[Frameworks] Singularity and intentional incoherence

[Bryan McManus]

Hi Ittai,

Yours is an interesting pursuit!  Much luck to you in your study.  Your
thoughts reminded me of an interview I heard with David Lynch (forgive me,
I cannot remember where) where he spoke about the "eye of the duck" as
being an element of his films.  Interestingly, I think he was referring to
this moment as being both an incoherence and an axis - in that the event is
distracting/surprising/etc - yet confirming of some internal or underlying
structure.  his thoughts may be a helpful place to continue your study.

Best,

Bryan

Bryan McManus
Aritist, Filmmaker
bryanmcmanus.com

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 1:37 AM, Ittai Rosenbaum <ittai66 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi
>
> My name is Ittai Rosenbaum, I am a doctoral student at the music
> composition department at UCSC and in the process of defining my
> Qualification Exams topics. I wondered if anyone could perhaps have
> interesting knowledge or insights about a subject in film theory that might
> parallel one of my topics.
>
> I am interested in singular events in composition: events that occur only
> once, contrasted and incoherent to the main musical language of the work,
> yet deliberately conceived and intentionally inserted in the composition,
> contributing, by way of distraction and surprise, to the conception of the
> piece.
>
> Coherence seems to constitute a compulsory element in composition, and
> even incoherence (surprise, collage etc.) as it happens in the music of,
> say, Charles Ives, George Crumb or John Zorn, becomes coherent and even
> homogenous once it recurs. I suspect that *singular*, incoherent events
> may have a genuine effect, different than that.
>
> I am interested in parallel or similar phenomena in film, as my own
> compositions are more than often related to the visual, verbal, social and
> other elements usually inherent in film.
> Far from an expert in films, I do recall several instances where I felt I
> have viewed such singular events in film: the awakening in Chris Marker’s
> La jetée – a single moment of two seconds of movement in a film made
> entirely of stills, some moments that I can't recall now in Fellini's films
> (although usually there is a certain "homogeneity of singularity" in the
> ones I saw), and a comic one, in Mel Brooks’s *Silent Movie*, when the
> famous pantomime Marcel Marceau utters the only single word in the film:
> “no!”
>
> I would be very interested to know if this is something that has been
> written about and generally what your experience and opinion is.
>
> thank you
>
>
> --
> Ittai Rosenbaum
> www.ittairosenbaum.com
>
> (650) 704-6566
>
> PRÆSENTEM
>
> http://earbits.com/
>
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