Re: from Tim Murray (Re: [-empyre-] Holbein thread)

[<magesm@mesanetworks.net>]

Thank you, Eugenie, for bring anamorphosis into the discussion of
"embodied vision."  I'm very excited by your interest in linking digital
aesthetics to the shifting viewing perspectives in The Ambassadors and
related examples. Curiously I've just written something about this a text
on what I call the "digital baroque." The gist of the argument goes back
to corollary reflections I've made on the role of the anamorphic shift in
contemporary film and performance as well (we're similar in that I have
training as an early modern specialist and my first article was on
anamorphis and Perraut's version of Cinderella ("A Marvelous Guide to
Anamorphosis:  Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufle de verre," MLN, 91, No. 6
(December, 1976), 1276-95)! .  You might be interested in the exciting
similarity between your summary of embodied (anamorphic) vision and
something I wrote in my book, Drama Trauma (Routledge 1997) when comparing
the figuration of sight in The Ambassadors to an early performance of
Orlan at the Louvre in 1978: "The Ambassadors ... suggests that the
ultimate strength of performance lies in the play of perspectives
sensitizing spectators to the choices framing their own libidinal and
ideological representation of aesthetic objects.  In moving their bodies
to enact the perspectival options of The Ambassadors, the viewers transfer
art from canvas to spectatorial and performative space, thus realizing the
side- and split-visions of aesthetic oscillation.  The end here is not to
present a sanitized image of the art of colonialization, but rather to
provide memory traces of the differences enacted by visual immmigration
and its supplementary libidinal and material vanishings."  My sense is
that such immigration and its embodied visions is enhanced by the digital
framework in which the viewer not only shifts corporally (whether through
eye or touch) with the oscillating perspectives of digital environments.  
The digital user now almost literally incorporates the interface of
anamorphosis itself to become the site of spit-vision.  Since we seem to
share similar formal and historical interests, I'd love to pursue the
early modern context of this discussion with you in another venue, since
this might not fall within the borders of your empyre charge.


Best,

Tim Murray

>   vince.dziekan@artdes.monash.edu.au
>Friday, 3 October
>HI.
>Sorry, don't want to jump in or preempt Eugenie's response, but I'd
>recommend you check out:
>
>Author:Baltrusaitis, Jurgis, 1903-
>Title:Anamorphic art / by Jurgis Baltrusaitis ; translated by W. J.
>Strachan.
>Publisher:Cambridge [Eng.] : Chadwyck-Healey, 1977.
>
>The idea of Renaissance, Cartesian Perspectivism containing this
>'alternative' within it is an interesting position to think about (the
>application of perspective as a technique can be considered equally "right"
>whether using it to form or inversely to deform. Somewhere along the way,
>one of those positions has become "right" and the other deemed "wrong").
>Looking at this in this way, does this sort of soften the borders between
>the "discursive" and the "material", as indicated in an initial observation:
>
>
>I've just read troy's first post and it looks - interestingly - as though
>>  we're approaching the issue of anamorphism from two distinct angles - the
>>  discursive (troy) and the material (myself).
>
>Thoughts?
>Cheers.
>Vince
>(ps. I'm a colleague of Troy's  in the dept of Multimedia & Digital Arts at
>Monash --- so thought I'd better put in my two cents worth...)
>
>
>
>Alan Sondheim wrote:
>
>Can you say more about Holbein's scheme? It's almost as if his painting
>devours architecture and the situated body. Did he do other such work? Why
>was this brilliance abandoned, if it was? Could his other work contain
>secret geometries? (I realize not, but want to speculate.)
>
>It reminds me, what you're saying, of the multiply perceived painting of
>Kuo Hsi -
>
>Alan
>
>On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, eugenie wrote:
>
>
>hi all,
>
>big thank you to christina, melinda, michael and jim for inviting me to
>participate in this month's discussion.
>
>I've just read troy's first post and it looks - interestingly - as though
>we're approaching the issue of anamorphism from two distinct angles - the
>discursive (troy) and the material (myself). my interest in anamorphosis is
>historically based - I arrived in the digital realm by the somewhat
>roundabout route of c18th landscape aesthetics - so I'm going to begin by
>giving a bit of historical background.
>
>anamorphosis, for me, is a way of approaching the issue of Oembodied
>vision'. the argument is simple and probably highly self evident to most of
>you posting to this list - vision and thought issue from an active body
>rather than a disembodied eye - but it's also one that western philosophy
>has traditionally had a great deal of trouble accepting.
>
>Hans Holbein's Ambassadors (1533) is a well-known example of an anamorphic
>picture and an excellent demonstration of the way that so called Orational
>perception' has always involved more than just the perspectival eye/I.  The
>vanishing point and Ocorrect' viewing position in Holbein's picture are
>clearly indicated by the precise rendering of the various perspectival
>objects in the image. Looking from this position, the anamorphic skull in
>the foreground appears as nothing more than a meaningless shape. In order to
>see it properly, the viewer has to approach the painting and look obliquely,
>from a position on the right, about halfway up the frame.
>
>Viewing Holbein's picture was a sort of play in two acts. Holbein was quite
>specific about the manner in which the picture should be hung: in a room
>with two doors, each one corresponding to one of the picture's two viewing
>positions. In the first act, the viewer enters the room and sees the picture
>from the Ocorrect' point of view. Captivated by the realism of the painted
>scene, the viewer is also perplexed by the indecipherable object at the
>bottom of the picture. Leaving by the second door, the disconcerted viewer
>casts a brief backward glance at the painting, and it is at this point that
>the strange object resolves itself into an image.
>
>Traditional theories of representation have paid a lot of attention to the
>way the viewer is constructed as/at the Ocorrect' point of view - i.e. as a
>distanced, disembodied, monocular eye. they have had much less to say about
>the transient state(s) between points of view - what I'm calling the
>Oanamorphic moment'. Holbein's picture calls attention to those moments in
>the event of seeing where the viewer exceeds the Cartesianesque
>configuration of the disembodied eye. It foregrounds the subject in its
>environmental sense: a mobile, embodied agent that acts in the real world of
>objects. As a concept of transformation, then, anamorphosis allows us to
>understand subjectivity as a Odynamic' condition, a matter of a constantly
>changing body schema rather than a fixed body image. Holbein's little
>theatre of representation, in other words, has a lot to tell us about the
>way we interface with virtual environments in the present dayS and this is
>where it links up to my current interest in videogames, and affect, and the
>way that we traditionally understand the history of virtuality.
>
>wow, I've run on and on. I'll leave it there for now.
>
>bests
>eugenie
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>empyre forum
>empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
>
>http://www.asondheim.org/ http://www.asondheim.org/portal/
>http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
>Trace projects http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
>finger sondheim@panix.com
>_______________________________________________
>empyre forum
>empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>empyre forum
>empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>http://www.subtle.net/empyre


-- 
Timothy Murray
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
Director of Graduate Studies in Film and Video
Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
Co-Curator, CTHEORY Multimedia: http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu
247 Goldwin Smith Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York  14853

office: 607-255-4012
e-mail: tcm1@cornell.edu