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?

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