[-empyre-] rejection of visual semblance

[Christina McPhee <christinamcphee@yahoo.com>]

eugenie et empyre,,


glossing on eugenie's remarks about the spatial
differential in the 'anamorphic' space ...


> i had the chance to play semiomorph for a couple of
> hours whilst i was in
> sydney. apart from being a lovely, eerie little
> world, the game itself
> demonstrates something really interesting about
> semiotic morphism (and
> 'morphing' in general), and how it differs from my
> understanding of
> anamorphosis. 
> 
> semiomorph foregrounds the fissures - or
> 'interstices' (this was a popular
> word at plaything!) - between the underlying system
> and its representation,
> by drawing attention to shifts in 'external'
> representation: the form of the
> environment and the player is constantly shifting.
> the internal logic of the
> game, however - its 'internal' system - remains
> intact. in other words, even
> though one's immediate perception of the environment
> is quite unstable - and
> the constant shifts in perception are unsettling in
> themselves - the
> environment is consistently meaningful and legible
> to the player on a
> structural level - we don't have to 'relearn' a new
> system in order to find
> our way around. i think this is what mostly goes on
> in mods and machinimas
> though it's easy and pretty interesting to conceive
> of a mod that would
> totally destroy the internal logic of a game and
> make a familiar, legible
> environment completely disconcerting. can anybody
> think of examples of this
> sort of mod? 
> 
yes, but in the 'real world' space of fluxus
performance ...! or...
how about in the 'disconcerting' mood of
"counterstrike" of anne-marie schleiner et al? -- in
this case though space is not disconcerting rather
signage, sign-cues.
> my take on anamorphosis is slightly different: i'm
> interested in the point
> at which representations stop being meaningful.

like a dada moment in terms of spatial construction;
or cinematic 'drift'. 

> total systemic failure, if
> you like.

yes

( let's go back to holbein's ambassadors
> again. when you stand in
> front of the painting, the anamorphic skull is
> 'meaningless' if you try to
> fit it into the terms of the perspectival system
> that the rest of the
> picture invites the viewer to adopt. when you move
> to a point where the
> skull becomes legible, the rest of the image is
> meaningless. instead of
> shifting from one form of representation to another
> whilst maintaining the
> same underlying logic, the viewer moves between one
> (more or less) logical
> system and another.
> 

here is an interesting take on anamorphism from
photonics.com............
Definition:

A term used to denote a difference in magnification
along mutually perpendicular meridians. Anamorphic
systems are basically image-distorting systems, such
as those used in motion pictures, that compress a
scene laterally in the camera and expand it again on
projection. 
> dalia judovitz puts it a bit more elegantly than i
> do:
> "Whereas perspective represents an effort to
> rationalize and thereby
> normalize the visible, anamorphosis, on the
> contrary, represents a rejection
> of visual semblance, in favor of a schematism that
> deliberately distorts the
> visible. Unlike perspective, anamorphosis does not
> reduce forms to their
> visible outline. Rather, it distorts them through a
> process that projects
> them outside of themselves. ... Anamorphosis
> supplants the frontality of the
> visible, since the position of the viewing subject
> is now constituted
> outside the parameters that define visual
> semblance." jud66-7
> 
> anamorphosis, in other words, points up the
> simultaneous existence of
> multiple systems of subjectivity, not all of which
> are 'logical' and many of
> which aren't even socioculturally legible or
> quantifiable as such. ... Rez
> - the game i was talking
> about in my plaything paper - shows us something
> entirely different. as i
> argued, it actualizes exactly the same thing that
> holbein's picture does
> i.e. that subjectivity is multisensory and
> multistable.

so it appears that the anamorphic organizes the
perception of a dissolve and shift from one spatial
coordination to another within the body of the viewer.

> A term used to denote a difference in magnification
along mutually perpendicular meridians.

a situation that never pertains in the alberti
perspective system, wherein meridians are never
parallel, but rather, always emanate from, or to, the
viewer's position! so this is cool: can we say then
that somehow Rave goes outside the 3d imaging graphic
restrictions imposed by the usual spatial rhetoric of
the software ? could we say that it is similar to the
outward 'projecting' of cinema......as Dalia implies
in terms that could be applied to teh  cinematic
widescreen.....

in favor of a schematism that
> deliberately distorts the
> visible. Unlike perspective, anamorphosis does not
> reduce forms to their
> visible outline. Rather, it distorts them through a
> process that projects
> them outside of themselves.  

kinda like when you are sitting way too close to the
screen in the movies, like in the front seat.

but how does this happen in Rave Eugenie....have you
looked at ways the design goes outside the  usual 3d
cartesian mapping ?

very interesting possibilities here.

Christina



> eugenie
> 
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre


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