Johnny S: Audiolly Yours, Johnny
http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=18153
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Audiolly Yours, Johnny
So I was thinking about class a little bit, and though I'd like to elaborate more on the readings, I'm yet to find a copy of Working to call my own -- but Tuesdays class was real good I thought. Looking at more Brackage, I think I got to realize a bit more of his style.. I don't mean so much his 'avant-garde' classing or anything like that. I'm not even really familiar enough with that concept to speak on it.
But what I got from seeing three more of his films briefly was that visually he allows the viewers perspective on what they're seeing form their theories. I mean that he leaves things out of his film making - commonly audio - and the absence has varying effects.
Generally some of the audience was affected by the eerily soundless "The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes." The irony of something so visually graphic and uncensored with complete silence does indeed beg an eerie feeling. Think about how crazy it would have been had the audio of the film been a loop of someone breathing heavily? Now think about in actuality that for a silent film such as "The Act.." the only thing the audience can detect is their own breathing.
While watching the horrific valleys inside body cavities, various organs being removed by the handful and the heightened green glow inside the cranium, I caught myself listening to my own breathing more intensely, as if the films volume was being turned up. Then my mind floats to how my lungs pump and flex and seize and are constantly 'ON' when all of a sudden I look up and see a chest plate has been removed and laying there are two blackened, slimy lungs.
Crazy reflection!
Unfortunately I missed the title of the second film we watched last Tuesday -- not "Mothlight" and not "Window Water Baby," but another of Brackage's pieces were it's purely cellulose manipulation and scratching on the film. We discussed afterward some questions of sound. Why do we think there wasn't any? why did Brackage choose this? I specifically thought to myself as I saw clouds of blue gyrating and moving all arround and then dissolving into other permutations of colours, "This could be a music video for a real special song."
If you're reading this and you know which film I'm referring to, please let me know. It's hard to think of that particular piece as rhythmic cause it's almost though you never see anything twice, shape or colour. But the rate it which the visual twitches, or pulsates, as its form grows and shifts is kind of trancing, like a real good instrumental.
I've attached a link to my profile to a website selling music by a producer/emcee who goes by many names. MF DOOM's instrumentals are something I would love to hear at the same time as a Stan Brackage abstract film. Click on some of the audio links to hear an instrumental from MetalFace Doom.. For me, it's something I've been listening to for a while and it entrances me.
Dare I face an audio/visual entrancement possibly so powerful to daze me? Dare you?
But what I got from seeing three more of his films briefly was that visually he allows the viewers perspective on what they're seeing form their theories. I mean that he leaves things out of his film making - commonly audio - and the absence has varying effects.
Generally some of the audience was affected by the eerily soundless "The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes." The irony of something so visually graphic and uncensored with complete silence does indeed beg an eerie feeling. Think about how crazy it would have been had the audio of the film been a loop of someone breathing heavily? Now think about in actuality that for a silent film such as "The Act.." the only thing the audience can detect is their own breathing.
While watching the horrific valleys inside body cavities, various organs being removed by the handful and the heightened green glow inside the cranium, I caught myself listening to my own breathing more intensely, as if the films volume was being turned up. Then my mind floats to how my lungs pump and flex and seize and are constantly 'ON' when all of a sudden I look up and see a chest plate has been removed and laying there are two blackened, slimy lungs.
Crazy reflection!
Unfortunately I missed the title of the second film we watched last Tuesday -- not "Mothlight" and not "Window Water Baby," but another of Brackage's pieces were it's purely cellulose manipulation and scratching on the film. We discussed afterward some questions of sound. Why do we think there wasn't any? why did Brackage choose this? I specifically thought to myself as I saw clouds of blue gyrating and moving all arround and then dissolving into other permutations of colours, "This could be a music video for a real special song."
If you're reading this and you know which film I'm referring to, please let me know. It's hard to think of that particular piece as rhythmic cause it's almost though you never see anything twice, shape or colour. But the rate it which the visual twitches, or pulsates, as its form grows and shifts is kind of trancing, like a real good instrumental.
I've attached a link to my profile to a website selling music by a producer/emcee who goes by many names. MF DOOM's instrumentals are something I would love to hear at the same time as a Stan Brackage abstract film. Click on some of the audio links to hear an instrumental from MetalFace Doom.. For me, it's something I've been listening to for a while and it entrances me.
Dare I face an audio/visual entrancement possibly so powerful to daze me? Dare you?
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Brackage 2
Between Brackage's "The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes" and Wiseman's "Titticut Follies" I had much to think about after the screenings. Without any audio (almost thankfully), Brackage's vivid documentary completely illustrates the word autopsy. I’ve much to say on Wiseman, but think it is better suited in discussion. Where I took many notes for Wiseman's piece, I could not bring myself to record what I was seeing in "The Act." Was it because I didn't want to miss anything I was seeing? I'm not sure... What I do know for sure is that what I was seeing was something not only quite gruesome but so so explorative. As I watched, and not by any means constantly, I realized that what I was seeing must be considered by those who do it to be an adventure.
Like a deep sea dive, once you know the waters, it's the various life and findings that differentiate the diver's experiences. The role of the autopsist, from what I gathered, is to split, dissect, collect and separate virtually every internal organ from each cadaver -- in the name of science. As the blood was being pumped out of the body cavity and they were cutting off and removing the chest plates, it was easy enough to forget that the process is indeed for a reason. How else would they strategically get to the brain but by making incisions along your back hair line and peeling your skull skin over your face? An autopsy is the only way to advantageously investigate death when there are uncertainties to the causes, circumstances.
I think the concluding scene establishes this reminder in the (generally awestruck) viewer, where the elderly autopsist (which we don't know how involved he is in the hands-on process) records a taped report of the investigation. His white lab coat bears only a few small splatters of blood, which the camera focuses in on. I liked that. It was an absolutely shameless inclusion of contrasting of the red, dark thickness of the inside of the body cavities, to the sterilized, clean whiteness of the room -- humans intact. Maybe there's something in the fact that the elderly man concluding the autopsy on the tape recorder could have very well been older than each of the numerous corpses filmed. Whether or not that was intentionally included, a film so unordinary and expository just grabs a hold of you, if you are willing to watch. During and after the film I thought of the material and re-told myself two things: “I want to be cremated,” and “I don't want to dream about this tonight.” Obviously I expected myself to have extreme difficulty forgetting a lot of the things I saw in the film. I was the most uncomfortable when they were dissecting a younger looking female corpse. Seeing her chest carved up and being dissected bothered me... I just didn’t like the thought of it. I wish I could explain it a little better. Regardless of how I uncomfortable I felt during the half hour film, it was so intriguing that I found myself talking to some people about it. Death, the one thing that none of us individually know about, really isn't what bothers us. Sure, the idea of being gone and our families and friends being devastated is horrible, but it is going to happen anyhow. Though I don't want my body carved up or disassembled, I still believe in the soul being an entity of its own, with different priorities after the death of my body. Still, I shudder at the thought of being on film, empty and being flopped around like in”The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes”.
Like a deep sea dive, once you know the waters, it's the various life and findings that differentiate the diver's experiences. The role of the autopsist, from what I gathered, is to split, dissect, collect and separate virtually every internal organ from each cadaver -- in the name of science. As the blood was being pumped out of the body cavity and they were cutting off and removing the chest plates, it was easy enough to forget that the process is indeed for a reason. How else would they strategically get to the brain but by making incisions along your back hair line and peeling your skull skin over your face? An autopsy is the only way to advantageously investigate death when there are uncertainties to the causes, circumstances.
I think the concluding scene establishes this reminder in the (generally awestruck) viewer, where the elderly autopsist (which we don't know how involved he is in the hands-on process) records a taped report of the investigation. His white lab coat bears only a few small splatters of blood, which the camera focuses in on. I liked that. It was an absolutely shameless inclusion of contrasting of the red, dark thickness of the inside of the body cavities, to the sterilized, clean whiteness of the room -- humans intact. Maybe there's something in the fact that the elderly man concluding the autopsy on the tape recorder could have very well been older than each of the numerous corpses filmed. Whether or not that was intentionally included, a film so unordinary and expository just grabs a hold of you, if you are willing to watch. During and after the film I thought of the material and re-told myself two things: “I want to be cremated,” and “I don't want to dream about this tonight.” Obviously I expected myself to have extreme difficulty forgetting a lot of the things I saw in the film. I was the most uncomfortable when they were dissecting a younger looking female corpse. Seeing her chest carved up and being dissected bothered me... I just didn’t like the thought of it. I wish I could explain it a little better. Regardless of how I uncomfortable I felt during the half hour film, it was so intriguing that I found myself talking to some people about it. Death, the one thing that none of us individually know about, really isn't what bothers us. Sure, the idea of being gone and our families and friends being devastated is horrible, but it is going to happen anyhow. Though I don't want my body carved up or disassembled, I still believe in the soul being an entity of its own, with different priorities after the death of my body. Still, I shudder at the thought of being on film, empty and being flopped around like in”The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes”.
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