An Approach to Centers, by Jared Caldwell

In Kate Linker's Vito Acconci, Linker chronicles Acconci's early video works in the 1970's as “the notion of penetration and elision of boundaries”. Works such as Applications, Security Zone, and Untitled Piece for Pier 17 all deal with boundaries, how those boundaries are broken, who breaks them, and who fulfills the roles of the aggressor and the person in power versus the vulnerable person relinquishing power. One such work dealing with boundaries was Acconci's video work Centers.

At first glance, Centers seems to be quite simple. The footage shows a man from the chest up, with his finger pointing directly into the camera. Though this seems to be a simple action, there is significance in this motion. When taping this work, Acconci sets up a feedback system where he can see himself being recorded on camera. He then points to the monitor he sees his image on, which in turn points back at him and continues to record. He proceeds to point for twenty minutes.

Linker provides an excerpt quoting Acconci, describing his experience of the film:
Pointing at my own image on the video monitor...I keep narrowing my focus...The result (the TV image) turns the activity around: a pointing away from myself at an outside viewer—I end up widening my focus onto passing viewers. (I'm looking straight out by looking straight in).

In connection with the notion of penetration, Acconci is penetrating and breaking the boundaries of the viewer. Acconci is justified in performing this act because not only is he penetrating the space of the viewer, he is breaking his own boundaries as well. To quote Matthew 7:5, “...first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.” Acconci's actions are not hypocritical, because he is sharing with the viewer in this experience.

After a few minutes into the film, Acconci's arm starts to tire. His arm begins to waver, and his finger begins to move, forcing him to struggle with fatigue in his arm throughout the remainder of the film. Even though Acconci is breaking boundaries, he cannot maintain this form of control. One could draw similarities between Centers and the iconic Uncle Sam poster, pointing the finger to single out the viewer, unable to maintain control forever. It could also be said that the forces of gravity are the only elements in play here, but by judging the content with the aesthetics of the film, the length of time that Acconci struggles against gravity shows that the struggle was an intentional one to satisfy the the performance in the film.

Vito Acconci and his body of work is made up largely of performance art. These performances and experiments were able to be captured visually due to the introduction of video technology during this period. Though much more tame than other works dealing with other issues such as sexuality during this period, Centers is one of his many famous video-performance works, dealing both inward and outward with issues of control, vulnerability, and boundaries.

Thoughts on the Whitney's by Jared Caldwell

After the inception of visual music during the Dada era of the 1920's and 30's, other artists started to experiment with different ways in which sound could be translated into images. Two such artists were John Whitney and James Whitney. Dadaists such as Hans Richter and Viking Eggling composed works of visual music such as Symphony Diagonale through hand drawn or cutout animation. During the WWII and post-WWII era, the Whitney's created their own devices to compose their works. On the cusp of the computer age, the Whitney's used analogue and optical apparatuses to produce their films. What tools that didn't exist or weren't made readily available, the brother would create themselves. With the use of a pendulum to produce electronic tones, created by John, and an optical printer, the Whitney's were able to use light to “animate” their movies. These composed films are described by Brougher as “sound is image, and image is sound, with no fundamental difference”.

From the early 1950's onward, the Whitney brothers delved into studies and experiments on visual representations of music. During this time of a technological Renaissance, towards the end of and immediately following after WWII, mathematical patterns, eastern metaphysics, and atomic energy were a major influence on the Whitney's, and are prevalent throughout the Whitney's works.

In James Whitney's Lapis, light, color, movement, and sound are used to create the work. Considered by Rougher to be “[o]ne of the great visual-music works”, James uses a series of perforated index cards to filter a light source, onto which an optical printer (created by John) records the movements and patterns of the light to create Lapis. In the work, the images are reduced to their “most basic fundamental state—essentially [points] of light”. These particles of light, bearing semblance to representations of atomic particles, are placed into patterns and shift position, color, brightness and transparency compelled by sitar music. The symmetric shapes and highly saturated color schemes used in Lapis are influenced by mathematics and eastern culture. This blending of music, mathematics, energy, and metaphysics creates a web of “truths”, in “'an attempt to approximate mind forms'”. James thought that these particles and their behavior based on harmonic movements were a way of creating a head space in which to contemplate the cosmos.

The brothers are an example of what it truly means to be part of the avant-garde; the Whitney's were at the forefront of visual music from the 1950's onward. With the creation of original optical devices and electronic tone producers, the Whitney's were able to erect these apparatuses to create truly original works in ways that no other filmmakers working in visual music had before. Meshing together technology, art, eastern philosophies, mathematics, and light, the Whitney's facilitate an environment in their films to show energy and how it is interconnected with all of these elements within visual music.

Stan Brakhage

“Dog Star Man” is a reenactment of Brakhage's “artist”. In “Dog Star Man”, a bearded man and his dog are climbing up a dreary, snowy rock face with nothing more that an ax. The main character acts as an explorer, a conquerer even, as he climbs and chops his way up the mountain side. Parallels between the main character and the “artist” can be made; both are figurative trailblazers into the “fear” that Brakage claims blocks out “unlimited love”. The comparison could also be made between Brakhage and his “Dog Star Man” for the same reasons; Brakhage is an avant-garde filmmaker, forging a new path ahead for others to follow. “They create where fear before them has created the great necessity.” Through use of extreme cutting, dissolves, cross dissolves, and stock space footage, Brakhage creates a surreal, near hallucinogenic experience of one man's journey to travel through the “fear” and unknown towards some enlightenment or higher understanding.

“There is no need for the mind's eye to be deadened after infancy, yet in these times the development of visual understanding is almost universally forsaken.” Though “Window Water Baby Moving” may be considered too literal of an example, the philosophies in Brakhage's “Metaphors on Vision” mesh well with this work. The innocence of the child being born juxtaposed against the tainted eyes of Brakhage, Jane, and even the eye of the camera, can create a sense of empathy with the situation. Even though in today's society looking upon a woman in such detail during childbirth is considered taboo, Brakhage presents the birth in such a way that retains the credibility of the film rather than lowering the work into the realm of perversion. Though those who have lost that innocence of a child “can never go back, not even in imagination”, the immodest images in the film shows the reality and the joy of an innocent child coming into the world. Brakhage's exposure of the birth goes to such great lengths, that even Jane's genitalia are shaved so that the viewer can see even more detail of the birth. These images are not presented to offend, but rather to contradict the notion that what we see with our “prejudiced eyes” is anything but innocent.

Stan Brakhage was a visionary, and seemed to place his philosophies into his films. Not only do his characters forge their own paths into their own unexplored territories, Brakhage does as well by making these avant-garde films. Even though Brakhage's own eyes and his camera are not “innocent”, they beckon the audience to follow them on their journey to find that innocence again. Though Brakhage even states that no person can “go back”, the gesture towards this innocence is made worthy through these journey's that Brakhage creates, leaving a path for others to follow.

Sitney and Meshes of the Afternoon, by Jared Caldwell

Meshes of the Afternoon, a short film depicting one woman's journey within the context of a dream, is one of the first films to further explore where Buñuel and Dali left off within the surrealist movement at the end of the 20's. Though Meshes shares element with multiple styles, the film most closely resembles surrealism. P. Adam Sitney disagrees that Meshes of the Afternoon is a surrealist film because of the lack of the “standard function of dividing imagination from reality”. Instead of separating fantasy from reality, Meshes contains a double ending: one of which she shatters the mirror while in her dream state, the other with her throat slit with shards of glass.

Sitney considers Meshes of the Afternoon to be more of a personal trance film. Elements of the typical trance film are in scenes of Meshes; though the entire film takes place in or around a small condominium, the different parts of the house are presented in exotic ways to provide a pseudo landscape for the protagonist to travel through. Also, the protagonist “passes invisibly among people” due to the dream state she is in. These elements, along with the internal struggle the main character and the “quest for sexual identity” can also classify Meshes as a psycho-drama. “'This film is concerned with the interior experiences of an individual. It does no record an event which could be witnessed by other persons.'” Even though much of Meshes of the Afternoon is shot from a third person perspective, the internal and subconscious are shown externally through the dream. Daren used “a number of montage illusions which created spatial elisions or temporal ellipses for the sake of the psychological reality which informed their vision”. The way that Maya's character seems to almost float and dance around the house also adds to this feeling of some dream state. The use of dreams, montage, and the journey and struggle of the protagonist combine to create a unique perspective on the trance film.

For nearly the entire movie, a detailed dream sequence is used to illustrate the protagonists journey. The importance of dreams, a notion inspired by Freud, is heavily underlined in Meshes of the Afternoon. “The film-makers have observed with accuracy the way in which the events and objects of the day become potent, then transfigured, in dream as well as the way in which the dreamer may realize that he dreams and may dream that he awakes.” The use of the double person (or in the case of Meshes, the triple person), another element of Freudian thought, is shown during the dream sequence as the protagonist dreams of waking, spawning another clone of herself, and repeating the process.

Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon is an important film because this film started up a resurgence of thought in the direction of Dali and Buñuel amidst a smattering of “expressionistic, impressionistic, and realistic films” shown over a ten year hiatus. Meshes explores the subconscious through the use of dreams and symbols. As the protagonist delves into herself through these dreams, what she creates inside of her “dream world” is so powerful, she causes events to occur in reality. The power of dreams and the subconscious in this trance film, although it does not fit perfectly into any mold, is kosher with the thoughts and ideals of both the surrealist and Freudian “vehicles”, creating this work of the interior experience as opposed to the outward.

Music for the Deaf, by Jared Caldwell

By 1924, Viking Eggeling had completed what most consider his masterpiece: Diagonale Symphonie, or “Diagonal Symphony”. Diagonale Symphonie is a black and white film created solely out of linear animated lines and curves. This “symphony” of line movement creates what some consider to be “visual music”. Diagonale Symphonie is one of the first in a wave of Dada films that uses abstract animation through film to capture a symphony of music through visual means.

Eggeling, originally a painter, committed most of his life's research to the “theory of art based on a language of linear forms”. He would take elements found in nature, such as rocks, grass, trees, and the sky, and distill their forms into basic geometric shapes. Eggeling used these basic derived elements of nature to create a kind of pictorial language through abstraction. His research became a progression of using these elements with the “notion of counterpoint of linear elements”. The pictorial “language” he created juxtaposed with elements with opposite meaning (i.e. Large to small, few to many, increasing to decreasing), formed a “'creative marriage of contrast and analogy'”. The use of counterpoint within these linear hieroglyphs were intended to create expression. The final element to achieve in Eggeling's work was the sense of temporality.

In Diagonale Symphonie, Viking Eggeling brings his paintings and drawings to life in animated sequences. “One motif follows another, each presented with the diagrammatic clarity of a blackboard drawing, all arranged along a diagonal axis.” Eggeling takes his pictorial language of lines and curves and presents them in a way to convey rhythm, contrast, temporality, and counterpoint. The pictographs and gestures start of small, slow, and simple; then, the rhythm picks up, and the images and gestures become more exaggerated. These gestures compose a song and dance of sorts with these “curves and straight lines [that] sprout and retract in a regular rhythm, one answering the other”.

According to Richter, both he and Eggeling believed that “'music became the model...every action produces a corresponding reaction”. The thought of counterpoint is well integrated into music. The gestures of counterpoint in Diagonale Symphonie, along with rhythm, create the sense of visual music. A musical structure is solidly in place. A beat or pulse is created by the rhythm of the movement of the pictographs. Crescendo, decrescendo, and accents can be seen with the ebb and flow of the counterpoint gestures. Legato and staccato are composed by the duration of the images in the film. One can experience a visual symphony without the use of any music.

Diagonale Symphonie is an important venture into the realm of avant-garde filmmaking. Not only is Diagonale Symphonie constructed in a way completely different from the normal conventions of film, other genre's such as painting and music are incorporated to create a meaningful visual experience. Diagonale Symphonie is an atypical approach to filmmaking and succeeds in creating music through a visual symphony.

Manhatta and The Avant-Garde Cinema, by Jared Caldwell

In Germaine Dulac's The Avant-Garde Cinema, the term avant-garde is used to describe “any film whose technique, employed with a view to a renewed expressiveness of image and sound, breaks with established traditions to search out, in the strictly visual an auditory realm, new emotional chords” (Dulac 43). Though Manhatta breaks a few of Dulac's “proofs” of pure cinema, Manhatta in spirit and mostly in form meets the ideas of avant-garde filmmaking presented by Dulac.

According to Dulac, an avant-garde film “considers nothing else” but art, unlike commercial cinema that seeks a monetary profit. Towards the beginning of its inception, the cinema went into the direction of “literature”, or narrative. Film was simply another means of communicating ideas in the same form. Most films were fictional stories, represented by the cinema in almost the same way a play would be represented, had it been recorded on film. Dulac speaks of three considerations essential to the cinema as a whole: movement, rhythm, and life. Dulac uses this quote: “'To strip the cinema of all those elements which did not properly belong to it, to find its true essence in the understanding of movement and visual values: this was the new aesthetic that appeared in the light of a new dawn'”. With these narrative films, the cinema was only mimicking other existing arts in a visual way. Dulac suggests that the film medium be used in ways separate from the other arts.

Manhatta, a short film collaboration between Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand, is a film that meets most of Dulac's pure cinema “proofs”. Proof number one states “that the expression of a movement depends on its rhythm”. In Manhatta, the rhythm of machines, workers, and the crowds of the city move the film along. The constant inclusion of steam throughout the city creates a kind of visual pedal to drive the film. Proof two comments “that the rhythm in itself and the development of a movement constitute the two perceptual and emotional elements which are the bases of the dramaturgy of the screen”. Manhatta holds this to be true as well. Manhatta starts off with a water sequence, which then segways into the landing of the barge filled with people. The flow of people move into a different piece with workers and machines, and the film continues this flow of continuity driven by movement and rhythm. The focus in Manhatta is real life. Manhatta's documentary style also captures the people in their surroundings, which is made apparent by scenes of water, the surrounding city, and the relationship nature has with the people.

The main proof that Manhatta does not follow is ”that the cinematic work must reject every aesthetic principle which does not properly belong to it and seek out its own aesthetic in contributions of the visual”. Manhatta does not solely use visual elements to progress the film. Music is used in Manhatta, and a poem by Walt Whitman is inter cut into the film. Though these elements are in Manhatta, it seems as if the written poem is used as a contrast to the visual aspects of the film. It is as if the poem is just made up of bland words compared to the powerful tableaux and imagery used throughout the visual components of the film. Even though these elements do not meet Dulac's standards for “pure cinema”, it is as if Manhatta is arguing the case that “pure cinema” is all that is needed, and that the written word in film does not have the meaning that the image has. Though Manhatta does not meet all of Dulac's criteria, Manhatta at heart contains the spirit of true cinema.