Motion can only occur in context. So perhaps a good way to dissect or even identify a phenomenon is through an analysis of motion within that phenomenon. Much camera is culmination of the "enlightenment" epoch that is rooted philosophically in the corpuscular kinetic view (late 17th through early 20th centuries). Although developments from relativity to postmodernism have spun us away from such a cultural mode, its tropes still persist.
The 18th century(ish): the Enlightenment. Teleology was phased out; mechanism phased in. "The mechanical scheme of nature may be summarized in the following five propositions: 1) Matter, which is discontinuous in its structure... moves through space according to the strict laws of mechanics. 2) All apparently qualitative differences in nature are due to the differences in configuration or motion of these basic units or their aggregates. 3) All apparently qualitative differences are merely surface effects of the displacement of the elementary units or their aggregates 4) All interaction between basic corpuscles is due exclusively to their direct impact. Action at a distance is a mere figure of speech. 5) Qualitative variety as well as qualitative transformation are psychic additions of the perceiving human mind; they do not belong to the nature of things." (Capek, 79)
"Features of classical euclidian space [followed] from its homogeneity: its independence of physical content, its infinity and continuity, the relativity of position and magnitude, its causal inertness, and its immutability." (Capek 29)
"While space was defined as the three-dimensional manifold of coexisting homogenous terms, time was regarded as the one-dimensional manifold of successive terms." (Capek 35)
Motion can only exist in context; can context exist lacking motion? The only practical question to ask here is whether context can be interpreted lacking a general framework that incorporates motion; motion becomes a potential epistemological variable.
the film Levi suggested you see is 'Spacy' by Takashi Ito:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.imageforum.co.jp/ito/introduction_e.html
http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQmi53FvcXkkdqrGzFlaJ-4jjq8dz59SpDlXhxBblbzLIDF4_RF
maybe if you ask Don he will let you borrow it to watch in the computer room?
also - have you seen Sarah Biagini's wipe film? she showed it at astroland last year as a w-i-p - using nothing but wipes from an old kurosawa film.
some things i wrote down that were said during your critique:
by levi: "growth over time"
by you: "an elaborate time and space-lapse"
have you seen Michael Snow's 'La Region Centrale'?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYr_SvIKKuI
also you might find this interesting:
atmosphere by chris gallagher:
a short clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odz9xPePkQo
the description:
http://www.cfmdc.org/node/194
pyramids:
ReplyDeleteyou might be interested in this image - from the new issue of incite journal:
http://www.incite-online.net/issuethree.html
contact - the intro!!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNAUR7NQCLA
powers of 10!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0