[Frameworks] "All the Dark Screens" (Albert Alcoz)

Sun Mar 31 13:19:35 UTC 2019

The flickering shutter creates an effect known as the phi phenomenon (and not persistence of vision as is often mistakenly evoked - persistence of vision explains the thaumatrope or spinning disc with bird and cage that superimpose in the eye, and this would only create 24 images per second superimposing in the eye). The phi phenomenon explains how we perceive a marquee of flickering lights as continuous motion. The brain creates the illusion of movement during the flicker, analogous to the dreams we create in the night that separates the days and waking consciousness.

The illusion at work when watching flickerless video is the beta movement effect. It is a very different perception and requires much less activity on our part as the brain has nothing to fill in. 

Here are links to illustrations of the two effects:

Phi phenomenon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phi_phenomenon#/media/File:Lilac-Chaser.gif

Beta movement effect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_movement#/media/File:Beta_movement.gif

- Pip Chodorov

> On Mar 31, 2019, at 7:24 AM, Nicole Baker <nebaker at pnca.edu> wrote:
> 
> When I was in film school a professor told me that watching film engages the mind in a very active way, that the darkness and persistence of vision required to assemble the frames into a continuous, moving image was like doing mental calisthenics.  On the other hand, watching video produces very little brain activity, the mechanics do not engage our minds the same way, and our watching becomes very passive and inactive.
> I do not have any science to back this up, it was just what I was told.  There's a certain amount of sense to it, but I'd love to see hard evidence or studies on the subject!
>  
> Nicole Elaine Baker
> MFA in Visual Studies, 2019
> Pacific Northwest College of Art
> Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies
> www.magiklantern.com <http://www.magiklantern.com/>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Mar 30, 2019 at 11:17 AM Robert Withers <withersr at earthlink.net <mailto:withersr at earthlink.net>> wrote:
> Hello Albert,
> I enjoyed a few minutes of the film you posted, even with my non-existent Spanish.
> 
> It raises a question I’ve puzzled over. We used to be bemused by the fact that, since film projection is intermittent and interrupted by a shutter, blocking light to the screen, we were perhaps sitting in darkness during half of a screening, watching the persistent images in our minds. It’s hard to research how video technology works comparatively, but I find some suggestions that there is no similar dark interval in video projection (if there is it’s fleeting — the blanking interval etc.) so I wonder how the video technology affects our physiology.
> 
> Can anyone share info or a source for info or thoughts on info about this? 
> 
> Thanks,
> Robert
> 
> Robert Withers
> withersr at earthlink.net <mailto:withersr at earthlink.net>
> 202 West 80 St #5W NYNY 10024
> 
> 
> From: Albert Alcoz <albertalcoz at gmail.com <mailto:albertalcoz at gmail.com>>
> Subject: [Frameworks] "All the Dark Screens"
> Date: March 30, 2019 at 4:15:03 AM EDT
> To: Experimental Film Discussion List <frameworks at jonasmekasfilms.com <mailto:frameworks at jonasmekasfilms.com>>
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I'm writing this email to share a video essay titled "All the Dark Screens" created by the curator Alexandra Laudo and me under the project Soy Cámara by the CCCB:
> http://www.cccb.org/en/multimedia/videos/all-the-dark-screens/231229 <http://www.cccb.org/en/multimedia/videos/all-the-dark-screens/231229>
> 
> It is a 25 minute video –with an Spanish voice over– where some esthetic and ideological issues are exemplified through experimental films and artist's videos:
> 
> In a society dominated by the power of screens and images, audiovisual darkness can be a strategy of resistance. We tend to associate screens with light, but darkness has been consubstantial with audiovisual creation since the dawn of the cinema. “All the Dark Screens" presents a fragmentary genealogy of the use and presence of opacity and the absence of image in cinematographic and video creation, and reflects on the poetic and political power of these forms of audiovisual iconoclasm, and on their relation with our ways of seeing and not seeing.
> 
> The points of departure are the video/action by Scott Stark switching off public TV monitors ("A Better World (for Rick P)" <https://vimeo.com/11156435> ) and the idea questioned here by Yoel Miranda on October of 2007 ("how much of what we see is black?" <http://www.hi-beam.net/fw/fw36/0610.html>).
> 
> Since it is an informative and pedagogical video, with dozens of short clips by independent filmmakers credited at the end, would be great if you to share it through social networks.
> 
> All the best,
> Albert Alcoz
> -- 
> http://visionaryfilm.net/ <http://www.visionaryfilm.net/>
> http://albertalcoz.com/ <http://www.albertalcoz.com/>
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