Metaphor, Machine and the Artistic Labyrinth

        In his last work, "L'Isola del Giorno Prima", Umberto Eco describes a complex mechanical aparatus for constructing metaphors, devised by an intellectually curious XVII-th century monk. Father Emanuelle has assigned himself the laborous task of ordering all possible words according to category. They are then placed in separate compartments, each bearing a different category. Through the rotation of the compartments, they relate to each other vertically and horizontally thus producing an extensive set of mechanically obtained metaphors. The art of the "gracious speaker" is then to choose among the formidable variety the one metaphor that best conveys the intended idea.
       The metaphor producing machine of Umberto Eco is the ultimate metaphoric machine and an insightful metaphor of the "thinking" machine in regard to human creation. In a sense, it is a primitive image of the computer as its prototype, and as such brings up the basic questions about the creative dynamics between human and machine.
       A potentially infinite, or should I say quantitatively inconceivable by the human mind, variety of possible metaphors stares with challenging indifference at the artist whose task is to choose the sublimest of them all. The machine extends the artist's mind by allowing him access to conceptual material he wouldn't instantly think of in such a formal diversity and quantitative plentitude. In other words, he is given a seductive opportunity to just pick and appropriate a beautiful form that is offered graciously from without. But is this relationship really so elegant and generous. Isn't it, at best, a miniature simulation of human creativity where the machine is a finite substitute of the infinite variety that the thesaurus of the universe offers the artistic mind, and at worse, a mental prothesis offered to the lazy at heart.
       Whatever the 'thinking' machine, it's seductiveness is undeniable. The sleek, swift, brainless approach to producing meaningful information is a fascinating property itself. It widens the artist's horizon, or rather spreads his mind, as a thin layer, over the field of variety, focusing his gaze on the glittering surface of a metaphoric expansion. He is now far more prone to the seduction of all those semi-meaningful, yet amazing by virtue of their unexpectedness, combinations. And this is precisely what happens to Umberto Eco's character: although he promises to finally deliver the ultimate metaphor of "dwarf", he ends up reciting dozens of them until, exhausted, the author cuts him off with a polite applause. Has Father Emanuelle failed to deliver his promise or has he pointed at the impossibility of the ultimate metaphor's existence?
       It is no coincidence that the 'thinking' machine has flourished in the age of market economy where variety of material production promises choice at the expense of the consumer's oversaturated gaze that ultimately incapacitates him to focus on a single item. An abundance of choice amputating the ability to choose and individual preferences are sublimated into mass responsibility/consumption. The distinct individual becomes an average consumer.
       As implied by its very term, mass production is conceived to satisfy the average human not the individual one, thereby promoting human unification. On the other side of this process stand the producers working with the technology that can bring forth this unification. And although it might seem that the producers are assigned the task of conceiving an 'average' product through 'mediocre' effort, it is a specificity of technology itself to promote 'mediocritization' of the creative process.
       In "The Ethical Superstition of the Reader" Jorge Luis Borges writes that "the page, called for immortality, can pass through the fire of typing mistakes, of approximate versions, of abscent-minded readings, of incomprehensions, without losing its soul in the trial." (trans. auth.) (1) Technology in general and computer technology in particular promise to free humanity from such trials. In literature it can be seen from top to bottom - paper has become glossier and more time resistant, printing techniques finer, inks deeper and more durable for a smashing visual representation, computer programs have virtually eliminated typos, speeding up substancially the writing process itself. While the advantages in storing and easing the production and dissemination of information are undeniable, how do new technologies ammeliorate or change the quality of the information itself is a question of much equivocacy. In a sense, computer technologies promise to seal the artwork's soul, or the lack of it, under the guise of impeccable formatting.
       And since talking without examples is mere eloquence, I shall proceed in a more illustrative fashion that would hopefully clarify the basis of my arguments. My direct aesthetic involvement with new computer technologies came up recently as a result of an immediate necessity to save certain documentary footage I had shot in poor video quality. Well, I have been aware all along that to be a 'professional' I had to have more than a fleeting idea of available techniques and media. Moreover, by virtue of my own experience, I have been convinced that every new technique or medium opens a new window of aesthetic considerations and inevitably stimulates the imagination in another direction. Yet, I wouldn't give priority to computer technologies, despite the hype surrounding them, for no other apparent reason but the fact that, in a certain sense, I've always been a Heckelian type, one whose "individual development mirrors the historical one."
       Anyway, my excursion through the available programmes applicable to cinema went far beyond my immediate necessity to save the footage. Like Umberto Eco's metaphor producing machine, computer technologies offer and promise ever better ways to assemble and treat the film material so as innumerable variations come at the filmmaker's immediate disposal. These variations take place in space as well as in time and their medium-specific dynamics entail an aesthetic variation in terms of methodology that allows the medium to function in its own right. However, while I shall come back to the question of computer art's authonomy, right now I shall limit my exploration to its applications in film.

       Unquestionably, computer editting programmes represent a time saving, and in a sense more economical, substitute of both video and traditional film editting techniques. As an inherent bonus, they allow the filmmaker to follow his train of thougth more intimately and with the benefit of immediate visualization.
       Getting my hands on these programmes reminded me of a daydream I had in my adolescence of inventing a machine that could record one's thoughts so as to capture their peculiar immediacy, their instant shifts and dives as they appear unobstructed by the somewhat sensoring conductivity of an intermediary device. How much even the simplest of media as a pen could alter or direct our thoughts is evident by the simplest test - one should only try to write down whatever comes to mind, to be convinced that shortly after the beginning, the logic of the already written text starts guiding him according to its logic. The mind goes faster than the hand and soon the only memory and reason of one's thoughts are those recorded in the text.
       The computer programme, much like the machine of my dreams, approaches the thought process rather intimately. It allows the editor to cut and paste the shots in a fashion most closely following his thought process. Time is cut down, giving in to the immediate space of the shots schematically exposed on the monitor in their full lenght. Without fear of overcutting and without the temporal obstruction of rewinding the entire film, The editor can change their positions and check out the result almost instantly. The minimization of time as the scene of chaos is translated into space as the scene of order. The editor is now in full control and at no risk whatsoever.
       While video editting is extremely restrictive in terms of temporal linearity, film editing allows for certain spatial freedom - a shot can be easily unspliced and pasted elsewhere without the need to remake the entire already edited sequence. The temporal constraint of video editing is the exact opposite of computer editing where the filmmaker is given full spatial control over the material. These three techniques promote three different thought processes that come through in respective aesthetic specificities.
       Editting video presupposes detailed knowledge of the material and its architectonic organization prior to the editting process. It requires a 'musical' thinking, a capacity to visualize the movement of the film through time from beginning to end. Combined with the low cost, shooting maneuvarability and availability of the medium, video is prone to deliver substantial quantities of footage to be dealt with in the editing machine. Having to go throught the shots consecutively, the editor is extremely limited in his possibilities to try editing versions and to even trim the shots down with matching precision. The resulting aesthetics has a rougher edge, an appeal more immediate in terms of artistic control. This is amplified by the visual quality of video, with its harsh light deleneations and blunt colours. All these convey a low cost, low quality, 'documentary' feel that focuses on what happens in the frame rather than how it is manipulated for a full sensory conviction. Respectively, video art as an authonomous artistic discipline of the medium has necessarily defined itself as rather concept oriented.
      Film editting, in its turn, allows more liberty on the editing table where many new decisions are made to the point of sometimes fully defying the original intention of the film-maker. Fine trimming and matching of shots is among the main aesthetic advantages of this technique, allowing for a greater sense of control and contextual image manipulation in the final product. However, trying different shot combinations is still a laborous process - one has to go back and forth through the film, find his way through a forest of 'unattached' shots, trim them down according to their new positions and often splice them elsewhere if the combination hasn't worked out. So, despite this freedom of manipulating the film in space, the editor must carefully consider and keep down his choices to a reasonable minimum, while preserving a certain 'musical' vision of the film as a whole. Film editting, like video, thus remains quite open to lucky chances and to possibilities of reconsidering mistakes, or of turning defects into effects.
      Rather thriumphantly, computer technology puts an end to all this. It offers the perfect solution to the problems of both video and film editing. It is clean, fast and liberal. Like Umberto Eco's machine, it can open up a range of possibilities with a click of a button, it can also play along the lines of the editor's mind as closely as technologically possible. In short, it promises to free the editor of all physical burdens and leave him alone with his ideas. Moreover, computer video programmes are never confined to the function of editting. They offer a mindblowing range of possibilities to rework, enhance and change the look and the quality of the picture itself.(2) Thus editing is enhanced by the simultaneous availability of optical effects - the new machine can painlessly join the two processes together.
      The space in which computer post-production takes place is soft, fluid, manageable and evading. It is a symbol of space for it contracts, implodes, packs up and miniaturizes the expansion of physical space. If the film rushes constitute the rough material of words, of symbols waiting to be organized in cinematic sentences, the rushes replicated in the computer are symbols of those symbols, i.e. they are fully abstracted from their physical reality, transplanted in an abstract space. The film looses its tactility and becomes a mirror image of the mind's eye. The physicality of the rough material can no longer determine the creative process the way film or video do. It poses no specific to its physicality limitations: the medium as material is suspended, the artist needs to obey it no more. A film directly shot with digital equipment observes the same rules although it is not displaced mediumwise. The very nature of digital technologies is to cut through the physicality of information. The objective of 'economizing' intellectual processes by packing their functions in the same 'symbolic' space grants the mind an ultimate authority and takes away the chance of external interferences.

       My initial problem with the footage I needed to rework was the appearance of red halo wherever the colour was in frame, and it was there all along. For a number of reasons that had to do with the technical problem as well as with the semantics of the imagery, I wanted to go for a particular B&W quality that would focus the viewer's attention on the person documented rather than on his heavily image-invested environment. Well, it turned out it wasn't that simple after all. And not because the technology was difficult to work with or unavailable, but because it was too available. Suddenly, a miriad of previously unconsidered possibilities opened up in front of me. I could use hundreds of effects to change the overall look of the image and I could even remake the whole image according to my particular requirements by working on it frame by frame in Adobe Photoshop through Adobe Premiere or directly in Adobe After Effects which was miraculously available to me at the time. Finding myself amazed and incapable to neglect such opportunities, I decided to make my aesthetic point even clearer by keeping the person's figure in colour while the background would stay in B&W. I refuse to comment on this idea, it sufises that I actually just confessed it.
       Next, I had all those possibilities of optical effects that I hadn't even tried. And I had to. I found myself very close to Father Emanuelle as he was trying to find the perfect metaphor for 'dwarf'. I was trying for a perfect visual metaphor and couldn't set myself on anything less than three of them. It took me a while to finally return to my original idea and settle for the Video Toaster which would do just as well as the state-of-the-art Adobe After Effects. In short, I ended up going through exhausting variations to find out they were tasteless versions of my initial idea. My final salvation came thanks to the fact that, incredibly, I had managed to preserve my sanity throughout the trial.
       In "The Secret Wonder" (3) Jorge Luis Borges's character, the sentenced to death writer Hladik, dreams that he is wandering in a library. The librarian tells him that tere is a book in the library's extensive collection and God is in one of the letters of that book. Many generations have searched for that letter and haven't found it. As they talk, a person comes to return an atlas. Hladik takes the atlas, opens a page and points randomly at a letter. The Voice of God thunders out.
       Wether this was really the letter or Hladik could have communicated with God throughout any letter remains a secret. What is more important here, is the parallel that making a choice for an artist could be viewed as close to Hladik's experience. An artist's talent is to be able to tune in to God's voice through any letter or to sense His presence in the one and only as it is fleeting by with many others. In other words, the true artistic choice happens elsewhere, all the rest follows from there.
       I never got scared of the poor quality of my video footage. All the material I needed was there, the shooting mistake was only a detail. It actually gave me the idea of going for B&W faster than I would've otherwise realized its aesthetic necessity for the film. Thus the obstruction became my instrument of focus. Having focus meant semantically validating a technical choice that later became the rope that saved me from irretrievably sinking in the plentitude of pointless choices. Sometimes a mistake can become an exterior equivalent to an inner sense of direction, it can provide a guideline, a purpose and even an insight into the work in process. This was one of those times.
      According to a writer I once 'accidentally' heard on TV, there was only one particular word that could follow the one already written. The aesthetic choices that take place in artistic production in order to communicate the original vision are determined by that letter, word, image that preceed, follow or, even better, abide elsewhere... And even if a mistake, an accident, an unpredicted distraction happens along the way, the artist does not necessarily need to 'correct' it. Sometimes all he needs is to recognise the particular resonance of God's Voice in it to find it's place within the text of the art-work, or to leave it out.

       The main implication of this experience was that perfect control over the material can result in loss of control over one's mind. Technical impecabillity can easily become an aesthetics in itself and divert attention away from the aesthetic content it is due to serve. With new computer technologies this impecabillity ceases to be a matter of the artist's skill as it is inherent in the technology itself. Going digital means that one can hardly go wrong in regard to technical quality. A mistake-proof technology is seductive in the sense of easy, accessible, mass-oriented. Not surprisingly, high-tech representation is gaining momentum as an aesthetic criterion that caters to an ever wider audience. And to an ever expanding mass producer.
       "Filmwork is made a de facto 'low-budget' or ' big-budget' product. This is what one constantly hears and has come to say it oneself. 'Low-tech', 'high-tech', 'high class junk', 'low-grade footage.' Pressure, money, bigness does it all..." (4)
       Computer technologies fit perfectly in this scheme of "control and standartization of images and sound". They promote an aesthetic uniformity that threatens to overtake the domain of larger public-oriented filmmaking.
       All the discoursive rhetorics surrounding new cyber technologies attempt to establish the computer as a self-contained alternative reality rather than another medium in the service of man. How ridiculous this idea is becomes apparent if only one gets back in time and imagines people defending the telephone or the radio as alternative realities. It is undeniable that these media have qualitatively changed the dynamics of human communications and have quantitatively changed space in terms of communication, but they have come as appendixes, as tools in a reality that has always been there. As far as reality goes, the only option for its multiplication on the socio-cultural plane is given by the sphere of art where an individual can conceive and construct a realm objected to its own particular laws. The media as such can only provide alternative ways to communicate information in yet another way, on yet another spatial scene at yet another temporal rate.
       But, as I've already argued elsewhere (5), the ideological craze with computer technologies is deeply rooted in contemporary society's obsession with control. What I'm talking about is not the liberating control over oneself, but the illusionary conceptual substitute of freedom as control over the environment in its broadest sense. Technological ideology does not tollerate chance, accident, unpredictability - computer technologies, in their turn, are emblematic for this aspiration to minimize external obstacles to human will. Not surprisingly, 'high-tech' aesthetics gains so much momentum in an age overwhelmed with the utopia of power.
       With all the convenience, precision and control that computer technologies grant the artist, why do they still ring somewhat aesthetically false? For one thing, perfect control is like a story with a happy end - it is complete in itself, it satisfies, it leaves no questions, it terminates itself. When I was a child, the only fairy tails I really loved were those of Hans Christian Anderssen and those of Oscar Wilde because they always left me thinking about the story long after I had heard it. I would have the same fairy tale read to me over and over again, always hoping that this time something would change and the story would finally be brought to a happy closure. But it wasn't and so, for me, it went on and on, forever... An infinite realm had opened to my mind with the promise to magically never give a single answer. An artwork that doesn't promise this infinity is mere entertainment. (6)
       Some may object that I'm spreading my argument beyond the subject of computer technologies as a medium. It is however, the semantic implication of the medium itself that should be considered before the medium is applied effectively as an artistic device. If Marshal McLuhan was a little overzealous in stating that the medium is the message, it is nonetheless true that the medium is a message. This can hardly be overlooked if one is to understand a medium's holistic significance and the semantic connotations of its applications.

       One of the reasons I previously examined so closely the different processes of film post-production (video, film and computer) was to illustrate how the very dynamics of the work process dictates subtle aesthetic shifts and thus, on a basic level, represents different aestetic approaches. The creative process in film as well as in all other arts starts with the first idea and ends with the last splice, or stroke, or note, that renders its physicality. The way the artist deals with the material through the instrument of post-production is part of that process and inevitably contributes to the aesthetic whole. The instrument of post-production dictates the spatio-temporal directions that may immediately affect the artistic choice and combination of material beyond the artist's initial expectations. This is not to say that, by cutting through physicality, computer technologies are suspended from such functional specificity as creative medium. Their ephemeral physicality is their specificity, but its exhaustive aesthetic exploration should be reserved to computer video art as an authonomous field responsible for fully elaborating the characteristics of its authonomous approach. As long as cinema is concerned, computer art and computer technologies can only be integrated as new functional additions to the already existing reality of film production.
      In one of his essays (7) Voltaire argues against the idea of the world's imperfections with an allegory of a beautiful sculpture made of all kinds of materials - gems, noble metals, cheap stone, mud and anything that could be put to aesthetic use to the end of the artwork's evocation. The work is sublime regardless of the fact that it's not made entirely out of precious material, or precisely because of it.
       In much the same fashion different media can be effectively used alongside, in the same film-work, as long as they are aesthetically sound in regard to the work's idea. Cinema is the discipline of the art of moving images, film is just the medium and if it has to be transgrassed, it very well can if the 'intruding' medim conveys better the idea it comes to express. Thus the semantic implications of video as a rough edged, immediate conductor of imagery, with the respective range of semantic implications, can be used to convey a sense of reality that would otherwise have to be more descriptively rendered in terms of film language. Depending on the particular style and aesthetic vocabulary of the artist, computer video can be used in much the same fashion to convey, for one thing, smoothness and control over the reality it depicts. In other words, Voltaire's allegory could come to represent an attitude, an approach toward a more medium-free, media-inclusive aesthetic approach, immune to technical ideology and focused on the nature of aesthetics in its mental/physical entirety.

(2) Although computer optical effects and image treatment are still more widely available for video than film (computer film enhancement is still quite costly), they have been a standard service offered by film labs for long enough to be established as a standard practice and to become part of the predominant movie look.

(5) Pelovska, Iona, "Virtual Terrorism and Aesthetic Subversion", 1997 (unpublished)
Pelovska, Iona, "Terrorizing the Cartesian Man", 1997 (unpublished)

(6) Here I'm not excluding genres, such as comedy, that presuppose a 'happy' end, for a good comedy can still have an 'open' end.

(7) Just for the record, I can't provide bibliography since I've read this particular book by Voltaire many years ago and I don't have it at my disposal.

McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, New York: Signet Books, 1964