“Explorations of Visual Representation: Towards a Language of Movement” presented by Bowman
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Expanded Visual Spaces
Presentation Title:
- Explorations of Visual Representation: Towards a Language of Movement
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Since the invention of cinematography experimental cinema has undergone continual advances in both technology, aesthetics, and content. With the development of digital interactive technologies, these conventions are being challenged and reshaped. This paper examines the graphic representation of abstract interactive cinematic elements that seek to explore movement, time and space and build upon the graphic tools film-makers used in the early 20th century to express these elements and affect the cinematic language of movement into the 21st century.
Early pioneers of experimental film, such as Eggeling, Richter, Ruttmann explored a metaphorical and symbolic visual language of abstraction that defined spatial dynamics and temporal layering of movement, time and space (Le Grice 1979). These early explorations into the language of movement were conceptualized through unique systems of graphic representation that combined signs and symbols. They explored abstraction in the moving image though an “equivalence of opposites” (Richter 1952) analogous with musical and dance notation resulting in a fluid abstraction of geometric, organic and anthropomorphic forms. Later we see expansion of these considerations by Eisenstein in his seminal work on montage.
