[ISEA2010] Paper: Chris Bowman – Explorations of Visual Representation: Towards a Language of Movement

Abstract

Since the invention of cinematography experimental cinema has undergone continual advances in both technology, aesthetics, and content. With the development of digital interactive technologies, these conventions are being challenged and reshaped. This paper examines the graphic representation of abstract interactive cinematic elements that seek to explore movement, time and space and build upon the graphic tools film-makers used in the early 20th century to express these elements and affect the cinematic language of movement into the 21st century.

Early pioneers of experimental film, such as Eggeling, Richter, Ruttmann explored a metaphorical and symbolic visual language of abstraction that defined spatial dynamics and temporal layering of movement, time and space (Le Grice 1979). These early explorations into the language of movement were conceptualised through unique systems of graphic representation that combined signs and symbols. They explored abstraction in the moving image though an “equivalence of opposites” (Richter 1952) analogous with musical and dance notation resulting in a fluid abstraction of geometric, organic and anthropomorphic forms. Later we see expansion of these considerations by Eisenstein in his seminal work on montage.

  • Chris Bowman (AU), BA (Hons), MA (Royal College of Art) is an artist and Director of Animation at the University of Technology, Sydney. He works in film, animation, and interaction and display. He has received funding from ACID (Australasian CRC), Screen Australia, and the Australia Council for the Arts.

Full text (PDF) p.  171-173