School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
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ItemPaul Verhoeven and his hollow men(La Trobe University, 2001)
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ItemThe frenzy of the visible: spectacle and motion in the era of the digital( 2000-02)During my first viewing of The Matrix (Wachowski Brothers, 1999) I found my vision bombarded by imagery and sensations more akin to theme park rides like the Spiderman attraction at Universal Studios' Islands of Adventure in Florida. My visual and aural faculties were plunged into a state of disorientation that constituted a physical assault on my senses. Not only was an array of framing effects and camera movements employed - from high velocity pans, tracks and fast paced edits, to 360° camera somersaults - but there was motion and there was lots of it! Bodies, cameras, sound and visual effects - everything moved and it moved fast, even when 'bullet-time' speed was visualised through slow motion techniques. Here's a film that's dictated above all by the speed of the image: within the filmic space (with its economically ordered narrative and fast paced action); within the production space (with its special effects and high velocity stylistic techniques); and within the audience's space (in the capacity the film has in affecting us on a highly charged sensory level).
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ItemHope: an e-modulating motion of deterritorialization( 2004)What keeps people going after an experience or encounter with an event that damages their sense of human vitality? The sense that is essential for a human organism to function properly: the will to live. The innate drive and joy of encounters and gleaning of skills which children own: the will to play. What causes the loss of one's possession of the will to joy; the curiosity inherent in the pursuit of the unfamiliar or the barely glimpsed; the production of fresh emotional responsiveness with which to claim an experiential event? What reduces the movement and modulations of emotion - e-modulating-motion - to an immobile point? An event that can cause the neural mapping of the traumatized body to return a message to the brain that says 'indifference' or 'despair', causing the body to undo its resident emotion of learned wonder. After a 'bomb sandwich', as Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf referred to the United States' practice of alternately dropping bombs and food over Afghanistan, what forms of hope or revelation could possibly be conveyed to the body of the receiver? The will to eat in the affective zone of probable pain, disability and death.