A medlee way between narrative non narrative

A meddle way Between Narrative and non-narrative, Environmental Sound in a Summer Home

©By Abdel Hernandez San Juan

Written and composed in English 

by Abdel Hernandez San Juan

  An statement thinking about sound and music in film and cinema starting from the concept or the idea of silence can be conceptually interesting to an occasion focused on sound and music. Silence is the opposite of sound and music or the symbol of no sound but at the same time the concept from which sound need to be related to be defined as a sound itself, silence or not sound seen as the opposite pair or as the other side of sound as sound need silence to be sound and silence sound to be silence, each one need the other to be itself. 

  The previous issue remember how Hegel defined and discussed the relation of mutual necessity and oppositions between major pairs, between being and nothing, for example, even considered out of existential parameters, when the idea of nothing appear not as an emptiness of being, of not feeling or feeling nothing, which by the way is also needed by being to know the opposite of his feelings, but regarding nothing for example as the opposite of being in the idea of infinity or in the idea of the consistency of becoming.

   A being is nothing without a becoming and a becoming is nothing without a being, to be it have to become and to become it have to be, but becoming if we stay asking about it itself seems to be, paradoxically, like a nothing to a being, each one need its pair as one with itself, being to be need to become as one with itself inside its own self and becoming need being to become, in the same manner sound need silence to sound and silence need sound to silence and there is in fact sound in silence and silence in sound. 

  The question, however, is about why are we thinking about this relation currently to think about sound and music in film and cinema. Aleatorism itself, in fact, grow up and started from music pointing out from the beginning this relation between sound and silence as experimental to music and by the way to music and sound inside film and cinema.

   The point I would like to discuss out here about, however, is the diagnosis of a certain contemporary generalized situation that tend to opposite narrative, anecdotic or mimesis on the one side and fragments on the other in contemporary film and cinema and by the way to how music and sound use to be usually explored in it, like it happen between for example, the so-called artistic photography and documentary or testimonial photography or between very functional architecture versus a very aesthetic, artistic and or formalist stylized architecture or between utilitarian arts such as ceramics and artesanies missregarded as minor arts versus the very fine art, there is to me in film and cinema currently a similar situation between narrative and non narrative or narrative versus fragmentary in contemporary film, on the one side lineal plots of dramaturgical arguments mimesis reality following an Aristotelian anecdotic sequence of introduction, considered as a presentation of the issue or theme, the characters and their contexts, the evolution of their relations to a nude climax and then it final issue end or outcome with music and sound helping and or mainly reinforcing that relations and on the other less or counternarrative films toward fragments in which sound and music play a more aleatorial, experimental and sometime environmental place.

  While I am not saying that the relation can be stablished in the same manner than the previous examples of the plastic arts, there are however several reasons to stand why experimental film seems to prefer to usually go on the way to fragments an attention back to the diminute elements consistence of the things. 

  If we are on the way to pay attention to fragment everything in fact revolves around decomposing something in it parts or deconstructing a whole to see the more infinitesimal elements in which it consist and by the way it is a form to look for or go to its origin, there is in fact a relation between fragments an a certain return to an state of things before being reduced to or evolved within a whole while in the case of sound and music in film and cinema it means instead of sound and music over contents an attention to the more diminute elements consistence of what a sound is in its ontology and by the way its relation with it inclusive opposite pair, silence. 

  In usual narrative films for example a young girl is living with her mom in the village and with the new husband of her mom, then her phater is living in a letlee village out of town and the movie should show her life between her everyday life activity going to school and back home daily within her family situation at her age, her mom with a new husband and her dad out of town, how to build a dramaturgical argument psychologically convincing, something that can be the life of many girls in society, of course, this choice example can be seen in society as a fragment to a certain point as well as there is the possibility to build it using fragmented methods more or less such as, for example, playing her mom character always as a voice in off but never appearing in scene and playing her as something when the girl is older and all we are seen as daily presented as her memories when she was young, but the story should run out a convinced narratives in terms of dramaturgic and the psychology of the characters in regard to reality meaning in regard to a mimesis on how the viewer have an experience on young girls in society with a similar life, here the fragment is used only as a toll to something else, it is being used as a toll of box to create a whole that at the end will be composed again by a certain lineal narrative. 

   Now I think, to put an example that is not going toward a complete fragmentation that Brian Deutzman film a summer home is a good example that he is trying to explore a way in the middle of the two extremes, there is not in his film a fragmentation but the creation yet of another new whole that is being spiritual and metaphysical with an idea of a unity and certainly when fragment are not always meanings of chaos or fragmentation as tend to be the case in many artists who working with fragments become themselves fragmented and their work fragmented while there is a moment in fragment when aleatorism conceal like in galaxies and the universe with an idea of harmony, however, aleatorism is still and yet a pivotal concept to understand it and John cage was the founder of aleatorism, his famous concert one hour of silence can be conceptually an example here, cage as the one who first explored this collecting of recording of sounds from everyday life and composed with that. 

  Cage was not himself in the field of film and cinema, certainly, but of music and conceptualism but I would like to say that through the concept of fragment in collecting sounds as given in everyday life and doing Aleatorials compositions with it Cage was exploring the possibility of fragments while to me one of the main characteristics of film currently is a tendency to stay far from the idea of a linearity or a lineal narrative, a reaction to diachronsm usual and predominant in most of the so-called experimental films today and yesterday. 

  But when I say that there is another way to see how to explore the possibilities of fragments to create another kind of wholes or aesthetic whole to the film as in Deutzman I am speaking on something that still need a more aleatorial relation between parts with the whole. 

  There is in Deutzman film yet when less than many others an exploration of a way to relate elements or parts to the whole of the film, the aesthetic whole less narrative toward a more aleatorial way to relate the elements or parts with the whole, instead of the Aristotelian linear parameter of introduction, climax and conclusion subordinated usually the film to a dramaturgical linear narrative or to a mimesis of reality, it is a way to see who to compose a whole in which the parts are related through fragments, a more significant place to fragment, this is then the aleatorial character of music and sound in his film including as main the sound of the cellular phone and the voice, while I remember it worked generally in the film as environmental sound.

  However according to him music and sound is being overwhelming film since many decades to currently, he explains that usually in contemporary film the viewer can even close his eyes and understand the whole movie by just listening the music and the voice so that image is being progresibly only a supplement and that he is interested in the opposite sour of move seen how to obtain a more near and interrelated relation between sound, music and image, he mentioned his experience to do the sound and music of his film a summer home when everything was filmed silently and the girl did the film music and sound proposal, she is an specialist in computers sounds more than in music, but composed it to his movie, he discussed this issue of the overwhelming of sound and music in his own generation in usa filmmakers today and also evoked the time of silent cinema of the earlier XX century when silence was pivotal as not sound or, to place my theory of the beginning as another way to sound, and he mentioned how surrealism and neorealism can be seen today.

  Regarding his accent to get a more interrelated relation between image and sound I am thinking about the case of Philip glass movies Koyaniscapsi and powaskatsi in which the first one a half of the movie consisted about recording images of nature in a very slow motion like galaxies, the sky, the sea, a desert, the nature phenomena’s in close up and details in a very slow motion with a Philip glass music played permanently as sound in a very abstract form both visual and sound toward the very slow motion images of modern civilization like buildings of downtown in new York, or people in consumer activity in the commercial molls, and walking the street and the cars in a very slow motion with the music back as well as powaskatsi slow motion about ritual from people in primitive Africa, a very close up slow motion of the jumping in a ritual dance, to progresibly slow motion images of ritual in modernity and technology with again Philip glass music in the background.

  The case of silent film in the earlier XX century was related with a very theatrical way to mise in scene the relation between text and image, every sequence was following the next one framed with a text, that mise in scene of the relation between text and image supposed to theater an innovation to parameter of dramaturgy but stablished at the same time at least to the current situation with film, an strong subordination of the visual to dramaturgic while to Brian in Chaplin films the body performance of the actor was very important the actor body movements as pivotal to understand everything and that film founded in image and the visual not on sound and music.

  To be back on the issue of the beginning I would like to relate this concepts of sound and silence as a major pair of both mutual inclusivism and opposite sides predominant in the ways experimental music has gradually infinitesimalized fragments of sound to progresible transform the piece of music in a more conceptual piece and in the case of film and cinema to transform in a conceptual phenomena the ways to relate music and sound with, through and within it–lees subordinated to a textual sense of drama--a more conceptual way to stablish and make work music and sound in its relation to image and the viewer experience.

  For sure this is a phenomena that can be equally diagonized regarding preferences to pairs paradoxes in experimentalism like for examples the relation between writing and the white page in several modalities of experimental or creative writing when the word as a graphic phenomena visually unfold on the page starting to explore its relation with literacy letting speak in the production of sense and meanings the emptiness of writing, spaces of no writing or simply the white spaces in between words or an empty page, or in the case of contemporary installation letting speak the while walls or simply the opposite of an object like it was in certain conceptualist exhibits like the idea of the white cube when exhibiting nothing but just the concept of the space empty taked the place of the supposed to be piece and or object to be showed.

  While in the visual art of the plastic side such a phenomena can be understand from the pair present and absences, more related to its visual nature there is too certain relation between objectood as matter and non object as inmaterial that suggest or remember something of the inmaterial nature of the non object or not matter, something usual in music, and the way experimental music is being exploring aleatorism since cage such like the electroacoustic move is being stimulated with similar questions, inquiries and motivations.

  From the moment a sound is being seen as a diminute ontological element or fragment the attention of a musicology on it turn to extend and or explore how to see music in ordinary sounds and by the way extend the domains of what can be considered music, like it happens with ready made in the visual arts when any object from everyday life not considered art started to be accepted, the turn of aleatorism in music opened a possibility to accept any sound from nature, everyday life and ordinary environments, while at the same time it helped to understand sound in it relation with silence opening a field to compositions of very complex experimental music like the acoustics and atmospheric character of very classic and elaborated music around the relation between sound and silence as a conceptual one, and on how the sound of silence tend to be the primary conceptual form of a sound inside it as a musical phenomena itself.

  Now this play with opposite pairs is not simply a play toward fragments or aleatorials it is also related with a way to build sense and meaning. 

   Such an imaginary of the sound seen from the pair sound-silence founded the conceptualization of music and entrance to film and music in a form that considerably changed how music and sound started to be explored within it.

  While Deutzman film can be considered as an exploration in the middle of the two extremes of over narrativized films on the one hand and Aleatorials or toward fragmented films, on the other, the case of music and sound in his film –a film that still have a certain story between a mother and her douther, her grandfather and a certain family story around a hotel, seem to be explored as environmental and as the more aleatorial element within his movie –mostly here the two main or first plane sounds, the wireless cellular one and the voice usually addressed through that phone in between Karin and her mother, when certainly there is also, without forgetting the very focused play of photography, a certain relation between free images and sound in the film, like the flashing of the screen effects of television or the sound of the sky ready to raining interrelated, to mention one example, as possibly a dialogue around Brian accent to interrelate visual image and sound more nearly.

  To end this approach I would like to finish with examples of very quotidian and or everyday life sound collected, recorded and late include inside a composition in anthropology and installation, the sound, for example, in my own work of anthropology the market from here: mise in scene and experimental ethnography I bring and presented at rice university back yard sewall hall in Houston during the spring of 1997 which included the recording of everyday life sounds of the Venezuelan markets played as environmental sound permanently like the sound of the vendors sailing the merchants both vendors in a place and mobile ones sailing, the sound of the wind on mobiles and sonajeros, campanitas in the popular markets and of the car traffic and urban surround and of animals, etc., the sound of washing the clothes in the barrio in Juan Carlos Rodriguez installation as I presented inside my curatorial series of exhibits on rice campus spring 97 and the sound of the sea in cristina Jadic artists from Texas exhibit titled “The sound of silence” recreated environmentally with materials and photography’s of the sea the gulf coast beaches environments, something Deutzman defined as immersive installations.

Notes

I want to express spetial thanks regarding this paper and conference to two friends of mine who remembered to me in recent years the major work of John Cage, to Terrell James for her regard of the San Francisco Art Institute paper on the exhibit of Mariana de Ball dedicated and inspired in Cage, to Alejandro Frometa by his presentation to me of Cage Concert Silence and to Surpic Angelini who participated with Cage in several performances in California

This paper is my conference to a panel titled Thinking in Sound and Music in Cinema and immersive installations, with lecturers Abdel Hernandez San Juan and Brian Deutzman to be discussed at the primavera sound music festival of Barcelona pro mid-april, Spain, 2019, but the panel was rejected so it is now simply a paper on such an aspects in Deutzman film

   Notas

este siguiente conjunto de textos sobre Brian Deutzman fue posible gracias a una presentación de Brian Deutzman en espacio Altamira dirigido por Edel Bordón y Yamile Bordón en ocasión de una curaduría de Yamile pardo sobre las fotografías de Kasia Trojack, la ocasión fue posible gracias a una invitación que me hizo Grisel antelo ya que la presentación de Deutzman en espacio Altamira fue una producción cultural de ella con Elena Molina y su espacio arthaus, posteriormente gracias a Grisel y Elena con arthaus, mi visualización se extendió a conocer más ampliamente el trabajo de Deutzman y a desarrollar diálogos entre ambos a modo de escribir sobre distintos aspectos de su film, los textos reunidos de hecho discuten una variedad de aspectos sobre el film de Deutzman y uno de ellos fue una conferencia en arthous mis agradecimientos especiales pues a Edel, Yamile, Grisel y Elena, asi como también a Deutzman