From: Jay Hudson (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Feb 08 2010 - 21:10:31 PST
My understanding was that ESC was to be shown as an installation, with two projectors, the images on top of one another. I only have seen it theatrically, where I found it very difficult to watch. In an installation, the viewer has an ability to turn away more readily
--- On Mon, 2/8/10, D. Mark Andrews <email suppressed> wrote:
> From: D. Mark Andrews <email suppressed>
> Subject: Re: Sharits and epilepsy
> To: email suppressed
> Date: Monday, February 8, 2010, 11:26 PM
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Chuck,
>
> Novice
> experimental filmmaker here, a trauma/emergency nurse by
> day. My professional,
> work-related interests are primarily neuroscience based. My
> artistic interests
> revolve around the intersection of early medicine and
> photography.
>
> I can
> not offer any specific information regarding your question,
> but have always
> found Sharits' work fascinating and found the
> positioning of ESC around
> photosensitive epilepsy odd since it is a particularly rare
> affliction.
> Essentially universal, however, is the Bucha
> effect--nausea, vomiting,
> disorientation, etc caused by overlapping images at a rate
> similar to human
> brain waves. This is caused even when the eyes are closed
> since our eyelids
> don't close completely and are translucent. First
> discovered/documented
> widely in the 50s, I've always wondered if Sharits
> was aware of it. I read
> most of his work structurally from the 70s within this
> context. Shutter
> interface in particular seems to me more rich than ESC
> since it is nearly
> identical to devices used to evoke pre-seizure brain
> activity in patients--this
> of course could be entirely
> coincidental.
>
> I once
> took care of a 20 y/o male who had a seizure while his
> mother was driving across
> the Bay Bridge from San Francisco to Berkeley. The sun was
> reflecting off the
> water at an intense level, but was punctuated by the
> pillars of the bridge. This
> light/dark effect brought on nausea first then full on
> disorientation. As his
> symptoms became worse his mother started driving faster
> which only exacerbated
> the effect which lead to a full blown tonic-clonic
> seizure.
>
> I've
> only completed one film, but it is titled, Ictus. It is
> part of a trilogy, the
> other two are called Prodomo and Postictus--all are
> references to the stages of
> seizures. If interested, your colleague can see a short
> clip on my website www.studioobscura.com
> under the "states"
> section.
>
> Again,
> I'm a novice here and this may already be discussed in
> the academic literature,
> but Sharitis' work strikes me as being aware of the
> fact that the pupil is not a
> dissectible portion of the eye, but a photosensitive
> element created by the
> structure of the eye.
>
> Mark
>
>
>
> -----Original
> Message-----
> From: Chuck Kleinhans
> [mailto:email suppressed]
> Sent: Monday, February 08, 2010
> 12:11 PM
> To: email suppressed
> Subject: Sharits
> and epilepsy
>
> A colleague asked me:
>
>
>
>
> I'm teaching my medicine seminar and
> I have a student
> interested in the intersection of experimental film and
> photosensitive
> epilepsy. He specifically asked me if I knew anything
> that has been written
> about Sharits' Epileptic Seizure Comparison
> from the
> 1970s.
>
> Anybody out there know anything on the
> subject?
>
>
> Chuck Kleinhans
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info
> on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at
> <email suppressed>.
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at
> <email suppressed>.
>
>
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.