Cine-Machine as Method: Conclusion
As the kaleidoscope initially showed, the built-in algorithms of filmmakers mean that there are certain appearances that we can show our world with, while there are others that they cannot show. Their possibilities of appearance may seem endless and seductive, but we must keep in mind that the extension of reality that these motives offer us is at the same time obscuring the deficiencies of the machine. For example. when Beck's DVS amazes us with water-like beauty but can't draw a circle. Or when Whitney's Arabesque program can calculate 360 points in a split second, but is bound by geometric laws.
However, motifs alone cannot delineate a film machine, because as we saw in the analysis of the motifs, film machines can also imitate each other, and thus a sign is not necessarily exclusive to one practice. In contrast, the algorithm model lets us understand that we can consider not only the film machine as the sum of some motifs, but also as the union of motifs. Namely, in the algorithm, they are systematized by virtue of their causal inputs and parameters, and this leads to the algorithm not only producing images but also latently animating them as it dictates the kinetic behavior of an appearance, e.g. in the form of movement, transformation and variation possibilities.
The algorithm in 5 film machines
One of the interesting results of using the concept of algorithm is that the identification of a filmmaker's algorithm builds an isomorphic relation with the other filmmakers. It is obvious to apply the I / O model to geometric equations such as Whitney's Arabesque, but also in less obvious contexts the difference between input, parameter and output contributes with new thought paths. Gasparcolor's three strips can be understood as inputs, and with this observation Rainbow Dance is similar to an algorithmic exploration of the technique. The optical printer has also provided inputs in the form of the strips that are copied, but here a problem with the parameter concept causes us to distinguish more sharply between the appearances (wipes, multi-exposure, split screen, slow-motion, etc.) from the actual parameters that are, so to speak, the "buttons" on the machine, ie matte, exposure, sequencer, etc.
The application of the model to the projector-and-strip machine in direct film requires a more abstract interpretation of the concept, since the parameters here may be the optical predicates that the animation fabric (e.g. paint) is applied to resemble. Here, the rapid pace of the projector contributes to us perceptually primarily perceiving the predicates and not their carrying objects, and it opened to an algorithmic interpretation of Lye's A Color Box, where he varies the basic technical motifs by crossing and merging their predicative association chains.
Finally, the model was also used on Beck's Direct Video Synthesizer, although this complex film machine is poorly represented through an overall I / O model, for example. does not take into account the possible patches or the more precise interaction between the modules. However, we can see how both VtP's propensity for symmetry and Beck's oscillator inputs have promoted motifs and movement patterns in the work. The mixer has promoted additive as well as parametric-programmed color mixing, which also contributes to new movement patterns, e.g. in the form of the yin-yang motif. And finally, the video feedback allowed the dots to transform with its cybernetic system.
The 6 motifs
At the same time, the use of the algorithm model to compare and map the processed filmmakers has given some clarity on how filmmakers imitate each other and how to treat this genealogy. The most important points here are to distinguish between input and parameter, to distinguish between parameter and appearance, and between the appearance itself and its function in the work.
This genealogical approach to the filmmakers can be seen as a systematization of the observations brought about by the study of the six leads. Common to these motives is that everyone can be observed in two or more of the film machines treated here. We can even show that their presence in the specific works is a trace of the used film machines, either as a symbol, a conveyance or an algorithmic necessity. But at the same time, they present us with an art-historical problem, because they also occur across film machines and environments. So how can we determine whether they are motivated by the film machine used (similar to a material-technological approach) or by the film history (a hermeneutic-iconographic approach).
We found the dot in three movie environments. In all cases, it had a symbolic character feature, referring to the Arabesque digital pixel, the emulsion film's perforation in A Color Box, and the TV screen's grid lines in Illuminated Music. The similar phenomenon is thus charged with different meanings depending on the context of the environment. In A Color Box it is not the actual strip perforation we see, and the appearance is thus symbolic. In Arabesque, the dot, in contrast, is the pixel of the computer screen, which reflects that Whitney's algorithm calculates the screen in geometric points. Here is the dot computer's discrete minority that lets the circle pixelate and dissolve it into Arabesque's running points. Faced with this, Beck's dot appears as a unit that is both a building block, for example. in TV flicker, but which also in itself contains a flicker. That reality is not the digital discrete, but the analog divisibility of the video signal and the underlying vibrating alternating voltage.
We found the gap from symmetry at Beck, but it was previously made on optical printers, among other things. in Pat O'Neill's 7362. In DVS, the subject is carried by the center reference signal of the VtP module, which is fundamental to the imaging of this synthesizer. The motif is found in Illuminated Music, e.g. where it divides the screen into bilateral symmetry. Beck, however, chooses to let these occur along with false instances of the gulf, which seek to camouflage the distinction between natural and unnatural occurrences. In this, his use differs from O'Neill's use of symmetry as an abstraction strategy. O'Neill's use of the prominence for abstraction seems, in 7362, to be promoted by the optical printer because he uses the effect in interaction with other of the printer's abstracting features, notably multi-exposure and colorful solarization. Later, in the digital environment, the gap has also found a popular spread in the form of "mirror effect" in Apple's PhotoBooth program.
The wave is a central motif, both in Lye's A Color Box and at Beck. At Lye, the subject is a variation of the strip, which is an applied revitalization in direct film that confronts the viewer with the reality of the strip as it runs vertically through the projector. As Lye deflects the continuous line to make it wave, he revitalizes another aspect of the projector, namely that it engages the continuous film strip in successive frames. At the same time, the wave creates another appearance where the line appears to vibrate on the spot. As a result, the arrangement of paint on the strip is not only based on static optical predicates, but also creates new forms of motion. In comparison, the wave at Beck is almost opposite to Lye's frantic fragmentation. Beck's waves are calm and stable in the image, and they serve as demonstrations of the VtP module's ability to translate the oscillator signal from rolling, horizontal lines to graphical waves reminiscent of the oscilloscope's screen. Their propensity to wave only vertically is due to advances in the horizontal loading principle of the environment. Thus, a possible genealogy in the chemical-mechanical environment does not point to Lye's striping, but to weary scan photography, whose wave effects are horizontally oriented, due to the vertical loading principle of the camera shutter.
The color blending of the filmmakers is yet another motif that goes across multiple environments, although it is not a figure in the same sense as the dot, chasm and wave. Nevertheless, the use of color holds deep traces of the filmmakers' algorithm. In Rainbow Dance, Lye used Gasparcolor as a filmmaker, considering the system's strips as three separate algorithm inputs rather than as one unified rendering system. The algorithmic practice leads him to an unreal and synthetic use of color, where he exchanges color channels in color fantasy. But in addition, the process also allows him to release the color as an independent image element, for example. expresses kinetic energy as the three tennis players hit the ball, or contradict spatial dimensions, using Gasparcolor's color layer like the spatial stratification of the cell animation, but letting the front, middle and background collapse through color changes. Contrary to Lye's practice, color is embedded in the image structure of the DVS, where it necessarily comes by form and motion, with the color chord module of the film machine filling in the surfaces first drawn by the VtP module. On the video screen, these colors are created by the additive color blend (as opposed to the subtractive of the strip) of red, green and blue, and it causes its blends to escape the pure light as substance. But, crucially, the DVS is not bound in this color process because Beck, with the VtP module, can program how to express specific interactions between surfaces in color. In this way, the film machine introduces a break with both Gasparcolor and the color printer of the optical printer, which in many ways prejudges the programmability of the digital environment.
Closely related is the dynamic free scraping used by Lye in Rainbow Dance. The appearance is based on the optical printer's matte technique, e.g. promotes turning the silhouette of a figure into an abstract texture, with Lye using the figure as a hole in the background for a new space. Where this practice reflects the DVS's dynamic filling of shapes with texture, Lye's use includes an algorithmic conveyance of the optical printer. For where the free scraping of a character has not been associated with transitions in normal cinematic practice, Lye uses it as a transition, where e.g. the figure remains constant while the background changes, and vice versa. This practice is obvious if one considers it from the optical printer's algorithm: Here both collage and "wipe" appearances are made by using the matte parameter, and in the work with the optical printer this relationship can foster the fusion of the two appearances so that the scraping takes over the function of the flip-flop and becomes a stage transition. This use is particularly linked to the optical printer, and continues to be unlike many digital film machines, where the matte-based wipes and exposure-based dissolves and fades have all become intersectional parameters used in most editors' interfaces. .
In continuation of this problem is also the split screen appearance, which as a technique goes back in both optical printer, video synthesizer and digital TV graphics. However, in the genealogy of this motif between the environments, we see an increasing spatial dynamics of the picture-in-picture, reflecting a changing parametric embedding in their algorithms. In the optical printer, the appearance comes from the math parameter, and this elaborate process is dynamized into "raster scan" synthesizers like Scanimate, where the cut, position, size and skew become the new parameters that let the artist model and even animate each input signal. with immediate effect. The final limitation of the video synthesizer is that it can only modulate the image as a surface. By contrast, digital 3D programs allow graphics to be reshaped and adapt to curved surfaces and spaces - a trend that can still be seen in the augmented reality-like integration of graphics into TV's photographic space, e.g. in the TV newspaper on DR1.
The echo effect is seen in Lye's Rainbow Dance, where the bouncing silhouette exposes colored traces of the movement, and in Illuminated Music, where the dancing dots multiply toward the center of the image and merge to form a star. In Lye, the motif extends by Marey's photographs, where one stage of motion is exposed on the same photograph, so the result is a figure stretched in time and space. The appearance here comes from the optical printer, which exposes the subject several times on the same frame, but therefore it must also allow the movement to unfold in the surface so that it remains clear. Also in Beck, whose echoes are made by video feedback, the subject holds both space and time dimensions, with the repetition in space being a delay in time as the camera films the screen displaying its own image. But here, the video format reveals its essence in that it projects the echo into the depths of the image. The echo gradually merges and becomes a new figure, and its strident movements are direct traces of the feedback technique's cybernetic system, which is about to re-balance itself.
