_a little story
she remembers sitting in the open window of her room on the top floor. The house is on a hill, and the illuminated city seems bigger at night than in the dull day. For a long time she sits there, glancing here and there and back again. She remembers the synesthesia of looking out and hearing music, and then with one glance looking in and hearing the city, all in a moment simultaneous duality. It is not the room, or its vantage point, but rather the reconciliation of opposites, within a single moment, by instinct and as an impulsive sequence.
As she arrives at the gates of the city, she remembers sitting in the open window, glancing neither here nor there.
The eye, she deliberates, might be the mechanism of that memory, the key to its effortless passage between antitheses. The lens receives light from its environment and focuses it onto the retina, here the inverted image is transposed into neural impulses which, processed by the brain become perception, our inner interpretation of the outer physical world. Within this light-fast sequence occurs a continuous and sustained transition between the internal and external and this she thinks must illuminate some mechanism which might allow for a construction which realises and manifests that moment.
She remembers sitting in the open window and wanders how she could dwell in that dichotomy. This is the question, what is the necessary construction to make this moment manifest in the physical environment?
She has come to Valencia on a kind of pilgrimage. She heard that there was once a professor here who had captured in images the space of that most fundamental of transitions, the retina. And so she has come here to find the modern day shrine to science where the evidence of that elusive space he had captured now lay.
The professor was one Ramon Y Cajal. He had been a rebellious teenager and in spite of his father’s efforts to apprentice him to cobblers and barbers, had indulged instead his passion for drawing and the pursuit of aesthetics. Much to the relief of his father I’m sure, he did finally enrol at the University of Zaragoza to study medicine. Ten years after graduating he was appointed a professorship and chair of anatomy at the University of Valencia. At 35, Cajal would finally reconcile his talent for imagery and science when he travelled to Madrid to meet Dr. Simarro; he wrote in his autobiography: “it was there, in the house of Dr. Simarro, that for the first time I had the opportunity to admire those famous sections of the brain impregnated by the silver method of The Savant of pavia.” He continued: “A look was enough [the nerve cells appeared] coloured brownish black even to their finest branchlets, standing out with unsurpassed clarity upon a transparent yellow background. All was sharp as a sketch with Chinese ink.” Enraptured by the technique, Cajal promptly stained the retinas of birds with the silvery ink. From this devised immaculate drawings plotting the neurons and their interactions and thus establishing the basic principles of modern neuroscience.
There was in this man’s method a certain madness she thinks. A perverse and brutal indulgence in the dissection of the sacred to reveal and demystify it. She admires of course the final product of these exercises, but shies away for now at least from those operations. For now, she remains passive, observing.
She remembers sitting in the open window, wanting to capture that moment and fix it.
Tomorrow she would arrive at the shrine, where she would see with her own eyes those delicate plans of where photon turns to thought.
The fixing of an image is a preoccupation inexorably linked to her desire to dwell in dichotomies. The camera’s eye could capture more perception in an image than hers could. She revels in the possibility of framing a composition to exclude the world she chooses to reject and distil the customised constructed world of her personal desire. In this way, she could see the world by filter, overexposing in order to express the ambiguity of her subjects in the somewhat nostalgic manner of the German expressionists.
People would say, as if trying to enlighten her, that not everything was so black and white. This irritated her intensely, as if patronising words like this would suddenly wake her from her slumber of ignorance, that she would suddenly awaken to the rich and diverse world which is greyscale. God forbid no; she maintained that things were that simple, that is was all about black and white.
This is not say that she is in denial about the fact that her eyes do actually, for better or worse perceive colour. But she has a habit of dwelling on contrast, of immersing herself in its clarity, encircling it until it reveals her preoccupations in the material of her environment.
As she wanders through the city on her way to the shrine, she remembers sitting in the open window wanting to compress the space of the city and stretch the time of the moment.
Suddenly she finds herself outside the University but stops at the glass door, captured by its dissection of the square. As the polished door pivots it splits the square in two and then slowly merges it again. She stops, looking at this, nudging the door open a little every time it comes to rest. As people pass behind her, she spies them according the angle of the pivot. The frame of her vision thus becomes privy to a much larger space, stretched over a longer period of time.
In a cafe on the square she finds solace in a place which seems to have the ingredients of her mnemonic space. She sits here soaking in whisky and cortados, simultaneously sipping at home and abroad. She recalls an architect friend of hers once saying “Good building must be seen as the nature of good construction, but a higher development of this ‘seeing’ will be construction seen as nature-pattern. That seeing, only, is inspired architecture...” He continued ecclesiastically: “ This dawning sense of Within as reality when it is clearly seen as Nature will by way of glass, make the garden be the building as much as the building will be the garden.”
She chuckles at this recollection, seeing about her every antithesis of this self induced epiphany. At the time she had been struck by the idea of a “dawning sense of within as reality”, mostly due - she realised now - to the fact that she saw little or no connection between this notion and the rest of the sermon. Her sense of reality was not one made of glass and steel and concrete.
Here the glass is not that immaterial facilitator of a dematerialised architecture (and by the way what was that architect’s obsession with demolishing his own work the moment is became solid?). On the contrary, the glass here does everything to mediate between the garden and the building, bouncing its imagery from plane to plane until all its momentum is lost and all that remains is a matter of perception. Although she feels terribly at home here, no doubt partly due to her relative intoxication by now, she misses within these walls of strewn out images the dynamic of her memory. She misses the movement of one to its antithesis, and so she leaves, continuing toward the shrine.
She remembers sitting in the open window, considering the cycle of seeing and being.
As evening approaches she thinks of the cyclical nature of her eye construction, its mechanisms and its framework. She repeats to herself: light reaches the eye is focussed onto the retina is transposed to neurons is perceived by the brain is the instigator of emotion is again transposed to physiology is thus made physical is then made a construction is reflecting light, is entering the eye and is focussed by the lens is transposed by the retina to be read by the brain and is expressed through emotion as physical form is constructing the environment and reaches the eyes by light, focussed onto the retina and...
Tomorrow she would see for herself those delicate plans of the dissected eye.
_reflective experiments set-up drawing
the idea being that the same effect is achieved as that of the initial mannekino-eye footage where it only becomes clear the mannekin has no eyes at a critical angle. Here, instead of the camera moving around the model in a circular motion, the model moves in a linear fashion and the camera is static
the idea being that the same effect is achieved as that of the initial mannekino-eye footage where it only becomes clear the mannekin has no eyes at a critical angle. Here, instead of the camera moving around the model in a circular motion, the model moves in a linear fashion and the camera is static
_the mnemonic trigger
I remember sitting in the open window of my room on the top floor. The house was on a hill, and the illuminated city seemed bigger at night than in the dull day.
For a long time I sat there, glancing here and there and back again.
I remember the synesthesia of looking out and hearing music, and then with one glance looking in and hearing the city.
It was a perfect simultaneous duality
and i have sought it everywhere, ever since.
It was not the room, or its vantage point,
rather the reconciliation of opposites, within a single moment,
by instinct as an impulsive sequence.
_project outline v.1.4
statement of intention
_the title : is 'kinostos, a cinematic poem about return'.statement of intention
_the vehicle : is the kino eye, whose drive - the desire for an affirmation - is defined by a movement which describes a form (of architecture) manifest by:
_the material : is glass (archit.) and water (environ.) where the phenomena is optics.
_the narrative : follows a transition from one scenic or subject extreme to it’s antithesis. the transition is aided by ‘markers’ which appear as dynamic reflections.
_the crime : is the punishment of the desire, and punchline of the narrative. where the promise of affirmation is replaced by the realisation of the contrary. (the accident might happen.)
_the image : has ambivalence expressed through diction and chiaroscuro.
_the critical aspect : optical transition is the touchstone of the project, where each aspect is subject to uncompromising technical scrutiny (a further opportunity for punishment) thereby informing material manifestations.
_the audio : undergoes a transition in parallel with the narrative. two channels, one dominant one subsidiary, exchange function at the point of transition.
_contrapposto
from sculpture to soma
from sculpture to soma
This film attempts to construct a plane of desire by reading between the lines of the previous two films [mannekino eye introvert/extravert].
As a basic kinomatic device, and in contrast to ‘mannekino eye [extravert]’ this film uses the zoom as opposed to the pan to define a scenic transition: that of scale.
As previously, the technique of chiaroscuro is applied in order to communicate ambiguity (to push something in two directions). As in mannekino eye [introvert], the light becomes a dynamic subject (the sun) which interferes with the desire of the kino-eye to focus on/identify the subject.
The subject – kino’s object of desire – describes a transition from inanimate to dynamic, a reference to the apparent coming to life (or ambiguity of mannequin’s lifelessness) of the apparently inanimate object: mannequin, in previous films. She is introduced as unambiguous inanimate sculpture-like figure. The film concludes with two impulsive somatic gestures, an exhalation of smoke identifying that the subject does indeed breathe; and a glance towards, the kino-eye, a reference to initial studies of parallel lines of thought in ‘inland empire’.
_mannekino eye [introvert]
The physical inversion of mannequin’s eye by the wax cast – the material of the geometric investigation – becomes here, a sort of personification of the inanimate object. The slice – necessary for the creation of an accurate section through her eye – becomes a further dissection/exposure. Ironically, it seems to bring the subject to life though an almost frankenstinian operation.
the colour black has an ambiguous and ambivalent nature, synonymous with bipolarity, giving it a mythological aura that has, over the centuries, fed aesthetics, ideologies, politics, techno, technology, theatre, cinema etc.
negative examples are:
black shirts; black magic; the black plague; black mass; black cat; black period; black list
positive examples are:
little black dress; black gold; black pride; black humour; black jack; black virgin; black pearl
_ambiguity : to be ambiguous, unclear. from latin ambigere ‘push something in two directions’.
_ambivalence : the simultaneous presence of contradictory emotions or feelings towards the same person or thing. a term used in psychoanalysis in relation to split personalities, a vein of ambivalence runs through art seen as a metaphor for splits with nature, culture, the self, one’s own art, etc. this bipolarity, this contrast or otherness, is expressed most visibly in the play between black and white.
_b/w [black and white] : a technique in photography in cinematography, but also a reference to conceptual expressions of representative form, such as the theory of perception, among others. in photography, black and white is synonymous with reportage, with images linked to fashion, and with subjects where photography is being used to create art.
- from the glossary of a noir
_polyophysiognomical : amalgam used by the italian futurist anton giulio bragalia to describe a method of photography which attempted to describe a dynamic object by means of overlays. also known as photodynamism.
_poly- : many or several
_physiognomy : 1 the face or features, especially when used or seen as a key to someone’s personality. 2 the art of judging character from appearance, especially from the face.
negative examples are:
black shirts; black magic; the black plague; black mass; black cat; black period; black list
positive examples are:
little black dress; black gold; black pride; black humour; black jack; black virgin; black pearl
_ambiguity : to be ambiguous, unclear. from latin ambigere ‘push something in two directions’.
_ambivalence : the simultaneous presence of contradictory emotions or feelings towards the same person or thing. a term used in psychoanalysis in relation to split personalities, a vein of ambivalence runs through art seen as a metaphor for splits with nature, culture, the self, one’s own art, etc. this bipolarity, this contrast or otherness, is expressed most visibly in the play between black and white.
_b/w [black and white] : a technique in photography in cinematography, but also a reference to conceptual expressions of representative form, such as the theory of perception, among others. in photography, black and white is synonymous with reportage, with images linked to fashion, and with subjects where photography is being used to create art.
- from the glossary of a noir
_polyophysiognomical : amalgam used by the italian futurist anton giulio bragalia to describe a method of photography which attempted to describe a dynamic object by means of overlays. also known as photodynamism.
_poly- : many or several
_physiognomy : 1 the face or features, especially when used or seen as a key to someone’s personality. 2 the art of judging character from appearance, especially from the face.
_illuminance studies of stills sequence from ‘mannekino eye’ film
_chiaroscuro : amalgam of italian words meaning light and dark referring to a contrasting use of light and shade in painting, photography and cinematography. In the latter, most notably in german expressionist film, and in film noir. Indusive of ambiguity.
_antichthon : The backdrop transition from city to room behind the mannequin insinuates a glance of hers to the same effect, the model’s line of thought&action. The kino-eye [camera-eye, the camera’s view] is, however, subordinate, in that it remains at all times the antithesis of her glance. When she appears to be looking into the room the scenery beyond is of the city, and when she appears to have moved her gaze outwards we see the interior of the room beyond it. In this way, the moment of thought&action is effectively stretched over time such that the camera can capture it.
_transition : a change or passage from one condition, state, subject, place, etc to another; music a change from one key to another; a brief modulation; archit the gradual change from one style to another, especially from Norman to Early English; physics a change of an atomic nucleus or orbital electron from one quantum state to another where the emission or absorption of radiation is involved. transitional or transitionary adj. transitionally adverb.
ETYMOLOGY: 16c: from Latin transitio a going across.
ETYMOLOGY: 16c: from Latin transitio a going across.
_line of thought&action : a sequence of mutually dependent procedures manifest simultaneously in somatic and cognitive space. the line is described as a narrative plotted along a series of ‘markers’. a marker is established by a physical appearance or gesture signifying a progression or transition, which thus adds momentum to, and dictates the course of the line.
_somintrospicere
_operative time drawing charting a line of thought&action from ‘inland empire’ [david lynch, 2006].
the impulse physical linguistics of the character nikki/sue plot points chronologically which define this line spatially as a sequence between extraversion – that is, influence from extraneous sources – and introversion, its antonym.
the [extended] moment of transition [01:08:25 – 01:08:30] is expressed somatically by the sequence: stare – close eyes – turn away – cover eyes, distilling the narrative of the extended scene to simple impulse gestures at once generic and laden.
auxiliary auditory passages are noted by way of two methods :
i : the waveform of all combined audio in the sequence provides a visual snapshot of the soundscape by way of a numeric frame of reference throughout the graphic.
ii : dialogue, lyrics, and percussion are noted and positioned within the graphic relative to the corresponding physical reactions of the characters such that relationships between sound and somatics become evident.
