Sunday, July 27, 2008

Time Lag

Video thumbnail. Click to play
click to play in Quicktime / or direct streaming at blip.tv
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"Sometimes a man rises from the supper table
and goes outside. And keeps on going
because somewhere to the east there’s a church.
His children bless his name as if he were dead.

Another man stays at home until he dies,
stays with plates and glasses.
So then it is his children who go out
into the world, seeking the church that he forgot."
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A not too short experimental docu-voodle by bk featuring an incredible beauteous moment of time lag captured in peaceful summer Oslo, Norway - 2008.07.23 at 19:05 hours. View three zoomed in glances at a fine young Norwegian woman (and thus time) standing still but not. It's neither Garbo nor 'filmkunst' but a docu-voodle with a very pleasant soundtrack by zikweb.
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The space Rainer Maria Rilke talks about is neither the space of the wanderer nor is it the space of hereditary but it is the potential of time lag - an interstitial space or state constantly between the lines, full of longings and regrets, but for those who know it it's the space that moves mass.
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b.k.: video 032 for lomeg-rom.blogspot.com - 5'51''
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This voodle is screened with the kind permission of the woman waiting. The format of the frame is by (cineaste) means changed into wide-screen. For those who want to view Time Lag in it's original format please download the Quicktime-file and change the visual settings of the video-track into the size of 520x390 (640x480).
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5 comments:

Gurdonark said...

The waiting metaphor is so vivid--a pregnant pause in how we read and experience literature.

The Tolstoi soldier whose dread of waiting on the eve of battle was due to an uncertainty of what comes life; Beckett's Godot; the endless stop and go of appointments not met, schedules askew.

This voodle is very effective, because it "stands in" for all the waits. I spent Thursday evening in a bar in Venice, California, near the pier. I was waiting just 5 or 10 minutes for the person I was meeting there (a fascinating musician and software designer). I felt the things I saw in your subject in this voodle--the anticipation, the self-consciousness, the vague puzzlement--and yet it was a matter of five minutes. It's a puzzling thing, this waiting--so many sensations in such a short time--and yet, like the fellow who insists on driving 120 km/hour in pitched traffic on a quiet Sunday morning--perhaps there is less need for worry during waiting, and more need to just enjoy the scenery. I enjoyed very much the scenery of this voodle--and to hear my friend across the sea zikweb's work featured as well!

LOMEG_ROM said...

I very much like the work of zikweb, and somehow it reminds me on the work of Klaus Schulze...

The state of the waiting... being in the realm of the waiting - i.e. time lag - is the clearest or most transparent state of mind I can think of. I tend to say it's the sweetest conscious experience I know of - although I know about it's horrors too...

Having particular interests - eager to nourish and treat those interests - I really don't know of anything better and more delightful then this state of complete 'desinterest'.

Your comment made me want to write about my first meeting with the alter ego of Sam Renseiw. That was long time before he was an official voodler and long time before the affix even was coined.
I'll have to come back to that on a later post though...

Desinterest is not only an 'adorable state of mind' but it's simply a necessity for any creative mind in order to position itself... desinterest providing the source for most of our personal and 'unique' experience.

b.k./LOMEG_ROM

Gurdonark said...

Zikweb's remix of one of my pieces led to a song called "Morning Life" that remains, some years later, on perpetual shuffle in my mp3 player.

http://ccmixter.org/files/zikweb/4048

It is very interesting, I think, that disinterest and detachment are so essential to do truly engaged and "in the moment" work.
This is true in the arts--it is also true in my work as an attorney.

SAM RENSEIW said...

in french, desinterest is called: desinvolture, and the term has a much broader and more poetic range.

a nice author to recommend, would be denis grozdanovitch. ( yes, he is french. unfortunately his books have not been translated into english, yet.)
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"reveurs et nageurs, ou du plaisir parmi les diffficultes"
and
" petit traite de desinvolture"

his fine writings are very close to eric rohmer's visual allongations btw.

LOMEG_ROM said...

Hello Sam, nice to see you're back!!

I have Denis Grozdanovitch' 'petit traité de désinvolture' in German (kleine Abhandlung über die Gelassenheit') and I sure will read it now. I got it some weeks ago from a former student of mine who now lives in Paris and who does not trust my french... (and he's probably right on that).

I am though referring to Marshall McLuhan and his concept of hot and cool media (i.e. 'The Gutenberg Galaxy' - 1962 and 'Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man' - 1964). In the latter publication he produced the (in)famous slogan 'the medium is the message' and - if I'm not completely wrong - coined the term of disinterest (and not desinterest as I was writing above).

McLaughan placed film/movies into the 'hot media' category while television was looked upon as representing the 'cool media'. "Any hot medium allows of less participation than a cool one, as a lecture makes for less participation than a seminar, and a book for less than a dialogue."

Whereby the voodle has to be placed in the same category as television and the seminar; cool media... or better... the voodle just settles on the continuum on which hot and cool exists, toggling in sound motility.

Anyway, I had a short break now and google gave me the following nice surprise: http://www.ubu.com/sound/mcluhan.html - McLughan's 'The Medium is the Massage' audio recordings (his 1967 adoption of the term 'massage' replacing the 'message'-term). I wonder how Gurdonark's adaption of this work would sound like - or, has it be done already?!

b.k./LOMEG_ROM