video web log [-\\/] video blog

24.1.01 melbourne

second critique on movement (2:00/1:48)

movement is temporal duration and not objects moving. the simplest and most obvious example of such movement is sound. music and speech are the canonical forms of such movement, even where this may not ordinarily be thought as movement.

movement is not equivalent to the representation of movement, but is qualitative change. you cannot unsay what is said, it is not reversible (unlike movement in cartesian space).

sound in screen based digital environments appears to require a visual substrate (an interface). this visual substrate is used for choice and presentation of continuous or contiguous segments. mp3 and its 'revolution' is a minor change within this apparatus. sampling is a major change.

sound artefacts routinely seek continuity and the security of temporal occupation which stands to duration as visual movement stands to 'real' movement. [sound ≠ time ≡ represented movement ≠ 'real' movement (qualitative change).]

silence is not a null condition in relation to sound. (as no choice is not in relation to hypertext.)

the reassembly of sound into new contiguous series is a given (mp3, playlists, randomising CD's, party tapes, home toasted cds). sound's impermanence has ensured that it has not been hypostatised into hierarchies of form. the essence of this is not in the technological felicity of the reproductive apparatus but in its repetition. songs, sounds, words, always repeat, are always repeated, are constituted as much in their repetition as in their singularities.

reproduction facilitates and reflects this repetition. sound formally celebrates its only existence as possible futures in its moments of actualisation. this rarely seems to be the case with the moving image, it is apparently hard to make, sell, persuade, with a movie, tv show, serial with a redundant chorus. unless it is advertising. or sport.

sound is regularly invisible to the extent that it is dedicated to the naturalisation of the image. sound, outside of radio or sound art, has some difficulty asserting its own authority. perhaps the materiality of the image is able to co-opt that which is already awaiting actualisation?

sound effects on mouse events are similarly naturalising. they invite us to be a tad less bright than pavlov's salivating puppies. rollover and get your tummy tickled.