Guest artist / Pete Thornley

ABSOLUTE FILM: AN INTRODUCTION
The term ‘Absolute Film’ has not been used to describe the form of installation - using solid light projection, flying text ©P Thornley and a SI surround sound soundscape - that I am working on.
The following précis follows closely the text from Michel Chion’s description of Absolute Film in his book on Kubrick’s film ‘2001’ - Kubrick’s Cinema Odyssey BFI 1999, translated by Claudia Gorbman, 2001 especially Chapter 5 - Towards the Absolute Film, P112-155

SYNOPSIS
Absolute Film can be described as a “commutation; where there was nothing, suddenly there is something but this something can disappear in an instant.”¹ The inchoate, out of time, a presence of existence with no tangible reality which can appear as it disappears. “A death with no trace, no body, no eulogy or requiem.”² Purely an effect of space, time and colour. “Images and sound that start, precede or follow do not bother to reflect that which they are covering or erasing and over what they are written.”³ In this respect the space, installation, screen, shows itself for what it is, a multiple surface or area on which none of what lives and pulsates upon or within it becomes imprinted on the spectator /participant’s visual or aural cortex. So becoming its (the installation, space, film) own past, present and future activated only by the spectator/participant’s own “..mneme.” A moment, a trace, a vestige of this memory (mneme) is actualized by successive eye movements and aural signals registering to the brain audio and visual patterns which cannot be recognised as narrative.
Thus, the Absolute Film is impossible to situate by going back in time (traditional narrative) as spectators/participants will notice if they try to pinpoint a given part of a narrative event. What happens in Absolute film is “..the creation of a before and after, with holes, interruptions...” that could and can contain a moment of the event or a gap in the event. These are impossible to pin down as part of a narrative but can only exist as a mnomic experience. That is to say, the Absolute Film experience can only exist in memory and cannot be committed to traditional formats of recording as these formats cannot capture past, present and future all running concurrently, even though the parts that make up the live experience may consist of aural and visual pre-recorded material. It is my intention, to create an Absolute Film experience in my installation ‘Floating Light’©P Thornley Unlike previous manifestations of absolute film, my installation does not rely on the projected image but on the space between the projector and screen, creating solid light projections, not unlike Antony McCall’s work (to whom I am indebted). However, by using multiple projections and a surround sound soundscape, I hope my installation will move Absolute Film forward to new dimensions.

Bibliography 1. Michel Chion. ‘Kubrick’s Cinema Odyssey.Towards Absolute Film” BFI 2001 p112-118 2. Ibid ? 3. Ibid ? 4. Mneme (see below) 5. Ibid Michel Chion. As above ‘Mneme’ – “The capacity which a living substance or organism possesses for retaining after- effects of experiences or stimulation undergone by itself or progenitors.” Oxford Dictionary Contact petethornley@googlemail.com

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