Exercise 1.6: The contemporary abyss
Simon Morely's essay "Staring into the Contemporary Abyss" published on the Tate Website can be found here:
http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/staring-contemporary-abyss
The initial sentence from this is very interesting:
"In the early eighteenth century Joseph Addison described the notion of the sublime as something that ‘fills the mind with an agreeable kind of horror’."
The process of film making is an art and an industry but how often is the art director called an artist
Longinus affirmed that "sublimity" might be found in any or every literary work perhaps this can be interpreted as that sublimity might be found in every photographic image which afterall its what a film is, a series of photographic frames.
At its basic level photography will have a level of the sublime based on Longunus' words. I think this is true since even the simplest non complex holiday snap will invoke a memory and with it an emotion to the participants in the holiday snap or the person taking it, or perhaps just the image of a scene or location. If I think about this then the logic is sound because its the very reason why we take them.
Look in any family home and you will find a photograph of one or more persons, the image historic and it will invoke an emotion in the home's owner and perhaps even visitors to the home, perhaps it is a young child, a teenager, a couple, a wedding etc
So how true then perhaps are the words quoted by Morely of Joseph Addison who described the notion of the sublime as something that ‘fills the mind with an agreeable kind of horror’. Its interesting how the horror and terrible can be described as the same yet appears as something completely opposite.
I recall as a child or teenager remembering the text or quote referring to Helen of Troy. Homer's classic Iliad she is is seen as having an affliction when her appearance is described as "Helen's terrible beauty". I remember at the time wondering how beauty could be terrible. Reading further now I discover that Aphrodite suggested that Helen's character had a menacing aspect, her "terrible beauty" and irresistibility.
Of course beauty has always been in the eye of the beholder. I read in the course notes Jesse Alexander makes reference to a few films. I've always been a fan of the Alien films. Has Joseph Addison's words been well portrayed in this series
Aliens
Ripley: It's very pretty Bishop but what are we looking for?
Bishop: [Pointing at some gas coming from the reactor] That's it. Emergency venting.
Hudson: Wow, that's beautiful. That... that just beats it all.
Aliens 3
Bishop "Its a magnificent specimen" talking of the Alien creature inside Ripley
Aliens 4
Gediman witnesses the birth of the new Alien in the spaceship Auriga and says:
"you're a beautiful butterfly" just before it kills him
Whilst the alien may not be described as being as beautiful as Helen of Troy, in the eye of the beholder beauty can take many forms, a female's appearance described as having a terrible beauty, an dangerous Alien being described as being beautiful, perhaps due its efficiency in causing death. Of course Helen's terrible beauty ultimately caused much death also. In this instance we have beauty and extreme ends of the scale yet brought together by their being both beautiful and sublime. Yet in the case of Aliens, an unfavourable situation is also described as being beautiful, in sarcasm, and brings yet another facet to this subject.
Morely says "At the sublime’s core are experiences of self-transcendence that take us away from the forms of understanding provided by a secular, scientific and rationalist world view. Thus, discussions of the sublime in contemporary art can sometimes be covert or camouflaged devices for talking about the kinds of things that were once addressed by religious discourses and nevertheless seem to remain pertinent within an otherwise religiously sceptical and secularised world."
The film 2012 is based around the predictions of the Mayan calendar foretelling of cataclysmic events to occur in the year 2012. Are the predictions wrong or is our interpretation of the calendar wrong. The story I feel is sublime in its creation of fear and almost an end of the world scenario.
Interestingly history is full of predictions of the end of the World, see the following link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events
The Danny Boyle film Sunshine details a scenario of Earth in a solar winter and man's attempt to reignite the sun by using an enormous nuclear bomb.
Yet if Newton and current science is correct, the world will end when our sun becomes a red dwarf and engulfs the planet earth as the sun's size increases. This is perhaps almost aluded to in Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project and maybe gives an insight into this. The experience would likely be described as being sublime. The photograph taken and used in Morely's web publication with little imagination could be seen as the imagined start of the sun's destruction of earth.
http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/staring-contemporary-abyss
It appears that one of the popular means of entertainment today is film; it, continues to takes the view of beautiful and sublime to further heights, perhaps as a result of modern special effects or even as our understanding of the known increases, as does our fear and drive to discover the unknown.
Ridley Scott's film The Martian is at the boundary of man's current technology as the consideration to put man on Mars seems more achievable. The beauty of discovery and of seeing the planet with our own eyes comes with danger and this is described within the content of the film's story
Modern technology, the ability of man's mind to dream and create, and skilled artists allow the beauty and sublime to be demonstrated well in the arts of photography and film. As man's knowledge and technology increase, so does the concept and the meaning of the sublime and how beauty is seen in different and new things today, compared to yesterday and this partly why today's films differ so much from those made in the past.
The process of film making is an art and an industry but how often is the art director called an artist
Longinus affirmed that "sublimity" might be found in any or every literary work perhaps this can be interpreted as that sublimity might be found in every photographic image which afterall its what a film is, a series of photographic frames.
At its basic level photography will have a level of the sublime based on Longunus' words. I think this is true since even the simplest non complex holiday snap will invoke a memory and with it an emotion to the participants in the holiday snap or the person taking it, or perhaps just the image of a scene or location. If I think about this then the logic is sound because its the very reason why we take them.
Look in any family home and you will find a photograph of one or more persons, the image historic and it will invoke an emotion in the home's owner and perhaps even visitors to the home, perhaps it is a young child, a teenager, a couple, a wedding etc
So how true then perhaps are the words quoted by Morely of Joseph Addison who described the notion of the sublime as something that ‘fills the mind with an agreeable kind of horror’. Its interesting how the horror and terrible can be described as the same yet appears as something completely opposite.
I recall as a child or teenager remembering the text or quote referring to Helen of Troy. Homer's classic Iliad she is is seen as having an affliction when her appearance is described as "Helen's terrible beauty". I remember at the time wondering how beauty could be terrible. Reading further now I discover that Aphrodite suggested that Helen's character had a menacing aspect, her "terrible beauty" and irresistibility.
Of course beauty has always been in the eye of the beholder. I read in the course notes Jesse Alexander makes reference to a few films. I've always been a fan of the Alien films. Has Joseph Addison's words been well portrayed in this series
Aliens
Ripley: It's very pretty Bishop but what are we looking for?
Bishop: [Pointing at some gas coming from the reactor] That's it. Emergency venting.
Hudson: Wow, that's beautiful. That... that just beats it all.
Aliens 3
Bishop "Its a magnificent specimen" talking of the Alien creature inside Ripley
Aliens 4
Gediman witnesses the birth of the new Alien in the spaceship Auriga and says:
"you're a beautiful butterfly" just before it kills him
Whilst the alien may not be described as being as beautiful as Helen of Troy, in the eye of the beholder beauty can take many forms, a female's appearance described as having a terrible beauty, an dangerous Alien being described as being beautiful, perhaps due its efficiency in causing death. Of course Helen's terrible beauty ultimately caused much death also. In this instance we have beauty and extreme ends of the scale yet brought together by their being both beautiful and sublime. Yet in the case of Aliens, an unfavourable situation is also described as being beautiful, in sarcasm, and brings yet another facet to this subject.
Morely says "At the sublime’s core are experiences of self-transcendence that take us away from the forms of understanding provided by a secular, scientific and rationalist world view. Thus, discussions of the sublime in contemporary art can sometimes be covert or camouflaged devices for talking about the kinds of things that were once addressed by religious discourses and nevertheless seem to remain pertinent within an otherwise religiously sceptical and secularised world."
The film 2012 is based around the predictions of the Mayan calendar foretelling of cataclysmic events to occur in the year 2012. Are the predictions wrong or is our interpretation of the calendar wrong. The story I feel is sublime in its creation of fear and almost an end of the world scenario.
Interestingly history is full of predictions of the end of the World, see the following link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events
The Danny Boyle film Sunshine details a scenario of Earth in a solar winter and man's attempt to reignite the sun by using an enormous nuclear bomb.
Yet if Newton and current science is correct, the world will end when our sun becomes a red dwarf and engulfs the planet earth as the sun's size increases. This is perhaps almost aluded to in Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project and maybe gives an insight into this. The experience would likely be described as being sublime. The photograph taken and used in Morely's web publication with little imagination could be seen as the imagined start of the sun's destruction of earth.
http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/staring-contemporary-abyss
It appears that one of the popular means of entertainment today is film; it, continues to takes the view of beautiful and sublime to further heights, perhaps as a result of modern special effects or even as our understanding of the known increases, as does our fear and drive to discover the unknown.
Ridley Scott's film The Martian is at the boundary of man's current technology as the consideration to put man on Mars seems more achievable. The beauty of discovery and of seeing the planet with our own eyes comes with danger and this is described within the content of the film's story
Modern technology, the ability of man's mind to dream and create, and skilled artists allow the beauty and sublime to be demonstrated well in the arts of photography and film. As man's knowledge and technology increase, so does the concept and the meaning of the sublime and how beauty is seen in different and new things today, compared to yesterday and this partly why today's films differ so much from those made in the past.
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