Discussion Animations for SAIC’s ENG 1005-014

Dissynchronicity in Sound and Film Art

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Izzy Adams

Soviet filmmakers spent their lives defining and redefining montage film. Montage is the central genre in experimental film in Soviet Russia. Earlier in the course we discussed and read S.M. Eisenstein’s theories on montage. Precisely, he defines the genre as such: “montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots.” Montage revolves entirely around editing, and when the soviets coined the term they introduced a new kind of cinema to the film world which would greatly affect the future of narrative filmmaking and filmmaking in general.

In their essay titled “A Statement,” S.M. Eisenstein, V. I. Pudovkin and G. V. Alexandrov discuss the introduction of sound to the art of film and its merits and possible detriment it could bring to the medium. Throughout, they seem to go back and forth on what good they think sound can do for film.

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Soviets and Their Theories Around Sound in Experimental Film

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Aspen Stanley

The idea of montage is heavily explained, and defended by early soviet film-makers such as Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Alexandrov. They would discuss theories in the construction and purpose of montage. When the introduction of sound into the cinematic experience, sure enough, the same soviets had much to say about the way sound should exist and interact with the montage.

The Soviets introduce a few possibilities for how sound can serve a purpose in montage, and also how sound could be the detriment of the piece. In attempts to stray away from the theater and grow into the potential film has apart from it use to capture theatrics, rather as a medium of constructing montage, the automatic adherence of sound to film is what is could be the driving detriment of a film. A “backing track”, so to speak, is what these thinkers are referring to: the purpose of adding sound for the sake of adding sound. This addition of a “backing track” to film is curious in early film because, often the music added to a film was being performed by a live orchestra in the cinema. In order to avoid “destroying the culture of the montage” a few applications for sound in film are introduced.

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Filmmaking, experimental cinema and video art

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Shower, Robert Whitman

Yilin She

The author Eamon Christopher discusses the temporality and the multidisciplinarity of art is important to explore the relationship between film and video art. “Happening”, a term coined by the Fluxus artist Dick Higgins, mainly refers to performance art and is valued by its temporality in time. In Fluxus, experimental actions and the multidisciplinary aspect are important. The methods that are used in the filmmaking lead to the formation of the experimental cinema and the video art.

Christopher starts by stating that Jackson Pollock’s drip painting is a Happening, to explain that Pollock’s involvement of his body action in his drip painting allows the artist and the audiences to experience the same feeling in the same work. This method gets Allan Kaprow thinking. By the time Kaprow admired Pollock’s method, John Cage influences Kaprow on the time-based, recordable, and projectable medium of film. Cage creates 4’33’’, which contains a repetition of creating music through an unconventional way. Later, he makes Theatre Piece No.1, which allows the audiences to be a part of the film by using their own actions to fill up the time of the film. Cage’s use of multidisciplinarity in his music makes Kaprow bring connections to his thinking of film.

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Valie EXPORT

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Katie Wittenberg

As one of the only known female Actionists, Viennese filmmaker Valie EXPORT explored the possibilities of experimentation in cinema during the late 1960’s- early 70’s.

Prior to her work, names such as Stan Brakhage and Michael Snow held major influence in New American Cinema (1960’s). Both artists were known for their work in Structuralism Film making. Film’s of this genre mainly consisted of an emphasis on the material aspects of the film, or qualities found in the film itself. Snow’s film Wavelength 1967, is one such example. In this film, a stationary camera focuses closer and closer on a particular section of a studio apartment over the course of 45 minutes. The area in focus, and even the room are not the subject. Snow chooses to demonstrate the act of “zooming in” as the main initiative, making the actions caused by the camera the primary staple of the film.

Work of Valie EXPORT and other Vinnese filmmakers took the polar opposite approach from both American and European Structuralism. Approaches to their films formed from encounters with Viennese Actionists. These Actionists held “Ritualistic Performances”, often using mud and bodily fluids on and around their bodies to show relations. The idea of incorporating “temporality”, starting first with both the Happenings and the Fluxus, was used as well. The mixing of genres (music, movement, sculpture, etc.) coupled nicely with their intentions of infusing work with interactivity.

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