The cinetrix is sad to miss out on the following, but she strongly encourages those in New York to cleanse their Tribeca palates with a dash of experimental film and video, cocurated by FOC Jennifer MacMillan.
The Aerodynamics of the Hovering Hummingbird:
Science, Cinema, and Ways of Seeing
Sat. April 29 at Millennium Film Workshop,
8:00 PM
Curated by Jennifer MacMillan and Bradley
Eros
In June 2005, Doug Warrick and his colleagues
at Oregon State University published their research findings on the flight
of the hummingbird. Their remarkable discovery revealed that the
hummingbird's wing movement is a hybrid between a bird and an insect,
and that the insect-like aerodynamic tricks give the hummingbird its unique
hovering ability. Inspired by this paper, published in Nature 453
(2005), we have created our own experiment to investigate the cross-pollination
of scientific visualization and poetic document. Our materials and
methods include star studies, satellite recordings, subaquatic and botanical
investigations, liquid crystals, visual music performance generated from
the scientific instrument, high speed motion studies, a discussion of subatomic
physics, and readings of the 10 most beautiful experiments of science!
This visual demonstration is designed to
test our hypothesis that cinema and science are alike in their approach
to the investigation of nature, with both fields using the image as data.
As Jean Painleve, the marine biologist & pioneering filmmaker
revealed, "Filming a once invisible world with a once only imagined instrument
. . ."; this show explores myriad ways of seeing through a spectrum of
capturing devices and projections from super-8 to satellite. Like the other
objects of study in this laboratory of poetics, the hummingbird can be
viewed through visual kinematics, musical mathematics, or performative
dynamics, illuminating the miniature nectivore's refracting iridescent
feathers, its wing movement of 200 times a minute, or its surprising flight
patterns -- backwards, sideways, & upside down. Hover like a
hummingbird, flicker like a film! - JM & BE
NINETEEN DOTS AND A HUMMINGBIRD by Ramon
Rivera Moret, video, duration variable (Intro loop)
Working with high-speed video data gathered
by Doug Warrick et al. for their paper "Aerodynamics of the Hovering Hummingbird"
Nature 453, 1094-1096 (2005), a digitally manipulated loop experiment
has been created to slowly reveal the hummingbird flight through surprising
perspectives.
EDGERTON'S HIGH SPEED MOTION STUDIES, courtesy
of MovieMike, 16mm, b/w, sound, 10 min.
While studying electrical engineering at
MIT, Harold Eugene Edgerton developed a strobe light technique, which led
him to the invention of the electric flash. This advance in photography
would enable him to capture a few of the fastest & smallest moments
in time, including the flight of a bird, the movement of a fly, and the
iconic milk drop splash as physical phenomenon. The ultimate pioneer
of scientific photography!
ECLIPSE by Jeanne Liotta 2005
16mm film, color 3:30 minutes sound by BDF
A lunar eclipse event, 11.09.03, documented
and translated via the light-sensitive medium of Kodachrome film. In the
4th c BCE Aristotle founded The Lyceum, a school for the study of all natural
phenomena pursued without the aid of mathematics, which was considered
too perfect for application on this imperfect terrestial sphere. This
film then, in the spirit of.
WITH: ECLIPSE/STARRY CAMERA ROLL. 3 minutes.
A sample of the 16mm field recordings for
'Observando el Cielo', an upcoming project
taking place in a constellation of mediums,
witnessing the cosmos
from my own backyard.
ACROSYNAXIS by Anthony Jay Ptak, Performance
for Thereminvox, 10 min
Utilizing the theremin's principle of interference
to feed back into itself an exponential deconstruction of the instrument,
the frequency of oscillation along a unified temporal axis, reflects a
recursive bridging of distance in a soundscape of interference. Much
like the 1000th of a second captured image of Warrick's hovering hummingbird,
or the Kino-Glaz reality 24 times per second delineated by Dziga Vertov,
or John Cage’s Future of Music Credo which alludes to Beethoven as a material
operating at 50 times per second and rejects imitative use of the theremin.
This electro-acousmatic work concentrates on sound as a carrier of
information.
LIQUID CRYSTALS by Jean Painleve,
video, color, with readings from Crystallography by Christian Bok,
6 min.
A pioneer of science films, Jean Painleve
has managed both to fascinate men of science and move poets and cinephiles
by revealing the once-hidden worlds of vampire bats, paramecia, water fleas,
octopi, seahorses, and liquid crystals. Son of a mathematician and
politician Paul Painleve, he has always been an independent thinker (a
scientist once called him a "fantasist"), who teamed up with avant-gardists
between the two world wars and cultivated anarchist opinions while at the
wheel of his Lancia or Bugatti. - From "Jean Painleve Reveals the
Invisible," 1986.
THE GALILEAN SATELLITES: GANYMEDE by Courtney
Hoskins (2003 (part 3 of 4 of The Galilean Satellites) 16mm, sound,
color, 3 min.
Ganymede is the cup-bearer of the gods. Though
he shows some superficial signs of age, the protection of Jupiter and his
distance from the sun keep him in a state of eternal youth--his younger,
liquid self cross-hatched with a cracked and aging skin. This film
is the third of a four-part series dedicated to filmmaker Stan Brakhage.
The inspiration for these films came from the incredible images and
sounds coming from the Galileo space probe.
POLYMER by Courtney Hoskins & Carl
Fuermann (2003- Digital files recorded onto 16mm film, silent, color,
23 sec.)
Living hundreds of miles apart, but drawn
to collaborate on a film, the two needed to be creative. Carl hatched
an idea: he sent the first image- a simple jpeg attachment to an e-mail
message. Courtney downloaded the image, manipulated it, and sent
it back. The end result was a chain of 45 individual frames consisting
of a sort of "Universal Magic-" images of hurricanes as seen
from space juxtaposed with spiral galaxies, jellyfish, single-cell organisms,
microscopic images of liquid crystals and various other images gleaned
from the world of science. All of these images were captured on scales
separated by thousands of orders of magnitude (as Carl and I were) and
through various wavelengths of light to be re-imagined through the artist's
eye.
VOID RATIO by Ray Sweeten, oscilloscope
performance, video, 7 min.
A piece for four oscilloscopes. An oscilloscope
is an analog instrument that graphs the flow of electrical impulse on an
x and y axis. Though its main applications are in scientific research,
Ray uses the 'scope to visualize compositions of sweeping electronic
sound, creating sculptural Lissajous patterns and tesselations that seem
to journey into the beyond.
VISIONS IN COLLISIONS, a presentation by
Peter Steinberg, Brookhaven National Laboratory, 15 min
I am a staff physicist at Brookhaven National
Laboratory, currently serving as Project Manager for PHOBOS, one of the
four experiments studying particle interactions at the Relativistic Heavy
Icon Collider (RHIC.) At RHIC, we study collisions of nuclei in an attempt
to create a super-hot and super-dense state of matter that has not been
accessible in any quantity since the big bang 13.7 billion years ago. The
collisions create thousands of particles, which we study with a set of
sophisticated detectors... the field right now is trying to determine its
most important questions for the future, and where to answer them.
Excerpt from A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME,
Errol Morris's documentary on Stephen Hawking, video, 5 min.
What do we know about the universe, and how
do we know it? Where did the universe come from, and where is it
going? Did the universe have a beginning, and if so, what happened
before then? What is the nature of time? Will it ever
come to an end? Can we go back in time? Recent breakthroughs
in physics, made possible in part by fantastic new technologies, suggest
answers to some of these long standing questions. Someday these answers
may seem as obvious to us as the earth orbiting the sun -- or perhaps as
ridiculous as a tower of tortoises. Only time (whatever that may
be) will tell.
PRESEPE (2004) by Bruce McClure, modified,
multiple projection, 12 min.
Part one and on this side of the punched
plate scenics, darkness is shaped and zippered-up in the flicker shuffle
between two machines hurling out syncopated flash and bump projectiles
like unnumbered sheep materialized as electric traces in friendly in-betweens.
. . . Within certain limits each projector meters out the light according
to a standard frequency established in a concordat between physiological
psychology and an economy of practice . . . It is here that the noisy Cyclops
with its first light critical flicker is rejoined by a broadcast of sound
that agitates the hegemony reigning over the binocular guests who share
its cave.
(Note from JM. & BE. : also known as
the "Black Hole" piece!)
AURORA BOREALIS by Bradley Eros, 16mm,
color, sound 10 min.
An homage to two lyrical surrealists of the
cinematic collage, Joseph Cornell and Jean Painleve. Made entirely
of science & nature footage, through a process of subtracting the original
expository devices, and emphasizing the oneiric beauty and confusion of
scale, where the microscopic is analogous to the astrologic, and the insertion
of unexpected diversions and creatures creates nocturnal associations and
uncanny perceptions. A work more alchemical than clinical, focused
on decay and regeneration, with a hypnotic sountrack by Messiaen.
ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPH FUNCTIONS (BRAINWAVE
MANIFESTATION) by Zach Layton, audio and video generated through
brainwave activity, 8 min.
Zach Layton is a New York-based composer
and improviser versed in biofeedback techniques, psychoacoustics and perception.
His work investigates complex relationships created through the interactionof
simple core elements such as sine waves. His interest in biofeedback led
him into the research of music produced by the human brain and the construction
of a homemade Electroencephalograph (EEG), which he now uses in performance.
Tonight's performance will also feature realtime manipulation of 2 and
3 dimensional contour maps that morph according to data received from the
brainwaves.
THE GARDEN DISSOLVES INTO AIR by Jennifer
MacMillan, super 8 to 16mm to video, color, sound, 6 min.
A cinematic exploration through the Brooklyn
Botanical Garden, using a super-8 camera and the simple power of observation;
a document of flowers, butterflies, dragonflies, and goldfish has been
captured and analyzed through the optical printer and Final Cut Pro. A
true film/video hybrid of science & imagination, this digitally manipulated
16mm film, in some small way approaches the marsh flowers of Odilon Redon,
where the marvels of nature become part of the dream world!
While the cinetrix is busy afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted students in her classes, be a pet and head on over to the Fesser's place, where 
