Media Art Net | Art and Cinematography

this case that of the single mother, in the middle of its camera work. Visual pleasure is extended to both the social and psychic space of a multi-dimensional person (Louise).

9. Framing Structures and Cinematographic Codes

Chapters Five through Seven return back to the framing structure of the film. They correspond to the first three chapters. While chapters one, two and three represent the cinematographic codes with particular emphases, the Hollywood cinema (one), the avant-garde cinema of Godard et al. (two), and the avant-garde of the Coop Movement (three), chapters five through seven already offer commentaries on these historical cinematic developments. In Chapter 5, a formal reference is once again made to techniques of the coop avant-garde movement, like ‘optical printing,’ this time using color. In terms of content, the stone sphinxes are opposed to shots of acrobats, the living expression of female bodies. The acrobats here index the profilmic and the space beyond the linguistic articulation of the body. Chapter 6 again shows Laura Mulvey. This time, she listens to the recording of her

own voice with a cassette recorder. Sound and image, which earlier (chapter 2) were bound to one another to form an impressive screen presence, now meet again, this time alienated from one another on two different levels. The magnetic tape represents a secondary inscription with emphasis on the spoken coding of a text, while the filmstrip in a certain way focuses on the primary inscription of physical presence. The fact that in this image a cassette player is introduced as the basis of magnetic tape recording allows us to think beyond the cinematographic. The cassette recorder already symbolizes a different access to inscription than film and photography. It anticipates the video recording with its almost immediate possibility of controlling the image. In addition, due to its inherent program structure, with its functions play, fast-forward, rewind, etc., the cassette recorder allows a different access to the recording than the cinema film. The cassette is much closer to the book, that is, the recording is indeed accessible as a text to read. It provides the cinema spectator with all the possibilities otherwise only made possible by the privilege of studying a film on a viewing table. Chapter