Re: [-empyre-] PATINAGE and TURNBABY by Babel

[Simon Biggs <simon@littlepig.org.uk>]

I was thinking more in the tradition of European (especially Eastern)
practice from the 50's through to the 80's. It was not my intention to bring
up what in German is called "trick-film" (in English translating originally
to mechnically based special effects but later to encompass computer
graphics and the like).

I would question whether there is a viable thing called the "virtual".

Gertie though was indeed ground breaking.

Best

Simon


On 06.03.05 16:01, "Barbara Lattanzi" <threads@wildernesspuppets.net> wrote:

> Yes.  I agree it would be useful to consider.  Already mentioned the "trick
> cinema" of "Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show".  But similar desire to
> transgress the boundary between the virtual and the physical occurs in the
> animation of Winsor McKay, e.g., "Gertie the Dinosaur" (1914).
> 
> (Note that by saying this, I am not trying to anticipate and reduce what
> surprises will be found by anyone latching onto your suggestion.  I would
> rather understand you to mean that we could be genuinely surprised in what
> directions of practice that this would take us.)
> 
> There are also parallel traditions that continued into the 20th century
> that date centuries earlier such as described in Victor Mair's book on
> Chinese picture recitation and related cultural practices in India, the
> Middle East, and Europe, titled "Painting and Performance" (published
> 1988).   Mair follows a thread of similarity among these practices in how
> they mediate for an audience the expository description/reading of picture
> scrolls.  The emphasis is not on the pictures as illustration, but as
> central "prop" - an interface, if you will, to transformational experience.
> 
> Barbara
> 
> --------------------------------
> Barbara Lattanzi
> www.wildernesspuppet.net
> 
> C-SPAN x 4
> www.wildernesspuppets.net/yarns/annotate/cspanx4.html
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> Best
>> 
>> Simon
>> 
>> 
>> On 05.03.05 22:21, "Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Here are two works of interactive video for the Net by Canada's Babel (aka
>>> Chris Joseph). These are done in Flash.
>>> 
>>> PATINAGE
>>> http://rhizome.org/artbase/14049
>>> 
>>> TURNBABY
>>> http://rhizome.org/artbase/6614
>>> 
>>> These pieces are part of a touring exhibition organized by Paul St. George,
>>> among others. Paul says of the exhibition (and about the forthcoming book
>>> about the exhibition):
>>> 
>>> "I see chronophotography as an attempt to gain understanding of time,
>> space,
>>> movement and duration through sequences of images. I do not see
>>> chronophotography as primitive or prototypical cinema but as something very
>>> different and perhaps antonymic to cinema. Typically, Cinema would display
>>> the sequence of images very quickly one after another and in doing so hides
>>> its facture and creates an illusion of movement. I selected the work in the
>>> current show because of its continuation of many of the
>> chronophotographer's
>>> aims as if these had not been diverted by cinema.
>>> 
>>> The exhibition aims to answer two questions. Can we gain insights into the
>>> use of sequential images in contemporary digital art by re-examining
>>> chronophotography and 'pre-cinema'? Do we gain a better understanding of
>>> chronophotography and 'pre-cinema' by re-assessing their histories from the
>>> perspective of contemporary art?"
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Simon Biggs
>> simon@littlepig.org.uk
>> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>> 
>> Professor, Fine Art, Art and Design Research Centre
>> Sheffield Hallam University, UK
>> http://www.shu.ac.uk/schools/cs/cri/adrc/research2/
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
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Simon Biggs
simon@littlepig.org.uk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk/

Professor, Fine Art, Art and Design Research Centre
Sheffield Hallam University, UK
http://www.shu.ac.uk/schools/cs/cri/adrc/research2/