Dear Kees, (et al).
You wrote:
Or, there seems to be a dynamics/dialectics between the defined
and he who defines, which makes every definition as dynamic and
arbitrary if not put in an explicit frame of thought (nominalist,
materialist,idealist, etc, etc.). Every definition then creates its own
'originary'model, not necessarily historical (narrative, thecnological
etc.).
I think it's not wise to want to put "film" in one definition only, but
one should be aware in which way he/she uses this notion.
Therefore,Dave, I hope you want to sketch use a definition in terms
of Bergsons' Creative Evolution; this might enrich our encyclopedia
of definitions...
BTW Dave, I'm curious about your analogy between the digital
image and becoming/duration? Can you give this a try too?
OK, I guess I asked for that, well then, here goes. Every definition
creates its own originary model ....(perhaps Todorov on how genre
is an evolving entity says just that) but this creates a paradox. You
cannot have an infinite number of different things, a procession of
returns in difference, and call them 'originary' as there status is
actually that of simulacra, an infinite masquerade (in the sense of a
Nietzschean return). It is in this way that becoming is said to be
evolving, a process of forever becoming-other, in which there is no
model (death of god, all that). Not so much, then, that every
definition is an originary model, but rather that every time film
develops (a ha) it is still film (movie, flicks, video, Digital image) but
in the process of becoming other. That is a thing's definition.
As for the digital image as becoming/duration, if Bergson saw the
celluloid strip, with its interstices, as analogous to the geometrical
dividing of space that creates 'false' movement, (i.e, as with Zeno's
arrow paradox, in which movement is supposedly analysed to show
that the flight of the arrow is a series of immobile states, movement
being merely that which occurs between them) and duration, or
becoming, as the philosphical *intuition* (specific term) of time as
indivisble, flux, change, movement being more of a merging, or
perhaps emergent.... then could you not draw an analogy with this
and the video, or perhaps digital image. Is this not an interstice-less
media? This is really more of a question, as I am rather ignorant of
the technicalities of this new format.
DAVE: Finally, Socratic dialogue, rhetorical, supposedly aimed at
the illuminating of already held truths, (The Meno) it can, therefore,
be used to show absolutely anything to be the case...
SOCRATES: Oh no it can't
dave.
David Martin-Jones
Rm 205, Department of Theatre,
Film and Television
The University of Glasgow
0141 3303809 ext. 0804
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