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Mon 11:06 PM


My feeling is that special effects designed to look realistic play upon pre-
established conventions of filmic representation, reinforcing the automatism of
passive viewing. What is interesting is when the jump between live action and
CGI is exposed, either through incompetence or design (see the new spiderman
movie). This seems to be a classic, though unsubtle, form of defamiliarisation
directed at the medium, or "technique", following shklovsky. Perhaps it is not
so effective now as we have had a whole century of formal renovation at the
hands of various avant-gardes. The question is: has the project of increasing
the difficulty and "length" of perception become an artistic convention?

cheers,

John



In message  <[log in to unmask]> Norman Holland <[log in to unmask]>
 writes:
> From:
>        "Joel Weishaus" <[log in to unmask]>
>
> Fri 4:07 PM
>
>
>
> >   From: [log in to unmask]
>
> > But you are right to point out another way in which defamiliarisation may
> > function, ie., "make objects unfamiliar", so once caught up in the formal
> > illusion we are shown things from an unfamiliar angle, challenging our
> ordinary
> > assumptions about these things. I think you are saying that in this
> > case, the better the illusion the more effective the defamiliarisation.
> Agreed.
> >
> > I can't agree, however, that this brings us closer to any "reality", as
> though
> > the dirty spectacles of convention have been removed and we finaly see
> > things as they really are. We would have no more use for defamiliarisation
> if
> > this were the case, since our vision would now be "correct" and
> > conventionalisation would no longer be problematic.
>
> The process of defamiliarisation is an old spiritual trick to show that what
> we call "reality" is a mental construct, an agreed upon vision of the world,
> however tenuous. I don't think, however, special effects does the job,
> simply because we are aware that they were made by someone else. On the
> other hand, psychedelic drugs, for example, also defamiliarise the world,
> but here know our own mind is doing it. Here, too, like walking out of the
> movie theater (coming down, in druggie terms), the experience must be
> integrated into one's life, or it slowly becomes something one once did.
> Here's where meditation practice may begin. But where does this relate to
> special effects?
>
> -Joel.

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