Die Tausend Augen des Otavio Schipper
"I have done that", says my memory. "I cannot have done that" — says my pride, and remains adamant. At last — memory yields.
Nietzsche [Beyond Good and Evil, 1886]
I.
Projected by a flickering ray of light onto the flatness of the screen, black telegraph poles stand out against a slate grey sky. Storm clouds hover over the waste land. In the distance, lightning strikes the broken towers of a ruined castle that stands atop the highest mountain peak. Electricity crackles in the falling darkness. The furious progress of a driver-less, horse-drawn coach carrying but a single passenger causes the road upon which the hoofs of the ungulate animals and the wheels of the carriage spin furiously to spit up mud and gravel. As the vehicle makes its way up into the highest hills, a completely starless, moonless night falls at last.
Thunderbolts crash and the enormous image of a pair of frowning, bushy-eyebrowed, bespectacled eyes is superimposed onto the scene.
"I have done that", says my memory. "I cannot have done that" — says my pride, and remains adamant. At last — memory yields.
Nietzsche [Beyond Good and Evil, 1886]
I.
Projected by a flickering ray of light onto the flatness of the screen, black telegraph poles stand out against a slate grey sky. Storm clouds hover over the waste land. In the distance, lightning strikes the broken towers of a ruined castle that stands atop the highest mountain peak. Electricity crackles in the falling darkness. The furious progress of a driver-less, horse-drawn coach carrying but a single passenger causes the road upon which the hoofs of the ungulate animals and the wheels of the carriage spin furiously to spit up mud and gravel. As the vehicle makes its way up into the highest hills, a completely starless, moonless night falls at last.
Thunderbolts crash and the enormous image of a pair of frowning, bushy-eyebrowed, bespectacled eyes is superimposed onto the scene.
II.
In the receding distance, a dream of oriental reds like molten rubies, delicate pinks and lapis lazuli swirls upon the finest white paper and becomes indigo. A golden yellow color is occasionally introduced into the scheme.
III.
There is a certain type of scientific documentary film that is almost genre-defying. Some of its most recognizable components include the use of animation, graphs, charts, slides, still photography, the use of intertitles, iris shots and myriad sound effects (most notably the beep) interspersed with newsreel footage, dramatic re-enactments by non-actors as well as interviews with scientists and specialists from various fields. In their attempts to portray scientific figures, explain scientific phenomena and generally to illustrate a body of knowledge that ranges from particle to the visible universe, such films forge an aesthetic that, oddly enough, is often redolent of such settings as the schoolroom, early television programming or the home movie projector. One of the most characteristic effects that may be experienced by the spectator upon viewing these documentaries often comprises a spectrum of sensations ranging from enlightenment to nostalgia. Thus, elements of hard science are almost subliminally transformed into entertainment of a most curious variety, leading the viewer into territories more closely associated with dream states or flights of imagination than anything related to a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
IV.
In an aleatory compilation of occurrences verified over a period of approximately 24 hours, it appeared to the artist and his interlocutor that rats and eyeglasses turned up variously (and with deliberate purpose) in the staging of a Wagnerian opera, a story by Poe, an iconic work by Jasper Johns, a poem by the Brazilian concretist Décio Pignatari [RATOS ROENDO DINHEIRO], public statuary in New York city, a road sign in an American modernist novel, a conversation about trines in the Chinese horoscope, one of the key texts of psychoanalytic literature and scene after scene in German expressionist cinema. With growing amusement (and not without an occasional sense of dread), they realized that vision, bioptics, intelligence, creativity, disease, monocles, breakers of union contracts, myopia, stereoscopy, comedic devices and Tristan Tzara had cropped up in their exchanges during the aforementioned period more times than they were able to recall, even though they had attempted to meticulously keep track of the phenomenon with the aid of a voice recorder as the incidents rolled almost uncontrollably off their tongues.
In an aleatory compilation of occurrences verified over a period of approximately 24 hours, it appeared to the artist and his interlocutor that rats and eyeglasses turned up variously (and with deliberate purpose) in the staging of a Wagnerian opera, a story by Poe, an iconic work by Jasper Johns, a poem by the Brazilian concretist Décio Pignatari [RATOS ROENDO DINHEIRO], public statuary in New York city, a road sign in an American modernist novel, a conversation about trines in the Chinese horoscope, one of the key texts of psychoanalytic literature and scene after scene in German expressionist cinema. With growing amusement (and not without an occasional sense of dread), they realized that vision, bioptics, intelligence, creativity, disease, monocles, breakers of union contracts, myopia, stereoscopy, comedic devices and Tristan Tzara had cropped up in their exchanges during the aforementioned period more times than they were able to recall, even though they had attempted to meticulously keep track of the phenomenon with the aid of a voice recorder as the incidents rolled almost uncontrollably off their tongues.
V.
It might be said the work of Otavio Schipper consists in his ongoing attention to the phantoms and resonances of images.
It might be said the work of Otavio Schipper consists in his ongoing attention to the phantoms and resonances of images.
Key words: Atlas; Branly; color, continuous waves, Calzecchi-Onesti; documentary; electric charge, electric field, electric current, electric potential, eyeglasses, Eckleburg, Ernst Lanzer; flicker fusion threshold; Graham’s number; Hertz; invention; Jasper Johns [The Critic Sees, 1964]; [Low] K; line drawing; mathematics, Mabuse, monocles, metronomes, mechanics, Mnemosyne; numbers; optical sound, “On Very Rapid Electric Oscillations”; persistence of vision, Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future; quantum tunnelling; rats, radiotelegraphy; science, set theory; Tesla, telegraph poles, telegraph, tuning forks; unconscious; V band; Warburg, watercolor, wash; Xenon; Y [Substellar objects]; Zwangsneurose
Text by Stephen Berg