Door Games Window Frames: Near Drama 景框戲門, a proposal 概念藍圖


Demo (proposal phase) //

Link to related video work: Door Game (2005 / Linda La / 26-min. single-channel video) // back to the work's main page

Linda C.H. LAI 黎肖嫻

- an automated multiple-window installation exploring mannerisms and formulaic structures in Cantonese melodrama from 1960s

THE BURNING EDGE, MAKING SPACE, ACTIVATING FORM, the 1st Faculty Exhibition of the School of Creative Media, the City University of Hong Kong, Jan 12 - Apr 30, 2012, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, Hong Kong

SYNOPSIS IN CHINESE:

《景框戲門》是個衍生性藝術作品,以程式演算創作的裝置,也可稱之為演算法錄像電影。作品由三個視窗組成。三個單元的聲畫內容的對流關係,由一連串的規則引發;依據重複、組合、交換排列的邏輯,以電算程序語言Processing 編寫,玩弄著約五百個有關門與窗的影像碎片,攪拌出龐大的劇力,卻似是而非的劇情。

《景框戲門》的創作靈感來自作者多年來的電影歷史研究理據,以及廣涉香港粵語片倫理劇的觀感。日積月累的重複觀看,有感於這些片子的特殊’癖好‘。例如,有幾個特別當紅的男明星佔據了大部分電影的主要角色,又或女主角的特寫神情、儀態都像有不成文的相像。又如場景之間往往不經意的依賴開門關門作連貫處理-這可以說是舞台劇過渡到電影的一種剩餘,又或者是剪接法探索應用上的未夠成熟。作品中的幾百個片段皆來自九部六十年代香港粵語片的通俗劇,男主角主要有兩位,而創作性的所在,就是把這些片子的機械重複性化為分析、批判的解剖性嬉戲,也把‘說故事’這活動推到微細的層面作為參照。

 

Door Games Window Frames: Near Drama is an automated installation generating action sequences of open-ended drama based on a database of a few hundred movie clips extracted from Cantonese thrillers and melodramas from the early 1960s.

Works in commercial cinema are by and large nicknamed genre films, indicating the power of formulaic treatment of character relation and event development. Taking this as my point of departure, I studied over a dozen of carefully sampled Cantonese oldies from the 1960s. My attention was gradually drawn to how often the closing and opening of windows and doors occur in each film to introduce new scenes and new actions. In Rear Window (adapted from Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the same title), for example, I have noted a total of 90 relevant clips that are window or door related. In two other romance melodramas, I counted 44 and 87. From the point of view of contemporary cinema, entrance and exit via doors as a device for dramatic evolvement are cliché and redundant. The doors and windows in Cantonese oldies, however, nonetheless deliver the function of a dramatic propeller. In the proposed work, doors and window movements are literally turned into devices for scene division and punctuations for emotive shifts. Their artificial presence underscores melodrama’s formulaic mannerism, exposing the interchangeability of performative components, thus generative possibilities for ‘infinite’ drama via rule-governed free matching.

What will the work look like?

Near Drama (abbreviation of the work) has 3 moving-image windows. They could be 3 windows on the same plane (Fig. 1) with a single projection, or, if technically feasible, occupying a corner of the building with 3 planes forming an angle (Fig. 2).

Figure 1: 3 windows on the same plane (an alternative would be to use 3 planes)

 

Figure 2: 2 example of a corner of the CMC with 3 planes for image projection

Near Drama is an example of algorithmic database cinema in which micro-narrative evolvement is strictly programmed.

The image sequence of each of the three windows (windows 1, 2 and 3) would be based on prescribed rules. Similarly, the use of prescribed rules governs the dialogic relation among the 3 windows. (See attached document ‘Meta-Data’ for details.) A demo of the multiple-window dynamics of the final work is available here:

http://vimeo.com/26372145

Rules reading repetition and alignment will be designed in such a way that what occurs in Window 1 generates Window 2, and subsequently Window 3. The overall work is therefore based on a combinatorial logic and rules of permutation. Since the identification of clips is based on critical analysis of low-level behavior of genre films (such as mannerism of camera work, stock gestures and facial expressions of individual performers) and the close comparison of a selected group of films, the overall narrative machinery will not be pure randomness. The use of a narrow assemblage of clips with similar yet varied behavior is essential to this work.

This work requires no interaction from audience. All rules will be coded. Based on principles of emergence borrowed from biology and widely studied in generative art, the entire work is like an evolving organism, or an automated machine with self-organizing capabilities, using simple rules in operation to achieve complexity.

What’s in the clips? Visitors will see the same few faces repeated throughout the work – yet in different costumes and posturing, and variegated class background. These repeated faces are male protagonists played by two most popular movie stars in the 1960s in Hong Kong – Xie Xian (Tse Yin, father of Nicolas Tse) and Zhang Ying (Cheung Ying). The ensemble of female protagonists is relatively larger. This work thus explores micro-narrative meanings, that is, to explore the free open meanings of individual elements (such as an object, a hand, an expression, a door) before they are finally subjugated to a story-line to complete narrative comprehension. Here, the standard story-based narrative shifts to a recurring trajectory of dynamics created by juxtaposing shots of varied sizes, varied intra-frame motions and speeds and differential contents. There could have been no end to this piece of automated 3-window drama, except that a black picture that says ‘the end’ will be attached to a few chosen clips so that it will appear at irregular intervals to give visitors a sense of a break or a breathing space.

There is no scored music. The work has a minimalist soundscape, comprising mainly the sound of doors closing and opening, at times banging, sighs, yawns and murmurs, utterances of names of female characters, or a fragment of a spoken line. Every now and then, a tiny fragment of a typical programmed music for tragedies would pop up. Like the case of the image track, the accumulation, distribution and juxtaposition of emotive intensity take over plot delivery in the sound track.

The entire work is a collage of signifiers of pathetic drama that do not amount to any comprehensible plot line. ‘Near drama’ is therefore an important concept in this work: some actions and human interaction are evolving as if something significant is about to occur, but not quite there yet. Practically speaking, the chance of the same near-drama trajectory repeating is low.

Keyword Descriptors of the work

*Database cinema / Media elements are selected from a database to construct a potentially unlimited number of different narrative segments. Database cinema, in short, produces generative narratives from a selected pool of clips.

*Algorithmic cinema / Moving image works that use systems of rules and software to control both the layout of the screen (number and positions of windows) and the sequencing of media elements that appears in the windows…

*Algorithmic editing / Video clips, each assigned tags (keywords, criteria) that indicate the clips’ content (e.g. location, presence or absence of people), behavior (e.g. action, motion) and physical characteristics (e.g. duration) and formal properties (types of shot, size and dimension of frame etc.), are assembled based on a system of algorithmic rules. Different systems of rules are possible, such as selecting a clip closest in characteristics to the previous one, matching a clip with the previous one by content, replacing every other clip to create parallel montage and so on.

*Generative art principles / Simple rules lead to great complexity via a process of self-organization and emergence.

*Critical analysis via art-making / This has a long tradition, the most prominent trend in the 20th century being groups such as the Fluxus and the Situationist International.

*Genre deconstruction / Attention to generic plot formula gives way to the close study of gestures, posing, posturing and facial expression as well as architectural devices, also an alternative way to observe ideological biases in melodrama via looks and surfaces.

*Performative narrative / Rather than pre-planned by an all-knowing author, narrative process is turned into a trajectory in the process of making in real time, calling attention to connectivity of low-level mannerism in camera work and individual performance as a mathematized account.


Feasibility of the work

This work brings together a few areas of the artist’s on-going research:

* Narrativity (micro-narratives), a theme the artist has written about and explored in a concept-driven videography workshop she developed
* Visual ethnography (collection of image) leading to found footage works (such as in the form of experimental video)
* Expertise in the history of HK cinema (analysis of narrative and cinematic conventions), which is the artist’s published research in cinema studies
* Generative art thinking (rule-based combinatorial and permutations), critical theory and cultural studies (the meta-critique of cultural practices and artistic conventions and the kind of knowledge they generate) – the artist’s core teaching areas

The proposed project is based on the artist’s found footage video, Door Game (2005, 26 minutes, b/w plus color, 4:3) which has been shown in Hong Kong, Taipei, Kaohsiung and Kuala Lumpur. The work was a single-channel video playing with three film adaptations of air (radio) fiction. The proposed work will be fully programmed based on set rules. I have also researched additional and identified individual clips to the exact minutes and seconds with uniform tag details. (Please refer to technical description below.)

The proposed project requires a junior Research Assistant to isolate individual clips, re-size and digitize them with precision as well as to create tagging. More advanced help is needed in the programming area. Since the work involves no interaction, the programming work is relatively simple – mainly for clip alignments.

 

Technical Description & Meta-data organization

This work highlights an internal self-generative logic by which a program defines principles of self-organization to a bulk of carefully selected movie clips. These clips are divided into 5 groups to be distributed on 3 windows.

[See attached document on meta-data...

 

HK films researched and included in this work: thriller + melodrama

All movies were made in the 1960s.

Film Title Director Male protagonist played by... Genre
01
Blossoms in Rainy May I 《五月雨中花》上集
QIN Jian 秦劍
XX
Family romance
02
Blossoms in Rainy May 2 《五月雨中花》

QIN Jian 秦劍

XX
Family romance
03
捉姦記》 (catching the adulterous ones)

WU Hui
吳回

ZY
Thriller (Hitchcockian style) + romance
04
《夜半奇談》(strange tales at midnight)
XIE Hong 謝虹
ZY
Thriller (haunted house) + family
05
Rear Window 《後窗》

CHEN Pi 陳皮
ZUO Ji
左几

ZY
Thriller (Hitchcock's Rear Window adapted)
06
The Splendor of Youth 《黛綠年華》

ZUO Ji
左几

ZY
Family romance
07
《難兄難弟》(unbreakable fraternity)
QIN Jian 秦劍
XX
Social reality + comedy + romance
08
《午夜招魂》(calling the spirit at midnight)
ZHANG Ying 張瑛
ZY
Thriller (haunted house and murder)
09 《金枝玉葉》(golden branch jade leaves) WU Hui
吳回
ZY Romance + comedy
10 《第7号司机》 (driver no. 7)
ZHANG Ying 張瑛
ZY
Social Drama
11 Second Spring 《翠樓春曉》
WANG Tianlin 王天林
Family romance

XX = Xie Xian (Tse Yin) 謝賢 / ZY = ZHANG Ying 張瑛

Female protagonists played by: Jia Ling 嘉玲 / Jiang Xue 江雪 / Li Zhuozhuo 黎灼灼 / Wang Aiming 王愛明 / Nan Hong 南紅 / Bai Xuexian 白雪仙 / Zhou Jialing 周嘉玲 / Zi Luolian 紫羅蘭 / Mei Qi 梅綺 / Xia Ping 夏萍 / Bai Luming 白露明

Other male protagonists played by: Hu Feng 胡楓 / Wu Chufan 吳楚帆 / Luo Jianlang 羅劍郎