constructivism

Constructivism was founded by an artist/architect named Vladimir Tatlin. Tatlin was born in Moscow in 1885 and studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and at the Penza Art School. An underlying feature of Constructivism is that it was promoted by the new Soviet Education Commissariate which used artists and art to educate the public. Later, as an educator, Tatlin emphasized design principles based on the inner behavior and loading capacities of material. It was this work with materials that inspired the Constructivist movement in architecture and design.

Constructivist art is characterized by a total abstraction and an acceptance of everything modern. It is often very geometric, it is usually experimental, and is rarely emotional. Objective forms and icons were used over the subjective or the individual. The art is often very simple and reduced, paring the artwork down to its basic elements. Constructivist artisits often used new media to create their work. The context of Russian Constructivist art is important, "the Constructivists sought an art of order, which would reject the past (the old order which had culminated in World War I) and lead to a world of more understanding, unity, and peace." 

Rudolf arnheim's theory of film

Rudolph Arnheim transferred the notion Gestalt, as developed by Gestalt psychology, to aesthetics. In the book Art and Visual Perception he uses the term “configuration” (shape). To him it represents the foremost and simplest aspect of perception, a perception that is not only something sensory which then becomes conceptual during the process of generalization, but one that appears as a general  conceptual formation from the very first moment. If I were to say, see a dog, it would appear to me at the very beginning from the aspect of “doglikeness“. And so Arnheim reveals elements in the sensory form which conjoin it with the more abstract, higher mental and spiritual matters.

To observe means to create “perceptive concepts“, each outside vision is in itself already an inner vision which comprehends the object as a three-dimensional whole; this three-dimensional whole has unchangeable configurations and is not limited to a concrete direction of projection. Configuration never reveals facts about an individual object, i.e. the category to which the object belongs; it is not the form of a single object, but a whole class of things. A related concept is SCHEME, a term it differs from because it considers the active side of experience as vital. Arnheim is not so interested in repetition and patterns as he is in exploring the world, simplification, integrity and the importance of experience

Rhetoric keeping film into perspective

Rhetoric Studies examines public advocacy and social expression by exploring influential speeches, internet posts, court opinions, media representations, written documents, and the many ways society engages in persuasive arguments. Courses focus on political, legal, environmental, social, activist, identity politics, and cultural argument while providing a solid grounding in the theory, practice, and criticism of contemporary communication. Students ultimately utilize this rhetorical understanding on the kinds of communication in which they have interest. In the process, they learn what makes rhetoric effective as well as how it affects their and others’ lives.

The simplest definition for visual rhetoric is how/why visual images communicate meaning. Visual rhetoric is not just about superior design and aesthetics but also about how culture and meaning are reflected, communicated, and altered by images. Visual literacy involves all the processes of knowing and responding to a visual image, as well as the thought that might go into constructing or manipulating an image. 

If cutting is prose, then montage is poetry

Creating a cutting for any event is an art.  It takes patience, knowledge of structure, and a full understanding of the author's story.  Prose is no exception.  Do not assume that because you can make use of short story, or a chapter from a book, that cutting a piece is any simpler.  Because it's not.  This event offers its own challenges to cutting that other events do not.  It also offers some of the same hurtles. The Prose Interpretation is not like Humorous/Dramatic Interpretation in the sense that full-blown character pops are not used.  That level of physical interpretation and back-and-forth dialogue is anti-Prose.

Montage is a technique in film editing in which a series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information. The term has been used in various contexts. It was introduced to cinema primarily by Eisenstein, and early Soviet directors used it as a synonym for creative editing. In France the word "montage" simply denotes cutting. The term "montage sequence" has been used primarily by British and American studios, which refers to the common technique as outlined in this article.

The montage sequence is usually used to suggest the passage of time, rather than to create symbolic meaning as it does in Soviet montage theory.

Russian formailsm

A school of literary theory and analysis that emerged in Russia around 1915, devoting itself to the study of literariness, i.e. the sum of 'devices' that distinguish literary language from ordinary language. In reaction against the vagueness of previous literary theories, it attempted a scientific description of literature (especially poetry) as a special use of language with observable features. This meant deliberately disregarding the contents of literary works, and thus inviting strong disapproval from Marxist critics, for whom formalism was a term of reproach. With the consolidation of Stalin's dictatorship around 1929, Formalism was silenced as a heresy in the Soviet Union, and its centre of research migrated to Prague in the 1930s. Along with 'literariness', the most important concept of the school was that of defamiliarization: instead of seeing literature as a 'reflection' of the world, Victor Shklovsky and his Formalist followers saw it as a linguistic dislocation. or a 'making strange'.

In the period of Czech Formalism. Jan Mukarovsky further refined this notion in terms of foregrounding. In their studies of narrative, the Formalists also clarified the distinction between plot (sjazet) and story (fabula). Apart from Shklovsky and his associate Boris Eikhenbaum, the most prominent of the Russian Formalists was Roman Jakobson, who was active both in Moscow and in Prague before introducing Formalist theories to the United States. A somewhat distinct Russian group is the 'Bakhtin school' comprising Mikhail Bakhtin, Pavlev Medvedev, and Valentin Voloshinov; these theorists combined elements of Formalism and Marxism in their accounts of verbal multi-accentuality and of the dialogic text. Rediscovered in the West in the 1960s, the work of the Russian Formalists has had an important influence on structuralist theories of literature, and on some of the more recent varieties of Marxist literary criticism.

Foregrounding

 Foregrounding is the part of a scene or representation that is nearest to and in front of the spectator. Though foregrounding theory was developed to understand responses to both literature and film, empirical research concentrated exclusively on reader response, until now. The present article examines whether `literariness' in film causes the same effects as those established for literature. In two experiments participants were shown one scene from Shakespeare film adaptations, either low or high in foregrounded elements. It was expected that showing these materials twice would reveal differences in levels of foregrounding effects. It was found that seeing high-foregrounding scenes twice was more enjoyable and made spectators perceive more significant aspects than the low-foregrounding versions of the same scenes did. A third experiment examined the extent to which a foregrounding effect requires spectators' awareness of a `background'.

 Participants in the experimental group were shown a conventional dinner scene (background) before they saw an unconventional one. The control group saw the same unconventional scene but first a (conventional) shootout scene. Results showed that the unconventional scene was considered more interesting and drew participants' attention more in the experimental group than in the control group. Also, the first group concentrated more on form aspects of the scene than the control group. These results present strong evidence that deviation leaves clear traces of foregrounding effects in spectators' responses.

Transference and Synaesthesia

Transference was first described by Sigmund Freud, who acknowledged its importance for psychoanalysis for better understanding of the patient's feelings. For instance, one could mistrust somebody who resembles an ex-spouse in manners, voice, or external appearance; or be overly compliant to someone who resembles a childhood friend. In The Psychology of the Transference, Carl Jung states that within the transference dyad both participants. Transference (broadly defined) and interpretation tend to intermingle, both in the clinical analytic encounter, and in any reading of art, be it by laymen, analysts or other scholars.

Synaesthesia's display combines information about the frequency, location and diffuseness of sound. The display is sufficiently detailed to let you distinguish several individual instruments, singers, or special effects on screen by their location, shape and color, and sufficiently fast to distinguish individual drum beats and notes. The interest in colored hearing dates back to Greek antiquity, when philosophers asked if the color chroia, currently we know timbre of music was a quantifiable quality. Isaac Newton proposed that musical tones and color tones shared common frequencies, as did Goethe in his book, "Theory of Color."