The refusal of time

I went to Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 10th. "The refusal of time" was created by William Kentridge and displayed at the second floor of the museum. It's a thirty-minute meditation on time and space

It was a 30-minute, five-channel video, collaborative multimedia collage installation which features live action, song, sculpture, graphic art,visual design, silent film, dance, performance and the innovative animation. Upon entering the room, we are met with darkness. There is one spotlight, aimed at the very center of the space. There is a  “breathing machine”at the center of the installation, called an elephant, and a platoon of projected metronomes, each asserting its own inescapable tempo. Overall, The films involve images of relativistic metronomes, Kentridge’s characteristic animations and charcoal figures, and an eccentrically parade-dance of vaudevillean silhouettes.

I've watched the piece twice, I feel like I’ve been progressively immersed in the work. Music and soundscape are continuous, as are the five videos, which are projected simultaneously on three of the walls. Soundtrack and moving images unfold in a sequence of what feels like about five sections that might be called ‘movements’ or ‘acts’; each has a distinct language in terms of image or sound repertoire, technique, genre and content. I think the Especially effective is the black hole theory sequence, one of the last in the video. The white streaks falling down a black background are almost ominous in the context of black hole theory. In my opinion, William tried to outline a history of our changing comprehension of time. 

Jorge Luis Borges - "Circular Ruins" & "The Library of Babel"

Circular Ruins

The circular ruins is the story of a long line of ancient wizards who project the notion of immortality through the art of cloning using some magical rites. An allusion to cloning is strongly supported by the idea that the Adam of the bible is just as imperfect as the Adam being created in the wizards dreams.The word “circular” in the title accurately describes the form that Borges’s story takes. At the end of the story the pieces fall neatly into place: Remembering that the dreamer erased all memories of his beginning from his son's mind, the reader recalls with new understanding the mysterious origin of the dreamer himself.The reader is never told where the dreamer comes from, except that it is upstream. His history is scanted, and he has no idea it is that he knows about the ritual of the fire god, or how he has acquired his magical powers. When the dreamer realizes that he is merely one revolution in a cycle, the reader realizes that the dreamer's memory has been wiped clean by his “father,” just as the dreamer has done for his “son.”

The Library of Babel

A short story yet vast in its attempt as an allegory of the universe. It explains man's endeavors at understanding the complexities of everything ever created, asking where and how and why our existence came about. The infinite hexagonal galleries signify how intense our universe is, and how it is expanding, both in the sense of space and of knowledge.

The library is said to contain everything that has ever been written, and everything that will be written, in all languages both dead and thriving. "The Library is a sphere whose exact center is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible." 

It is also said that man has tried and tried again to find the "circular book," that which is an allegory of God, and that which is a catalog of catalogs, but no man has ever seen this.

I really like the idea of the universe as a library, eternal and infinite. This is one of 阿labyrinth with the "wall" in a different understanding.

Final project -- Non linear

 
            Process:

Project 2 -- Long vs. Short

Project 1 -- Time Map

Response of Memento

Memento chronicles two separate stories of Leonard, an ex-insurance investigator who can no longer build new memories, as he attempts to find the murderer of his wife, which is the last thing he remembers. One story line moves forward in time while the other tells the story backwards revealing more each time.

The most significant manifestation of Leonard's injuries is that his short-term memory has been destroyed; he is incapable of retaining any new information, and must resort to copious note-taking and Polaroid photographs in order to keep track of what happens to him over the course of a day (he's even tattooed himself with a few crucial bits of information he can't get along without). That's exactly why the film can be intriguing in flashback. Because Leonard's mind was a puzzle, he cannot settle his memories in a forward order. So the movie was cohered by many piece of fragments, just like his mind labyrinth.

But in this obscure and recondite memory chaos, the director do give us a clear clue to follow the plot. The colored frame is flashback and the black-and-white is positive sequence.

Project 7 -- Fictional Documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvav7TUQl08

Our mockumentary is about the world-renowned musician Joe Hisaishi. He is a composer and musical director known for over 100 film scores and solo albums dating back to 1981. But in our storyboard, he is a musical artist with a congenital eye illness that lives in New York. His special vision gives him a unique way to observe the world and immerse himself in musical creation. Due to his particular disorder, he acts oddly that is different from ordinary people. So our fictional documentary was designed to record his daily life and tried to make audience standing in his shoes to see the world. 

In order to make the movie shots more diverse and professional, we used to cameras to complete shooting in different angles. The whole documentary accomplished in two scenes, one is actor's home, the other one is Washington Square. There are also tow interviews of related supporting actors to make the character more vivacious and picturesque, one is Joe's doctor, one is Joe's sister.