Session 2, Sound and Image Connections, article

[Rita]

Hi all

I'm not the best at speaking out in a group situation but I wanted to
share this article I was thinking about and the other thing I tried to
say!

I recently read an article (that interests me personally and might
interest you) in Cabinet magazine (issue 44) 'Shapes With the Sound of
Their Own Making' by Aura Satz, goes into more detail about the
history of artists creating their own systems to control aspects of
audio/visual connections on film. But the interesting bit is at the
end in reference to Lis Rhodes who offers a critique to abstract
visual interpretations of music (by Oskar Fischinger or Mary Ellen
Bute):

"Seeing is never believing, or lip sync a confirmation of
authenticity". In works such as 'Dresden Dynamo' and 'Light Music',
Rhodes explored the film image as sound and the sound as image by
using geometric abstract patterns that bled into the area of the film
that is 'read' by the projectors optical sound equipment. Moving away
from the dream of a universal language to a critique of the power
structures of language, Rhodes attempted to disrupt and subvert the
perception of a perfect fit of sound and image. Ultimately, she
understood her filmic experiments such as 'Amanuensis' as
demonstrations of the "impossibility of making a material connection
between 'what is said to be seen' and 'what is seen to be said'. There
is no apparent connection between saying and seeing other than
perceptually."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we4-xvuaoCI
Recently at ICA.

I was also thinking about rhythm in animation in general, that in
session 1, the wavering lines of The Moschops (Jim Trainor I think)
and the shimmering surfaces of the last film (can't remember title,
but where the colour on the figures of the people working in the
fields was changeable from one frame to the next and so shimmered or
seemed to breath) seem to offer the viewer a key to a personal rhythm
drawing you into the feel of the work or animator... argh how ever I
try to write it it doesn't make sense... without being cheesy about
life rhythms, energies and all that, any one know what I mean?

Rita

[Adam Pugh]

Hi Rita, and all

That makes a lot of sense to me. It's the hand of the artist, I guess, isn't it, that's visible: almost a direct corollary with the sense of the light of the enlarger hitting the emulsion of the paper (in our case, I guess the light of the projector hitting the screen through the celluloid) that Barthes talks about, referencing Susan Sontag, as I think we touched on in the first session. Here, it's the hand of the artist which is visible in the lines: they in turn become at once the boundaries of the thing they are describing and a record - index, even - of the actions, gestures of the artist. That feels liberating in a sense, to me: the idea of a hidden or entirely subjective index, which of course is anathema to the idea of the index as we discussed it but because of that feels entirely subversive! A map of clouds; an atlas of emotion. Does that chime with what you were thinking about?

Thanks also for the quote from Lis Rhodes: a very useful one. The idea of sound as image; sound as material is an interesting one which we will touch on briefly in session 6 with Bruce McClure and which is also relevant to the practice of juergen reble and Thomas koener (amongst many others of course) which we'll also look at, in the next session (I think).

Looking forward to seeing you all again next week,
Adam

Sent from my phone