Moon Blink

An experiment in stroboscopic effects, or effects akin to stroboscopy, the contrapunctual and unconnected reverberations of visual artifacts brought about by staccato repetition and the dulcet grate of tone generators. At one point it appears to hit a steady state and the phrase "a meditiation on mediation" enters my consciousness, no doubt to reappear later, but for now one stares at the screen and hopes that it will stop.

My first glance after it became clear what was happening was to the audience award sheet where my eyes were comforted first by the fact that the repetitive flicker was further reflected such that what I was now looking at was the moon in the ripples of a pond rather than directly at the sun, and then by the running time. Ten minutes is a long time in traffic, in the queue, at the cinema. It is not too long to wait.

Not without thoughts drifting however; if there are brains that can hold nothing but this mixture of white and noise at the conscious level for six hundred seconds the one that thinks it is me is not one. The mind wanders, in search of meaning, like scientists caught in an Antarctic snowstorm, reaches for moments of arrythmic semi-synchrony like waiting to turn right onto a motorway entrance-slip, the blink-blink-blink of indicators from different manufacturers becoming the blink-blink-blink of indicators from different manufacturers while above or behind or nearby the sussurus of pneumatic tyres across expansion gaps from wheelbases and gross-laden weights that serve as aural indicators from different manufacturers rumbles and thumps and the idle of the engine and the angle of the sun and the sure and steady sense that...

At one point it appears to enter a steady state and the phrase "a mediation of meditation" enters my consciousness, but for now one stares at the screen and hopes that it will stop. At one point, at one point, at one point there is a question as to whether those are focus artifacts that are a product of what might be digital moving to digital or what might have been analogue moving to digital, or my relatively new glasses. I take them off and in as much as I can focus I can see that there is indeed a change in focus, even in the hum and blink and blink and hum, and when I put them back I wonder if that small game with focus which becomes perhaps a third axis of opportunity for discovery will throw off something akin to light.

With the benefit of programme notes one discovers that at least part of the experiment of Rainier Kohlberger's short is the generation of film from code - one assumes then that these are loops in FOR rather than merely form. There is a place for film like this, and certainly short film festivals play host to them with a frequency that is not quite a parody of the genre, but if they are to your taste then you will know already. For those delving into this $ERROR incognita one once again entreats experimental film to state the terms of their hypothesis that there might be a map instead of just territory, but I disengage the handbrake as I allow the clutch to elevate and the transmission grabs first and as the wheel returns to straight ahead and the indicator blinks off automatically the steps to second and third and fourth and fifth are started. Move on.