The movie confronts the reality of human condition to its modern idealization, culminating in a final scene where jazz and spiritedness defeat the order so preciously orchestrated, at least for the time of a dance. Play Time is a post-modernist masterpiece because it plays with the paradoxes of human existence; humour and derision being the only possible postures.

See also the Toronto or Elsewhere video that I did in 2006. I didn’t see the film of Alain Resnais back then but I realize now that the theme was somehow very similar.

The presentation of Professor Uri Hasson was fascinating (see this article from the New Scientist). By using fMRI and observing brain’s activity, it is now possible to tell if two spectators go through similar mental states when watching a movie: do they pay attention to the same things (e.g. a face or a decor); do they experience the same picks?

Uri Hasson was careful to not suggest that movies controlling more effectively brain’s activity are necessary better (ambivalence can also be a virtue). He also emphasized how his researches could be used for other purposes than studying films. Films could be used to simulate the effect of real-life situations on the brain for example.

However, it is very easy to predict what Hollywood studios will make of these researches, whatever their initial purpose was. They will use them to optimize trailers and films so that they can generate the ‘optimum’ effect on the brains of the audience. They already do so, but through approximate methods, such as asking a test audience to explain what they experienced when watching a movie (technique used for Harry Potter films). Hollywood studios have always been obsessed in controlling their audience, for economic reasons, or American propaganda. It is very frightening to think of what they will do with this new technique.

The film director Amos Gitai didn’t let it pass. He overreacted to the research, accused Uri Hasson of having a hidden agenda, and clearly wished that the research never existed. He felt that his artistic practice of filmmaking was threatened. The debate became very passionate and confrontational between the two orators and the audience, in a typical German fashion.

I think for my part that we cannot ignore the evolution of science. It is counterproductive to simply wish that it didn’t exist, especially when the research could also have positive applications. Hollywood studios will use any trick at their disposal to ‘control’ their audience. The audience should be aware of these techniques; this is why this talk is so valuable. The audience has also the capacity to choose other options, and to support instead independent filmmakers and alternative movie theatres, which are becoming increasingly popular.  Even when they watch a Hollywood blockbuster, and I do sometimes, they can let their mental states being controlled for a while, and still remain critical. The problem lies more in education and the audience’s capacity to remain critical, which is sadly appalling in many socio-cultural groups.

I have always been convinced that video art should not only be screened in galleries and small cinemas, but also in public spaces and unusual locations. Many of my videos don’t require the same kind of attention than a film, displaying them in public spaces can prevent some of the misunderstandings deriving from how we are accustomed to consume films in a ‘formal’ context. So I hope that these distribution channels will become more frequent!

I discovered at this occasion a masterpiece from 1943, the Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren. Enjoy!

Meshes Of The Afternoon
Hochgeladen von cinefalo. – Klassik TV, Abendsendungen und Nachtsendungen, online.

I collaborated with him to prepare the photographs and Polaroids, you can find the details here.

I hope it conveys the message and the exciting mission of the Philosophy and Management association.

“Slurb” by Marina Zurkow, 2009

“Forest of Cement” by Jisoo Kim, 2007

• Find Out What People Want By Taking It Away From Them: Is the customer the master or the slave?
• Tracking one’s sex life.: A very taboo subject. How do people manage their sex calendars? Can it be online as all the rest? Probably…
• Microsoft Office Labs vision 2019: the digital world interwoven with reality, and more human. But what if the opposite happens? If reality gets interwoven with digital world, and less human?
• Our life will finally look like the 70′s sci-fi movies!

Some online reflections:

• http://laurentledoux.blogactiv.eu/2009/02/16/should-we-hope-for-obama-to-be-a-machiavellian-leader/, a good article to understand what Machiavellian and smart leadership mean, part of a series on leadership.
• http://www.philosophybites.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=435413, explanation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s notion of Bad Faith. Something that really makes you think about how you live your life.
• Nice way to visualize how the credit crisis happened:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

The idea of those videos came to me a little less than a year ago. It started when I was on my way back home at the North Greenwich station. I had a vision of someone looking at a still creature, seat on the roof of the London’s O2 Dome.  I tried to understand what this vision meant. I slowly realized that this creature of my imagination was in fact a representation of a mood, a state of consciousness, seated between the character and the object of his brief attention.

I then had the same vision but at different times of the day, different locations. It was something following me. Though with an important exception, the creature faded away when I was not alone, in action, in a communication with someone, totally emerged in the instant.

It took me a while to translate those feelings into a storyboard. I progressively abandoned the idea of a creature to keep the essential, a minimalist representation of the consciousness: a colour, a movement. My technique to build a storyboard is to start imaging a scene, then see if I can find what will be the next, and the next. I know I found the right angle when each new scene I think of makes me more excited than the previous one, and when everything seems to flow easily, consistently, at all levels.  It’s an intense moment of satisfaction.

Once the storyboard drawn, I took videos with my Canon Ixus 80, of motorways in Greenwich, buses, trains and stations of the London public transports, offices and few other places. Then followed as often a predictable and quite boring stage of production: the video selection, edition (I used Sony Vegas), the digitalization of my draws and so on. The most difficult part is when I put everything back together and compose the soundtrack. It is at this stage that what I imagined is confronted with the material I have a front of me. It takes a lot of time, and my full concentration to shape a video which is genuinely close to my feelings, consistent but still fresh. It is only possible if the initial vision is truly important to me, at multiple levels. Otherwise, the narrative doesn’t work, things don’t get together. But when this difficult task is done, comes my biggest joy. Looking back at my work, I can analyze it and discover all the hidden significations I didn’t realize before. And then I understand how I found the energy to make it, why it was so important to me.

This is the first project for which I’m really thinking about the installation. My experience of the past years taught me how important it is to condition an audience for the reception of a video. My videos are one the Internet so that everyone can see what kind of things I do. But I know that most people will not be receptive to my productions on a computer screen. I’m myself not often receptive to that kind of videos when I’m at home. I need to be in a special place, have the work presented in a certain way, so that I can give myself a chance to get into it. This is the kind of environment I tried to imagine for ‘Breath’.

Of course, this is just my way of inventing videos…

Breath – At the bus stop from Christophe Bruchansky on Vimeo.