I make pictures where the space of the picture is really flat, but you think it isnt at first. It looks like it has some depth -- maybe not much, but some -- but then you see something else that forces you to change how you thought about the space, and then you realize it wasnt at all the way it looked at first. You cant do that with real pictures, ones made that try to be like reality. The Japanese try to build rock gardens that make you rethink arrangements with your memory, but it just isnt the same as a picture. Their idea of ma I like. Its about the way our memory of what weve seen shapes our understanding of what were seeing now. Thats what they try to show with their rock gardens.
My pictures dont use their idea of ma but its related to what I do. I dont know a word that describes what I do very well. Liquid Perspective was suggested by a friend of mine, and I like that idea too. The perspective just flows around the picture and you get carried with it.
Realism is something distinct from narrative, from the way the film events develop, but at the same time it is a mode by which they are revealed -- thus, even for films which are not-realist, they will still find themselves following the same hieratical structure of photography/editing/development (action) that realism follows.
Formal aspects of the film material -- frame lines, tape splices, dirt, fingerprints etc. -- have been claimed by some filmmakers as the only way to make film pure. Often these arguments for purity proceed from the basic idea that the material of film, the base which supports the emulsion, is the basic aspect of what film is. Such arguments are based on the idea that the projection is separate from the film, separable from the film. But when we consider what it is that makes our experience of film different from sculpture or painting, we realize that this experience is based around the projection of a film and its development within the duration of that projection.
while all motion is an effect of a strobing light, the strobe movie is a movie
where the image is actually printed onto the screen (rather than being a
separate object) and the light source is simply a strobe
physical design of image used is a significant factor in the
activation through strobing
[Statics Folio 3: Village to City is a collection of strobe movies]
large-scale prints lit by strobe light, tuned to the most effective frame rate
(will be some variability from person to person)
best effects produced when light is above rather than below the image
(angle of reflection = angle of inflection)
