Lists, Gestures, and Moods

In the Mystory I created, I intuited one possible instruction: create lists of moments when a word is used. In my experiment, I did this with the word "light." The difference is that in my experiment I was not necessarily thinking this in term of a state of mind, but rather linguistic cliches.

Lists were apparently a crucial aspect of Chinese poetics. According to Julien, the lists of particular configurations and gestures would suggest that "it is as if the Chinese using the lists would have no need to derive a more abstract concept fro any theory over and above what they themselves instinctively and actively feel to be the pertinence of shi through the cases listed" (112).

Ulmer has alluded several times to the Chinese way of explaining how to play a lute, so I figured that would be a good place to look for an instruction. First, positions are explained, then a sketch showing the position of the fingers, but opposite that sketch is a pose of an animal or landscape "corresponding in each case to the particular example of fingering." Finally a short poem, "positioned beneath this second sketch and facing the explanation, renders allegorical the state of mind suited to the posture or landscape depicted" (110).

This link between the external gesture and the internal state of mind I think is a crucial point for us. Julien suggests that these positions in movement "for us" require a "cinematographic" technique. Series of shi are like cross sections from continuous movement. They "represent not just any random slice of movement, but those that most fully exploit the powers of this dynamism and that are the most potentially effective" (114). What matters is this overall movement that can be grasped "at once" (Moment against Now if we are using the terms of Avatar Emergency).

I think this points toward a useful instruction because I found myself enacting this very process: what screenshot from my popular film had the potential to convey the dynamism in the scene. The dynamism for shi is grasping the overall "movement," but I'm not sure that we are looking for the movement, so much as the tiny detail (the punctum). The screenshot can be punctive and potentially powerful because we cannot see these minute facial gestures or details when we watch cinema. Slowing down frame by frame allows us to see the force (and perhaps the "invisible") meaning behind even the most banal gestures in a film. People have used this technique in courts as well in order to find "microexpressions" that might reveal someone is lying on the stand. We will look at this from within an aesthetic perspective rather than a legal one.

The instruction:  Use a screenshot, not necessarily from a movie, that shows the lines of force of the gesture/movement in that scene. The gesture and movement may seem insignificant, but through slowing down and isolating a "cross section" we can find those moments between the "visible and the invisible"

Additional Possible instruction: This may be obvious, but instead of using these still images to illustrate narrative, they will be "felted" like we did in the Mystory, layered on top of one another.