For this short video:
The sound changes as you drag your mouse/pointer/cursor from one frame to the next.1. Each video is approximately the same duration--there is about a one + second difference in length between them. Hence, because they loop, the nature of the slpit screen changes a little bit each time through, creating some strange juxtapostions. This raises an interesting question about intentionality: about the third or fourth time through the loop, it looks as if there is some conscious design to how the images on both screens are matching up. What is intention when the loop itself determines the juxtapositon of images? In what sense does the interface itself determine meaning? Can the code have or express intention?
2. The clips on the left frame run forwards, while the clips on the right run backwards. In Christopher Nolan's Memento, the film in the opening sequence actually plays in reverse. Then--even though each sequence goes back deeper into time--the actual events unfold in forward-moving time. But what would have happened if Nolan had preserved the reverse-moving time of the opening sequence throughout the movie? (Well, it would have messed with the dialogue, for one thing.) Near the middle of the video, I thought it would be good to re-align and synchronize one of the clips, so in both videos, the "alley" sequence plays in reverse.
3. In Cinema 2: The Time-Image, Gilles Deleuze explored the differences between what a character sees and what the camera sees. In certain films, he claimed, this distinction breaks down: "Objective and subjective images lose their distinction, but also their identification, in favour of a new circuit where they are wholly replaced, or contaminate each other, or are decomposed and recomposed" (149). Although the video I've posted here is a poor example, I was interested in what really "happens" to a character as opposed to the way that character remembers events happening. The rhizome apparatus would allow for an interesting experiment in this--with both versions unfolding side by side. It would certainly allow for representing the elasticity of subjective time: an event that lasted only 30 seconds in "real time" could be rendered on the left-hand screen, while the right-hand screen could show the character's prolongued memory-version of the event. I'm working on this now for a future posting.
As for now, here is the initial experiment. (Again, depending on your system, you might have to let the video play through once [about one minute] before the sound kicks in properly.)
In Her City rhizomeOne.mov (4.4K)
P.S. Looking forward to Stu's movie meme....
Comments