From: Tom B Whiteside (email suppressed)
Date: Fri Dec 04 2009 - 10:03:12 PST
It is interesting to think of "sensory overload" at this point. For a long
period of time probably any kind of frame-by-frame or other super rapid
editing would have qualified, but now a film like Brakhage's "Garden of
Earthly Delights" is simply lovely. It is hyperactive but it does not
"overload." Perhaps now this is actually kind of relaxing, the rapidity
becomes a pleasantly "buzzing" visual experience. (I realize this is
debatable.) Same might be said for the music of Conlon Nancarrow, among
others.
If you think about, the first simple edits probably qualified as "sensory
overload" 100 or so years ago - how did that picture that I was looking at
suddenly change into a different picture? I can imagine that after
centuries of looking at paintings, and decades of looking at still
photographs, the brutal visual violence of those first cuts was just TOO
MUCH for many people - the senses could not take it. Throughout the 20th
century rapidity of editing was a hallmark of modernity - what does the
postmodern era bring?
The Nervous System projections by Ken Jacobs are sensory overload, in my
experience, in that watching them makes me kind of hallucinate, and they
take me out of time. My senses don't operate in their normal manner during
that show (and for a while afterwards!)
How would the "single image, single frame" films play if they were made
and watched at 50fps? 125fps? Who wants to build that machine?
- Tom Whiteside
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