- The stretched consciousness of meditation and expanded cinema
2022 | Video Installation | Acrylic, Copper & Components | 356x200x186cm
#Experimental Movie #Video Installation #Expanded Cinema
Circuit (2022). 16:9 version.
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Artwork Creator: Ng Sing Yiu
Article Author: Ng Sing Yiu
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Today’s Cinema and The Project Direction
“Despite cinemaÎs heritage of technological and creative diversity, it is Hollywood that has come to define its dominant forms of production and distribution, its technological apparatus and its narrative forms.” (Shaw, Weibel, 2002). Based on today’s movie trend, my attempt is to employ my industrial post-production skill to create an experimental movie, which stands out from the traditional cinema and viewing experience. By separating movie production as many micro components (e.g. music, composition, actor, etc.), my experimental movie focuses in visual effect without clear character and plot. Based on this approach and recent interest, I have studied the knowledge of chakra. As a spiritual and meditative theory, chakra, is out of traditional scientific domain, which diffuses religious and indescribable sensation. Their ethereal characteristics are highly suitable to present in an abstract form of visual effect. After finishing the movie part, the simple material has become an interactive installation by employing technology and coding. The sense of touch emphasizes the audience’s self-awareness then simultaneously expands his/her consciousness into the different section of circuit: a cyclic world of chakra, thereby letting audience becomes the main character in the movie. The whole set-up of artwork and viewing experience raise up the question: Can this artwork be a cinema?
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New Consciousness in Movies
According the book Expanded Cinema, the author (Youngblood, 1970) pointed out his thesis “When we say expanded cinema we actually mean expanded consciousness. Expanded cinema does not mean computer films, video phosphors, atomic light, or spherical projections.” (41). Expanded cinema is emphasizing the new consciousness, not the pursuit of high technology.
The author also pointed out a new term - cosmic consciousness “…especially cinema, has shifted toward cosmic consciousness...A completely new vocabulary of graphic language is available to the image-maker now that our video senses have extended to Mars and beyond.” (139). Moving image has the potential possibility to extend our consciousness to a new abstract experience. As an example, Youngblood mentioned the Stargate in movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968), “...the astronaut encounters the alien monolith in crucifix-alignment with a string of asteroids and is seduced through the Stargate into a dimension ‘beyond infinity’ - that is, beyond logic.” (141). In this Stargate, the psychedelic colour, mysterious pattern and the continuous camera movement seduce the audience’s attention into a new cognition: a cosmic consciousness, which is beyond our present logic.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Stanley Kubrick.
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In Cambridge Dictionary, consciousness is explained as “The state of understanding and realizing something”. At the aspect of human science, scholar (Lash, 2018) explained consciousness is a premise on memory and a derivative of experience. The function of consciousness is fixing attention on certain segments of experience and original chaos (e.g. percept and concept); recalling the outer world when it is not materially present; establishing a relation between disparate things to form new knowledge (55-56). Based on these three main functions, I deem that the abstract movie scene can let audience’s consciousness to fix their attention on the segments of sense, new concept and abstract experience; help to establish the abstract, unknown outer world, which is not materially present; connect a new relation between new concept and abstract experience to form new knowledge. Along these comprehension for experience and consciousness, one of the targets of my experimental movie is employing abstract visual effect to establish the experience of travelling in a meditative world, thereby granting the new consciousness of meditation to audiences.
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Content of The Experimental Movie
My movie concentrates to chakra, which is the conceptual and subtle energy system in human body. There are seven chakra in our body: The Root, The Sacral, The Solar Plexus, The Heart, The Throat, The Third Eye and The Crown (Shrestha, 2009: 22). A unique scene is designed for each corresponding chakra then let the camera wanders and enters through the chakra’s journey.
The book Chakra Therapy: for Personal Growth & Healing (Sherwood, 1988) described the detailed characteristics about the first to sixth chakra and the seventh chakra further, “There is nothing but emptiness, and in emptiness one finds himself in the ALL, the universal field of energy and consciousness.” (156). As my understanding, seventh chakra is meaning all and nothing. Furthermore, another point about the first chakra is recorded in Chakra Therapy, “We must consider it also as one end of a system that at the opposite end opens at the seventh chakra.” (135). The first chakra, which represents the birth and life, connects to the inseparable seventh chakra with the all and nothing. After the scene of seventh chakra, the first chakra’s scene will show up again, then the second chakra’s scene, the third chakra’s scene and so on... This looping order will keep playing as a cyclic world of chakra.
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Connect to The World
According to the research about therapy, singing bowls can open chakra (Shrestha, 2009: 21). Hence, the installation is referenced the shape of singing bowl. When audience touches the installation, the black screen with noise will fade out then the screen shows the cyclic movie - audience enters into the chakra journey in different time slot.
Circuit - 虛遊迴路
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Establish The Cognition
One of my referencing artwork Legible City, Shaw and Groeneveld introduced their work “The Legible City is a pioneering interactive art installation where the visitor rides a stationary bicycle through a simulated representation of a city that is constituted by computer-generated, three-dimensional letters that form words and sentences along the sides of the streets...... Travelling through these cities of words is consequently a journey of reading; choosing the path one takes creates a recombination of these texts, and spontaneous conjunctions of meaning.” (Shaw and Groeneveld, 1989)
Legible City (1989). Jeffrey Shaw and Dirk Groeneveld.
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In their work, the handlebars and pedals of the bicycle interface gave the audience interactive control over direction and speed of moving in the virtual city. The interactive relation between riding a vehicle and the exploration of virtual city, broke the wall between audience and the screen, which effectively let audience expanded their consciousness to the virtual poetic world with the linguistic recombination. Furthermore, the action “riding” was significant for audiences to enhance their feel of exploring and establish the sense of moving, although they were not moving actually in the real world.
By referencing this approach, my work involves the striking and rimming action. For reducing the excess controls on-site, the mallet for striking was simplified as the viewer’s finger. Besides the touch as striking, audience can rim on the singing bowl’s structure and simultaneously rotates an extra thin stick to affect the visual content of the movie. The gesture of striking and rimming can establish the perception of “interacting with a singing bowl” and the causal relation between the world of chakra and the audience’s being with the singing bowl-liked Installation.
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Interactive Narrative in Circuit
Shaw and his co-authors quoted a concept from another scholar to inscribe a more general principle of interactivity, “Serres explains the narrative relation between the subject and the object as two dynamically interdependent durational systems. For Serres both objects and subjects are interactively defined by their temporal relations.” As an example for explaining the relationship “...by reference to the example of geometrical measurement provided by the Greek mathematician Thales. To measure the length of the shadow of a pyramid at a particular time of day, for example, is to express the interrelationship between an object in motion (sun) and an object at rest (pyramid). In enunciating measurement as the duration or tempo of the relation between the pyramid and the sun, Thales converts mathematics into a narrative form.” (Shaw, Weibel, Brown, Del Favero, 2003: 5). Serres explained two objects, the objective interrelationship between the sun and pyramid were subjectively narrated by the mathematician via the measurement of shadow.
In my work, the movie and the singing bowl’s structure as two independent objects, the movie of chakra is continuously playing; the singing bowl’s structure stands stationary. However, visible light is spread from the movie, the singing bowl’s structure accordingly reflects the light from the movie; the background noise (sfx) from the movie conveys to the singing bowl’s structure then produces resonance. Two independent objects produce the interrelationship objectively. After that, the viewer’s participation subjectively involves into the interrelationship between the movie and the singing bowl’s structure, then narrates them a new interpretation and further stimulates on the sound and visual content. Via the interactive approach and participation, the visual content of movie is being changed by the singing bowl’s structure, and the new visual content simultaneously is being reflected on the singing bowl’s structure, therefore the interrelationship is being more complexity. The objectivity and subjectivity intertwine together in the interactive process.
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Can This Artwork Be A Cinema
Back to the question I have set at the opening: Can this artwork be a cinema? To me, the core of Circuit is an experimental movie, which has employed element of post-production to explore narrative in micro angle, then giving back the driving seat to audience, letting them to activate and enter to the world of movie. In the process of entering, audience is being a participant, who turns the whole video installation into the interactive narrative: The objectivity of the video installation and the subjectivity of participation intertwine together in the interactive process. Additionally inspired by the concept of meditation and expanded cinema, Circuit has explored “consciousness” in different layers, then connecting with technology and participation to exist as a form of experimental cinema.
- Thanks for Watching -
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Bibliography
Shaw, J and Weibel, P. (2002). Future Cinema: The Cinematic Imaginary after Film. Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. Retrieved from
https://zkm.de/en/exhibition/2002/11/future-cinema
Youngblood, G. (1970). Expanded Cinema. P. Dutton & Company, Inc, New York.
Cambridge Dictionary. (2022). Retrieved from
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-traditional/consciousness
Lash, S. (2018). Experience: New Foundations for The Human Sciences. Polity.
Shrestha, S. (2009). How to Heal with Singing Bowls: Traditional Tibetan Healing Methods. Sentient Publications.
Sherwood, K. (1988). Chakra Therapy: for Personal Growth & Healing. Llewellyn Publications.
Shaw, J and Groeneveld, D. (1989). Legible City. Jeffrey Shaw Compendium. Retrieved from
https://www.jeffreyshawcompendium.com/portfolio/legible-city/
Brown, N, Del Favero, D, Shaw, J and Weibel, P. (2003). “Interactive Narrative as a Multi-temporal Agency” in Future Cinema, The Cinematic Imaginary after Film. ZKM Karlsruhe and MIT Press.