Frame-Leveled
On Loren Coleman's Cryptozoo News blog last February the question "Why frame 352?" was posted. Frame #352 being the lone frame out of nearly a thousand in the Patterson-Gimlin 16mm filmstrip that has become widely recognized as a central cultural signifier associated with Bigfoot (and Fortean activity generally!)
One commenter to the aforementioned post suggests "Frame 352 displays a classic and recognizable human form. As humans we tend to extrapolate and describe things we cannot explain into anthropomorphic terms, making them less frightening to our psyches." (drshoop) Likewise, the appearance of friendly paperclips, smiling computers, avatars and emoticons, dwelling in computer interfaces everywhere are an attempt to familiarize the unknown. "We imagine we have more control because the icons seem to notice us," writes Norman M. Klein in an essay included in The Sharpest Point anthology, "but with each user-friendly step, we move farther from the programming itself." (Klein, p.27)
Frame 352 is of course a result of veiled "programming" as well. Beyond the film itself, this particular image was selected by some newspaper office, then reprinted, propagated and multiplied through the mediasphere. Culturally hacked to hype all manner of consumer schlock (see this post for more on these exploits) What makes the Bigfoot so fascinatingly photogenic at this frame may also be tied to human beings' narcissistic response when looking at animals in general. In his 1977 essay "Why Look At Animals," John Berger writes:
"The eyes of an animal when they consider man are atttentive and wary. The same animal may well look at other species in the same way. He does not reserve a special look for man. But by no other species except man will the animal's look be recognized as familiar. Other animals are held by the look. Man becomes aware of himself returning the look." ( Berger, p.4-5)
The theories surrounding Bigfoot as "missing link" speak to this want of familiar (family?) traces.
The level of engagement surrounding seemingly familiar faces bring me back to a previous post--the Fantastic encounter rendered as kinesthetic experience --the potential of this first-hand sort of experience design has been demonstrated, par excellence, by contemporary media artists. The performance duo GRANULAR~SYNTHESIS for example, operate by effectively weaponizing the process of anthropomorphization and amplifying the period of hesitation associated with the Fantastic.
Using custom built computer software for live performance, split-frames of audio-video information are extracted from pre-prepared digital recordings of human performers and then resequenced in real-time into kinetically unfathomable new formations. Media theorist Tom Sherman has written at length about these artists and describes their project as the assembly of "a technical apparatus, a machine, an instrument for processing recordings of human appearance and behaviour into something post-human, something we have never seen before." ( GRANULAR~SYNTHESIS : The story so far...by Tom Sherman) There is a reversal here of the usual anthropomorphic gesture, a moving away from human characteristics. "Granular Synthesis turns people into machines," (Sherman) any familiar traces are fleeting and glimpsed only in the interstices of "the essential characteristics of machineness (speed, precision, unnatural control)" (Sherman) . This audio-visual encounter is typically augmented through multiple floor-to-ceiling projections, surround sound and sub-audio that physically affects its live audience.
"There is no time for reflection or anticipation. No time. The perpetual moment machine scrambles and destroys narratives before they ever get started. The audience is carried through the work in the present tense. Clock or machine-time mean nothing to the audience during exposure to the work. As the model's presence is refreshed, rewritten, renewed, instantly/endlessly updated--so it is we are there for the moment and the moment only. Perpetually." (Sherman)
Like a first-hand encounter with an unknown animal, the (Techno)Fantastic realm opened up by GRANUAR~SYNTHESIS unfolds in real-time. The duration of uncertainty and anxiety is extended indefinitly by these kinetic engineers who unleash familiar, yet captivatingly other and unknown animations --terrifying and fascinating onlookers.
One commenter to the aforementioned post suggests "Frame 352 displays a classic and recognizable human form. As humans we tend to extrapolate and describe things we cannot explain into anthropomorphic terms, making them less frightening to our psyches." (drshoop) Likewise, the appearance of friendly paperclips, smiling computers, avatars and emoticons, dwelling in computer interfaces everywhere are an attempt to familiarize the unknown. "We imagine we have more control because the icons seem to notice us," writes Norman M. Klein in an essay included in The Sharpest Point anthology, "but with each user-friendly step, we move farther from the programming itself." (Klein, p.27)
Frame 352 is of course a result of veiled "programming" as well. Beyond the film itself, this particular image was selected by some newspaper office, then reprinted, propagated and multiplied through the mediasphere. Culturally hacked to hype all manner of consumer schlock (see this post for more on these exploits) What makes the Bigfoot so fascinatingly photogenic at this frame may also be tied to human beings' narcissistic response when looking at animals in general. In his 1977 essay "Why Look At Animals," John Berger writes:
"The eyes of an animal when they consider man are atttentive and wary. The same animal may well look at other species in the same way. He does not reserve a special look for man. But by no other species except man will the animal's look be recognized as familiar. Other animals are held by the look. Man becomes aware of himself returning the look." ( Berger, p.4-5)
The theories surrounding Bigfoot as "missing link" speak to this want of familiar (family?) traces.
The level of engagement surrounding seemingly familiar faces bring me back to a previous post--the Fantastic encounter rendered as kinesthetic experience --the potential of this first-hand sort of experience design has been demonstrated, par excellence, by contemporary media artists. The performance duo GRANULAR~SYNTHESIS for example, operate by effectively weaponizing the process of anthropomorphization and amplifying the period of hesitation associated with the Fantastic.
Using custom built computer software for live performance, split-frames of audio-video information are extracted from pre-prepared digital recordings of human performers and then resequenced in real-time into kinetically unfathomable new formations. Media theorist Tom Sherman has written at length about these artists and describes their project as the assembly of "a technical apparatus, a machine, an instrument for processing recordings of human appearance and behaviour into something post-human, something we have never seen before." ( GRANULAR~SYNTHESIS : The story so far...by Tom Sherman) There is a reversal here of the usual anthropomorphic gesture, a moving away from human characteristics. "Granular Synthesis turns people into machines," (Sherman) any familiar traces are fleeting and glimpsed only in the interstices of "the essential characteristics of machineness (speed, precision, unnatural control)" (Sherman) . This audio-visual encounter is typically augmented through multiple floor-to-ceiling projections, surround sound and sub-audio that physically affects its live audience.
"There is no time for reflection or anticipation. No time. The perpetual moment machine scrambles and destroys narratives before they ever get started. The audience is carried through the work in the present tense. Clock or machine-time mean nothing to the audience during exposure to the work. As the model's presence is refreshed, rewritten, renewed, instantly/endlessly updated--so it is we are there for the moment and the moment only. Perpetually." (Sherman)
Like a first-hand encounter with an unknown animal, the (Techno)Fantastic realm opened up by GRANUAR~SYNTHESIS unfolds in real-time. The duration of uncertainty and anxiety is extended indefinitly by these kinetic engineers who unleash familiar, yet captivatingly other and unknown animations --terrifying and fascinating onlookers.
posted by cdiehl at 9:54 AM
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