In Search of a Poetics of the Spatialization of the Moving Image, 3

I am very impressed with Marc and Lev's exchange
regarding the Poetics of the Spatialization of the
Moving Image. Very briefly, I'd like to add a few
ideas.

In trying to differientiate between traditional
cinemagraphic montage and the new possibilities
(which, I think Marc is saying are actually very old
possibilities) of the spatialization of the moving
image, it might be useful for a moment to think in
terms of architectural practice.

Hitchcock as example - then defining terms:

In addition to constructing the narrative, the
sight-lines and camera angles of Hitchcock's films
seem to create an architecture of power relations;
both between the characters and between the audience
and the directed point of interest on the screen.

This idea has been written about by many people - so I
will skip right to what interests me about this; if
these sight-lines and shot-assembly constitute an
architectural practice, then what is the "space" that
is created?

In my opinion, three types of space are created: and
they overlay easily into the, also much written about,
categories of the real, the actual and the virtual. It
is possible that other readers will disagree with my
defining of these three type of spaces here, none the
less, I hope it won't be too distracting to use these
definitions for the moment.

Real, Actual, Virtual:

In the architectual practice of cinematography, the
space of the real would be the illusionistic, depicted
space of the setting of the scene (inside a room,
inside a courtyard, alongside a country road, etc).

The space of the actual splits in half - the first is
the actual location of shoot (where props, people,
backdrops, staging, etc. were filmed and also are on
occasion, altered, moved, or faked as necessary to
create the image - even to go as far as to create
elements digitally that do not exist - or even to
create the entire film digitially with no actual
photographic element). The second is the actual space
of the viewer's environment while viewing - sitting in
the theatre, at home in front of the TV, at a
black-box gallery, inside of an elaborate media art
installation…).

Finally, the space of the virtual, which I think is
the area that Marc is most interested in - is the
overlay that is generated by the real and the actual,
but exists only as generated in the minds of the
viewer through the process of imaginary construction.

We construct in our minds the space defined by the
master, two, ECU, and reverse shots. We construct in
our minds the architectual "program" of the sequence
of shots. We generate connections to past ideas
recently witnessed within the project we are viewing -
as well as connections back to associated ideas from
our own more distant memory.

So what would the goal of this program be, as applied
to the poetics of the spatialization of the moving
image? I believe it is towards an art practice where
the final medium is memory.

What else do we have? We have only memory and
exchange. If all thought can exist only as memory
(even the most immediate thoughts or experiences we
have can only be formed through the construction of
memory - as nothing can exist in the ever-receding
now-moment, but must be pushed out by the next
now-moment), and if memory is both a specific and a
cumulative construction, then all thought and all art
is a result of past experiences combined with the
near-immediate re-configuration of these experiences.

The poetics of the spatialization of the moving image
seem to be in service of this near-immediate
re-configuration. The black-box video gallery,
theatical cinematic apparartus, or elaborate video
installation, all seem crafted towards creating a
environment where the re-configuration can have
maximum effect.

The most successful installations, for me, give value
to the process of imaginative construction, and
respect and exploit the brain's ability to create
robust and highly personal mental images and ideas in
association to what is being seen in the actual space.
Game designer Will Wright calls the brain "the most
powerful graphics rendering device" - and I think he
is right on when reccommending that the most
compelling images are the ones that can somehow
trigger this renderer and employ it's power to do the
bulk of the work.

Images that try to replace the mental renderer often
feel impoverished. Personally, it is only recently
that I have begun to understand that a camera can do
both - both depict and trigger.

This is where I believe that the spatialization of the
moving image differs from the cinematic apparatus of a
movie theatre or even watching a video at home: the
place in which the moving image is presented is
crafted within the specific architectual program and
artistic practice of constructing memory, generated,
in in a state of perpetual near-completion, on the
most powerful rendering device in the world.








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