Letter and Image by Massin (review)

Books 273 decades. They seek to take cinematic experiences out ofthe shadow ofmindless programmed thought into the light of creative perceptual activity. The audience is forced to become aware of its perceptions because the extraneous structures of drama are replaced by true cinematic design-structures that are intrinsic to their medium and, it is argued, to perception and 'the human condition, the universal subject of aesthetic activity' (p. 1). The author launches directly into 'synaesthetic' works after too briefa mention ofsuch artists as Antonioni, Godard, Fellini, Welles, Cocteau and Ray, whose films, although narrative, 'are not important for their plots or stories but for their design' (p. 70). In the 'personal' cinema exemplified by Stan Brakhage , Michael Snow and Will Hindle 'post-stylization ofunstylized reality results in an experience that is not "realistic" but neither is it "fiction" as generally understood ...' (p. 107). This is accomplished through combinations of cinema realism surrealism, constructivism (recording the process offilm-making), and expressionism (alterations due to lenses, lights, scratching, etc.). Some space is devoted to Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey', considered 'an epochal achievement ofcinema ... marred by passages of graceless audience manipulation and vulgar expositional devices . . .' (p. 139). A summary of the technical equipment deployed in the 'Stargate Corridor' sequence is included. Ofthe artists working entirely with film, the last to be covered is Jordan Belson, although here there is little technical information and much mystical speCUlation. The author proceeds to cybernetic cinema and computer films, with simple introduction of terms such as 'on-line', 'off-line', 'real time', etc. and mention of some commercial CRT/computer systems. The most fascinating part of this section concerns the invention and achievements (including a mechanical analog computer) of the Whitney family. Since 1966, John Whitney has been using IBM program GRAF (Graphic Additions to Fortran) in which the artist can directly interact with the computer's visual output, resulting in spectacular transmutations of geometrical structures . An elementary introduction to the TV camera, receiver, de-beaming, chroma keying, feedback, telecine projection, videotronic mixing, switching and editing is presented in the following chapter on 'television as a creative medium'. The author emphasizes that 'videotape is not television although it is processed through the same system' (p. 281) in his detailed account of synaesthetic videotape, including work done at KQED, San Francisco and WGBH, Boston by, for example, Nam June Paik, Loren Sears, Terry Riley and Aldo Tambellini. Paik's work includes 'videotronic distortions of the received signal, closed circuit teledynamic environments ' (p. 302) and sculptural pieces such as a near nude cellist whose music is input to the two miniature TV sets she wears as a bra. In the works discussed under Videographic 18 Cinema, 'film and video technologies have been synthesized, often through many generations of processing to achieve graphic character unique in the world offilm' (p. 317). Representative ofartists working on this horizon of visual art are Lutz Becker, Scott Bartlett, Tom De Witt and Jud Yalkut. The latter used Paik's TV works as basic material for Paikpieces. The last chapters of the book are somewhat anticlimactic after his foregoing account of video/film syntheses, discussing intermedia environments, mammouth expositions at the Montreal Expo '67 World's Fair and digressing into New York's 'Cerebrum' (psychedelic art gallery/night club/ neither) and some murky metaphysics on the evolution from Form to Structure to Space. The last piece of innovation, covered briefly, concerns research in holographic movies and the computer generation of them, (being done respectively by Hughes Research Laboratories and IBM). The author culminates his collation with conjectures on Technoanarchy. This final chapter suffers both from political naivete and pretentiousness by excluding any consideration of the 'politics' of IBM, Bell-Telephone, RCA, CBS, Kodak, etc. and focusing on the utopian image ofanarchic freedom that he believes is a necessary truth of natural order to be realized, finally, by our technological advances. In spite ofsome flaws, Youngblood's book is a vital testament to the beauty and changes evolving in cinema and television today. Letter and Image. Massin. Studio Vista, London, 1970. 285 pp., illus. £6.30. Reviewed by: Annette Gadney* Most people accept the written word merely as a vehicle for the information...