If film is a language, can birds make movies? An essay and two heretical descriptive systems
(2017)
author(s): Tim Ridlen
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
The work presented here uses the analogy of artists as talking birds and draws on research from cognitive ethology, linguistics, and film studies to ask, what kind of knowledge does art produce? Drawn diagrams and short structural videos illustrate but perhaps complicate or even obfuscate various parts of the text. The starting point is a 1966 film by Pier Paolo Pasolini, 'The Hawks and the Sparrows', alongside his essay published with the script, 'The Cinema of Poetry'. That text made a compelling argument about the nature of cinematic language, while his film imagined a world in which birds could speak. This essay – made up of text, drawn diagrams, and short video loops – takes the next logical step and asks, can birds make movies? The question is left unanswered, at least explicitly, and remains a figure or stand in for artistic forms of knowledge, research, and thought. This essay may not be of interest to those studying linguistics, cognitive ethology, or film history in earnest, but rather to those interested in visual forms of knowledge production and communication, humanistic explorations of the natural sciences, and the history of ideas.
This presentation is the first of a three-part series titled 'The Artist’s Field Library', an arrangement of essays and source materials that explore the mutually transformative relationship between art and the university. The second essay in the series deals with academic institutions as the site of artistic and political practices, as well as what stands to be won or lost, and the third deals with critical pedagogy.
Sense of Entangled Being, The Emotion of Awe in Weaving Towards Polyperspectivity
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Miranda Kistler
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
How has the concept of the sublime informed an unconsciously internalized world view throughout the history? And how could a mindset driven by the emotion of awe be a foundation for new understanding towards our environment as polyperspective?
Small elements all play a part in how we perceive. The choices of words we make, influence how we experience and how we define our reality. It becomes clear that to be aware of definitions and the use of words in a certain context, is crucial to avoid unconsciously misinforming our own perception and creating a reality we do not want to be in. Words create realities, realities we live in and others tap into when enforcing exchange. But would it be possible to alternatively inform an exchange that can reach beyond words and their established structures?
Sublime and awe are terms which often seem to come hand in hand. Some might refer to them as synonyms. However, the word ‘sublime’ from the contemporary perspective, has throughout history accumulated multiple connotations. It is thus that it differentiates itself from the word ‘awe’.
This research paper investigates the difference of the two linguistic definitions. By comparing the difference between the philosophical works on the sublime, by thinkers such as Longinus and Edmund Burke to contemporary psychological works on awe by Dacher Keltner. The paper investigates the sublime from its early origin up until its transformation into the contemporary time.
By tracing back the development and unfolding of the sublime experience with a focus on nature, into a sublime influenced by technology, the paper will come to speculate how nature of the modern age can then be experienced and perceived if modern technology is drawn away within that experience.
As a counter proposal, the paper will there conclude in proposing the emotion of awe as a new guiding concept in replacement for the sublime. Sublime has influenced a world view and ontology, with a perspective led by distinction for the majority of history. Awe will hold a new aim to foster interconnectivity and polyperspectivity between the human and the environment, making awe to become the new guiding concept for viewing interspecies relation between human, nature and technology of the future.
The Gāthās for Piano
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Saman Samadi
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This exposition represents a series of piano compositions of which the rhythmic structure is derived and developed from the language of Zarathustra's homonymous book of poems (The Gāthās), Gāthic or Old Avestan which belongs to the ancient Iranian language group that is a sub-group of Eastern families of the Indo-European languages. These pieces were formed by applying the poem's meter which is historically related to the Vedic tristubh-jagati family of meters. This project, in content, was inspired by the poems expounding on the divine essences of truth (Asha), the good-mind (Vohu Manah), and the spirit of righteousness.