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Re: introduction to idiomorphic projects
Barbara Lattanzi
Dec 09, 2003 11:34 PST
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At 04:10 AM 11/30/2003, you wrote:
Whoa! Could you enlarge on that. Why "idiomorphic"? Which strategies? best, Brian ------------------------------ ------------------------------ Hello Brian. sorry for the bit of delay in reponding to your welcome questions. okay. here goes.. Regarding my "idiomorphic software" and your question about "why idiomorphic": the primary definition is simply dictionary-derived... idiomorphic - having the characteristic shape. Said of well-crystallized minerals. From Greek 'idio-morphos', having one's own form. I use the term "idiomorphic" to characterize the limited-scale software I have developed for use with time-based material (typically for use with quicktime videos). I came up with the term "idiomorphic" for a variety of reasons. 1st. "Idiomorphic" is meant to signal my objection to a form of software application that would encompass "all" possibilities of time-based editing/post-production used in film/videomaking. Examples of such applications are Final Cut Pro, Avid, Media 100, etc. By constructing other, strongly-specific software, I demonstrate that the "shopping list" functionalities of such industrial software are not neutral. Moreover, since industrial software strangles the ideas and practices of montage by sheer banality of its total tool array, "idiomorphic" is meant to signal an alternative. 2nd. The "idiomorphic software" label signals my objection to software-seen-as-tool that supposedly "frees" montage from technical constraints. To do this, these technical constraints ("transcended" by Avid, et.al.) must somehow be seen as separate from montage itself. In contrast to this mystification, with idiomorphic software, functionalities are themselves forms of montage, rather than subordinate substrate. 3rd. The "characteristic shapes" of idiomorphic software indicates that the software is meant to dialogue with the material to which it is applied and _explicitly_ with the montage strategies out of which it emerged. Therefore, each software program takes an idiosyncratic form, rather than some industrially-managed form that must be parametized for every occasion. Regarding your other question about "which strategies" I have "open-sourced" with Idiomorphic software: I mentioned structuralist and post-structuralist film strategies spanning 1970 to 1990. My idiomorphic software includes the following (among others): "HF Critical Mass", is based upon the procedural algorithm used in the1971 film, titled Critical Mass, by Hollis Frampton. It applies this algorithm to any viewer-selected quicktime video. It also parametizes the algorithm so that the viewer can dynamically change the duration values of 2 variables as she views the video. "EG Serene" is based upon the procedural algorithm of the 1970 film, "Serene Velocity" by Ernie Gehr. As with Frampton's film, this work by Gehr should not be viewed as remotely reducible to an algorithm. However, I "open source" a strategy of time-imaging that I claim that Gehr used. Strategies are not equivalent to the experience of a total work such as Gehr's film. However, strategies can be translated and refunctioned. In my version, the viewer-selected video is bisected so that playback between the resultant 2 segments can be alternated in a viewer-manipulable time-frame. "AMG Strain" is based upon Anne McGuire's deconstructive video reworking of the Hollywood feature, "The Andromeda Strain". Where McGuire reverses the sequence of the entire film and thereby "open sources" the mechanism of industrial modes of montage, I have tried in a more limited way to mimic this algorithm-of-reversal in my software. ----------------------------- I hope that this explanation is helpful and has not belabored the obvious. best regards, Barbara www.wildernesspuppets.net |
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