Hyper-reality and political reality

Image above taken from the Matrix.

There has as always been a lot of interest in hyper-reality as an area around which to develop level 5 essays, however it is not enough just to celebrate Baudrillard for his perceptive analysis of the media soaked conditions of our time, he needs to be put into some sort of perspective. On the one hand of course it is possible to compare and contrast his views with those of Marshall McLuhan but perhaps you could even go back to one of McLuhan’s key influences F. R. Leavis, a man who basically set out the framework for what in colleges and universities we now call critical studies. In 1930 Leavis published ‘Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture’ this was a book that would set out how to critically analyse contemporary cultural products. He was teaching in an English Literature department so was essentially writing about the paucity of critical thinking around writing but his views would influence a much wider spectrum of thinking. He reconnected critical thinking in relation to culture with political awareness and in doing so set out a framework of relationships that both Baudrilland and McLuhan would benefit from. He wrote about culture as it exists within the ‘modern industrial world of mass production’ which treated men as ‘a factor necessary to production” in a system where power and capital had become one. He stated, “Men are now incapacitated by their work, which makes leisure necessary as it was not before.” People are now “using their leisure for ‘humane’ recreation, that is, in pursuits that make them feel self fulfilled and make life significant, dignified and satisfying.” He pointed to newspapers, the cinema, the gramophone and radio as being areas that people were turning to as technologies within which they could immerse themselves in order to give their life meaning. McLuhan took these ideas further as he recognised that these technologies were changing the way we think and Baudrillard extends the idea further as he posits a world where the technologies of escapism now drive our view of reality. If you are going to write about hyper-reality perhaps you need to consider it as a gradually developing idea and introduce a historical context.
The central problem with Baudrillard however, is that the proliferation of simulacra gives us nothing to grasp, no reality with which to forge weapons that can be used to fight back against the prevailing conditions of capitalism and its accompanying evil consumerism. However Deleuze and Guattari in ‘A Thousand Plateaus’ find a way to think about levels of representation rather than simulations. Thus a double becoming looks towards the growth of potential. By combining ideas that are embedded within the representations that surround us, we can start to create anchor points. Then, Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas of rhizomatic connections can be envisioned as a sort of flexible underlying grid, each intellectual move taking up another position on the grid that had not previously been used. These then become the lever points for new fables and stories created from unforeseen amalgamations of potential. (This could be seen as a type of philosophical big bang). From these new positions of leverage you can then fight back against Capitalism’s simulacra and overturn simulation with representation. Deleuze and Guattari state that this resistance is a collective project and locally the rise of new cooperatives such as the Leeds Creative Time-bank could be the type of organization from within which these changes might happen. Eventually these working bodies of self-supporting groups of connected individuals may inject themselves into the body of Capitalism as antibodies designed to eliminate and protect us against false consciousness.
What Deleuze and Guattari offer is a theoretical standpoint capable of re-reading Baudrillard's hapless world of illusion as a type of metamorphosis that offers up a range of leverage points for change. Set against the cynicism of postmodern ethics a new moral landscape emerges of hope and new possibilities. As artists and designers we can combine our talents and seek to re-touch the real through making and constructing our own narratives of representation. In the world of the Matrix it is interesting to see that the hollow book that represents simulacra and simulacrum is handmade with a green cloth binding with its title in embossed type. The prop no doubt made by an expert craftsperson. This craft is of course linked to the crafts of camera work, editing, special effects creation and all the other skills required by the community of film-makers. Debates in seminars have suggested to me that our ethical and moral world is one that needs rebuilding and perhaps one avenue we can take as artists and designers is to do this collectively alongside the collective sharing of our individual crafts. Is this perhaps a move towards a new type of guild system or the establishment of co-operatives? A co-operative is defined as "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise". In a world where power is often invested in large corporarte organisations, it may be worth thinking about alternative models within which you can set up ways of working that enable you to achieve a lifestyle that is as Leavis put it, "self fulfilled, significant, dignified and satisfying.”

Is film an art form? Part 2

Plato's Cave

The last post argued that stained glass is an art form; however it can come in very different formats. A Medieval cathedral round window, a narrow niche in a college foyer, a lamp shade etc. I think there has often been slippage as to what is considered an art form and what is a format. I would argue that a symphony is a musical format, so is a 3 minute pop record, someone singing in the bath and a folk song. Non of them necessarily are aesthetically pleasing unless they “provide a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction”. My problem now is the word ‘pleasure’. Is giving pleasure enough? We tend to associate ‘pleasure’ with ‘entertainment’ and disassociate the term from ‘meaning’. Perhaps this is a mistake. Much art is ‘difficult’; hard to understand, jarring, designed to shock etc. Modernism (as in Dada, Surrealism etc.) is often ‘transgressive’, which itself is defined as, “of or relating to fiction, cinematography, or art in which orthodox cultural, moral, and artistic boundaries are challenged by the representation of unconventional behaviour and the use of experimental forms”. So the old chestnut, “But that’s not art!” is perhaps not as simple to get round as we think it is. If an art form is “a conventionally established form of artistic composition”, if this convention is broken, is this not a way of therefore establishing the fact that what is there is not art? Again though there is the problem of ‘convention’. Who establishes this and why? Conventions have often been overthrown because they were out of date or put in place by power structures that have now been deposed. The avant-garde as a concept presumes that artists should operate at the boundaries of convention. Is this something to do with how a society establishes its ‘moral’ fabric? What is it right and proper for me to do as a member of society?
It might be of interest at this point to go back in time somewhat. Epicurus (341–270 B.C.) believed that knowledge is derived from the senses. The pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, were therefore at the centre of life’s decision making. He tried to demonstrate the differences between natural desires, (need for food etc) and artificial ones (need to pander to vanity, have more riches etc). He was looking to develop a philosophy that led to contentment of mind. He would therefore suggest that transgressive art forms were to be avoided as their assimilation could lead to a disturbance of mind. Inner peace or ‘ataraxia’ is what we should be aiming for. Therefore forms of art that lead to contemplation are what he would advise we should develop. All this however seems in opposition to Aristotle's ethical and social activism.
In Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics Book VI he states: “What affirmation and negation are in thinking, pursuit and avoidance are in desire; so that since moral virtue is a state of character concerned with choice, and choice is deliberate desire, therefore both the reasoning must be true and the desire right, if the choice is to be good, and the latter must pursue just what the former asserts.”
In order therefore to make choices “reasoning must be true and the desire right.” So it isn’t enough to set out a clear reasoned argument for the establishment of an art form, the emotional need for art must also be given a voice.
My feeling is that emotional needs are linked to deep psychological drives and that these have been wired into us over thousands of years of evolution. It could be argued that human psychological traits are evolved adaptations to solve recurrent problems that have faced humankind in the various environments we have found ourselves living within. So why do we get pleasure or satisfaction in sitting together in the dark watching an illuminated screen of moving images?


Being inside a dark cinema is similar to being inside a cave or the womb


We have archeological evidence of human beings doing similar things over 30,000 years ago. In 1976 Richard Dawkins published ‘The Selfish Gene’, in this text he proposed that there was a way to look at culture from an evolutionary standpoint. He came up with the term ‘meme’ his word for a unit of culture that was supposed to be rather like a ‘gene’, something that is carried by a mind and that can be reproduced from mind to mind. In the same way that a gene is subject to the ‘survival of the fittest’ evolutionary test, a meme will survive if it is useful to us and our collective survival.
There is a wonderful book by David Lewis-Williams called ‘The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art’. He proposes a scenario where early humans collected together in caves to develop a particular set of rituals which were essential to collective survival. The shape and form of these rituals is I would argue still apparent within our present cultural products and activities. Williams describes a scene from 30,000 years ago, where people enter through a narrow passage that opens out into a cavern. The darkness is lit by flickering lights and images appear to almost move as the light flickers across the surface of undulating stone. Sounds of drumming fill the space and chants are sung and narratives told as social rituals are enacted. I’m sure certain modern forms of entertainment reflect these conditions quite closely. On the other hand, caves, in particular those structured in similar ways to the Rock Womb at Nenkovo, are clearly womb-like structures, the significance of which is inescapable.


Still from Herzog's 'Cave of Forgotten Dreams'

What really struck home with me however was Lewis-Williams’ description of the wall of the cave as a membrane. A surface that was understood as a barrier between the world of the living and the world of the spirit. It is an awareness of this divide and a need to come to terms with it that I feel lies at the core of what ‘art’, ‘religion’ , science’ and all our other forms of collective coming to terms with what’s out there are all about.

The psycho-analyst Lacan has a term called ‘the big other’. This is something that is so radically different to us that it goes beyond the imaginary. This term is usually linked to his understanding of constructions such as the law. However if we think of death as a passageway between what has life or ‘élan vital’ as Bergson would put it and what is inanimate or dead, the big issue is what is it that changes? At one moment a human being is alive, moves and has soul, at another there becomes no difference between a body and a stone, both exhibit complete inertia and are lifeless. This is a fundamental thing that we as conscious beings have to come to terms with. Perhaps all our ‘art’ forms are in one way or another simply trying to help us understand what it is to accept death as part of life’s experience. Without the development of culture our lives would be meaningless. In this sense culture has an intimate relationship with the development of religion. My experience of religious chanting or whirling dancing being at times not far away from my experiences in raves; my experiences in art galleries has at times reminded me of visiting a cathedral.

So is film an art form? Well yes and a powerful one. It brings together light, movement, sound and narrative in a collective environment and its images and stories attempt to make sense of the world. How many times as we leave a film with a partner do we end up discussing, “what was that all about?” What it was about was a meditation on the human condition. Whether or not it was a useful one, a deep one or a superficial one is another issue.

Is film an art form?

Rose window: Notre Dame de Paris

Early film theory looked at how film differed from ‘reality’ and tried to establish how it could become an art form in its own right. But what is an art form? Some definitions are circular, such “as a genre or activity viewed or treated as an art form”. On the other hand you get definitions such as, “a conventionally established form of artistic composition, such as the symphony or the sonnet”. But a film is a technology, not a form of artistic composition. It can be a documentary or a western, short or long. Is playing musical instruments an art form? According to this definition it is when a symphony is being played but not perhaps when a group of people get together and jam in someone’s front room. The key phrase is, “a conventionally established form of artistic composition”. So how is this convention established? The 3 minute single was a product of technical limitations, so is the convention of the pop single a conventionally established form of artistic composition? In this case we have the word ‘artistic’ to contend with. The definition of which is, “performed, made, or arranged decoratively and tastefully; aesthetically pleasing”. Aesthetically is defined as; “Characterised by a heightened sensitivity to beauty”. So is it to do with defining whether or not an art form can achieve “a heightened sensitivity to beauty”? If so, what are the structures that enable it to do this? If these structures can be singled out, how then do we measure the success or failure of these structures to “capture beauty or heighten sensitivity to it?
Beauty is defined as; “characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction”. In the case of a film, I would presume this could be both an object (the film itself) and an idea (the film’s content). I can see how the perceptual experiences of pleasure, meaning or satisfaction could be important, but again how each of these is singled out as a measure of success or failure of aesthetic worthiness is hard to understand.
For example a very unpleasant film may serve to heighten an understanding of meaning. This understanding may give great satisfaction but am I therefore to now read “beauty” as some sort of recognition of ‘meaning’?
Light has at times been thought of as being a symbol for the revelation of God; this can be seen at its clearest in the production of Medieval stained glass windows. If you visit Chartres for example, the stained glass lights your travel through the dark spaces of the cathedral’s interior and you feel the resonance between the building’s religious significance and your experience of how light is controlled by the makers of that time. There is a pleasure in the understanding of how this light is shaped in deference to a deeper meaning and this gives great satisfaction. Therefore it could be argued that stained glass is an art form. As an art form it seems to me that it is not very far away from film. Light is projected into a dark space in order to “illuminate” the audience. However there are also stained glass makers who make inserts for door panels, lamp shades etc. and they do not usually attempt to forge a symbiosis with a grander concept, such as religious experience. However they may for instance develop floral decorative motifs designed to remind us of nature. It must be art if it is, “performed, made, or arranged decoratively and tastefully”. But is it aesthetically pleasing? Where is the dividing line between a weak decorative connection to nature and a deep convergence of religious meaning and formal expression?

Level 4 lectures and DFGA

Images from Robert W. Paul’s film Come Along, Do! 1898

Now that level 5 are starting individual tutorials it is perhaps a good time to reflect on the lecture programme for level 4 and how it contextualises DFGA practice.

The programme started with Modernism and for me what’s interesting here is that Modernism as a movement starts at about the same time as the history of film. The first film to show action moving from one shot into another was Robert W. Paul’s Come Along, Do!, made early in 1898. In the first shot an old couple are outside an art gallery, in the second shot we find them inside the exhibition.

In the same year the Post-Impressionist Paul Cezanne painted Les Grandes Baigneuses, his fellow Post-Impressionist, Paul Gauguin painted The White Horse, Edvard Munch the great symbolist painter produced his key work, Metabolism and Odilon Redon embarked on his painting The Cyclops.


Paul Cezanne: Les Grandes Baigneuses


Paul Gauguin: The White Horse


Edvard Munch: Metabolism


Odilon Redon: The Cyclops

The key early modern movements of Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism and Surrealism are all starting to jell around the influence of these painters. In my mind’s eye the grey out of focus images of paintings we can see in Paul’s film, could be these seminal images. Later in the same year Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon was made.



Méliès’Trip to the Moon was the first science fiction film. In a few short months film had moved on very quickly and to some extent was already outpacing painting as a modern medium.


Un Chien Andalou


Ballet Mechanique

Some Modernists embraced film as an extension of their art practice, such as Dali with Un Chien Andalou and L'Âge d'Or or Leger’s Ballet Mechanique, while most preferred to stay within the boundaries of their chosen medium. In some ways you could look at their reluctance to play with new media as a perverse aspect of Modernism. An old technology, (painting) being the media that is most often used to illustrate Modernist art practices. (Abstract painting in particular).
However film seems to me to have always been post-modern, even when it was finding its feet. By the very nature of the way lens captured images are made, they are appropriated. Cutting a film and putting it together (montage) is clearly a type of collage technique and college is cited as a key post-modern way of working. Film exemplifies for me what Harvey called "time and space compression". A term he used to point out the nature of post-modern life, which it could be argued, now reads like a film.

Some of the issues that were opened out in the lecture on High and Low culture could be used to explain this, film, as a popular medium perhaps not being taken seriously by Modernist artists, who saw their practice as ‘High’ culture. This divide still exists within the fine art world. Because of the way that Street artists, such as Keith Haring, were appropriated by gallery culture, it could be argued that like modernism, postmodernism does not democratise art. On the other hand it could easily be argued that the low/high culture divide doesn’t matter within the culture of late Capitalism. The example of Blu’s work being used by modern advertising companies to sell everything from cars to insurance being a clear illustration of this.
As makers of digital films and video games, the world of trans-media production is one you will all have to inhabit. The nature of this world has on the one hand been seen as a post-modern one and has been examined by theorists as diverse as Baudrillard (hyper-reality and the simularca), Fredric Jameson who describes postmodernism as the "dominant cultural logic of late capitalism" and Lyotard who saw post-modernism as being a product of the "computerized" or "telematic" era. On the other hand Henry Jenkins would argue that the coordinated use of storytelling across platforms makes for more compelling narratives and that this new technology takes us back into an older aural world, where the story was prime. This echoing Marshall McLuhan’s image of the Global Village, where information technology allows us to exchange ideas across great distances and develop new social structures in response to these fast changes in technology. Steven Shaviro goes on to show in his book Post Cinematic Affect, how these new digital media are shaping new sensibilities.

Finally my own interest in the continuing relevance of allegory leads me to George Romero’s Survival of the Dead (2009). A film that suggests that communications media are over and done with; laptops and i-phones are rendered useless, Net-connected filmmakers can no longer record the events, geeks have to resort to vinyl, WiFi networks have broken down, and as Steven Shaviro states, “we are now stuck in an interminable endgame that is no longer being televised, an ending (of the world) that itself refuses to end”. As revolutions spread throughout the world, many of them fostered by the use of new communications technology, of what use will this be unless we get to grips with the coming triple crunch of endism, climate change, peak phosphorous and peak oil.