Wednesday 20 October 2010

Week 4 The embodied mind


Peter Kubelka: Schwechater Film still

Thinking about how we use our own bodies to develop an understanding of the world reminded me of meeting Austrian film-maker Peter Kubelka. He gave a fantastic talk/performance about how he thought about film as part of the Evolution Festival in 2007. He started to talk about his film making by walking about trying to measure out lengths of film which he had wrapped around his arms. He would link seconds of running time to how far he could extend the film by using his hands and feet. Holding the film down with his toes he would stretch out, so that his body was contained in the film loop. He would then lay the film across the floor and walk along it, each stride being linked to a time and rhythm that would be of course part of the film run time as it would be when eventually put through a projector. In order to get his audience to remember to digest the information he was delivering he gave out donuts, which not only reminded him of a sun symbol (therefore light) but the looping of film and the cosmic circularity of all things, as well as the fact that once information is digested it is absorbed and unwanted elements become waste.
That soft shape we get when we round edges off has set up another embodied train of thought. Why is it that so many people hate Comic Sans typeface? Is it just too 'babyish'? See link below: Death to this typeface.

2 comments:

  1. That sounds like quite an interesting talk, I'm going to have a look at some of his films, are there any in particular you would recommend? As for the Comic Sans typeface, i believe that the hate towards it is due to a couple of reasons, one being its over excessive use, which i personally have experience with. When i started high school, I vividly remember myself and pretty much everyone in my class, using this font to the edge of the earth. Other than that i think 'babyish' is pretty close to what it is, but like with pretty much all fonts if its used in the right way then it could be effective. Now the question is, what would be the right way to use Comic Sans...

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  2. Read his interview at: http://www.offscreen.com/index.php/phile/essays/interview_kubelka/ this gives a good introduction into the way he thinks..

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