into what is at the core of our existence, the stream of consciousness will reach the soul through still images-sequences.
PERCEPTION, SENSES AND CONSCIOUSNESS
ZOOM SESSION NOTES, RECORDS AND LINKS
(Next we share the exchange-conversation that happened on Wednesday March 20th 2024 between the group that attended this 2nd session)
-If you prefer just to listen the Audio Recording as a “podcast”
-The chat Transcription
-Links: Benya “found examples on instagram of
1) Fast cuts that are meant to elicit aww / longing without time for consciousness and
2) A counter-example of using a single cut, but rhythm to keep attention. Still sensorily satisfying, but allows more space for conscious reflection.”
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