ontvandcreativeblock

The following essay will attempt to convey the author's thoughts on the medium of television in general and the theoretical foundations which underlie the philosophy of the author's television show: creative block theater in particular. Furthermore, it is hoped that by elaborating on both subjects a greater understanding of both will emerge.

In 1936, at the very dawn of television Rudolph Arnheim wrote an essay entitled "A forecast of Television." The following excerpts from said essay offer an insightful view of how television was first looked at before it had effected every aspect of our life as it now has. Arnheim states:

"Through television radio becomes a documentary medium. Only when it ministers also to the eye, radio fulfills its task-not its only task and perhaps not its most important-of making us witness immediately-what is going on in the wide world around us. We see the citizens of a neighboring town assembled in the market square, the Prime Minister of a foreign country making a speech...the smoldering remains of a wrecked railway train...We see the sun shinning on Mount Vesuvius and a second later, the neon lights that illuminate Broadway at the same time. The detour via the describing word becomes unnecessary; the barrier of foreign languages loses importance. The wide world itself enters our room."

"...television changes our attitude to reality: it makes us know the world better and in particular gives us a feeling of multiplicity of what happens simultaneously in different places...We come to recognize the place where we are located as one among many: we become more modest, less egocentric...The technological gadget of television set, however, does not cause these beneficial changes by itself. It offers possibilities, which the public must seize."

"The TV set has become the primary source of news and entertainment for most Americans and a major force in the acculturation of children. Television has transformed the country's political processesTelevision, in short pervades and alters the contemporary American environment."

"Our relationship to television is more like our relationship to the daily newspaper than to a film or play, which are experienced outside our normal routine. We seek out films and plays, and they begin and end in darkness and silence. But the TV set is turned on casuallythe result is that it is easy to watch television but difficult to talk about it intelligently."

"When we hear thatthe motor-car industry is running scared, or that the text-book industry, like the school system, is in the process of total restructuring, few people are inclined to suspect that all of these changes and a very great many more are directly due to the impact of the TV image on the American senses. The TV image is not the first to have reshaped the outlook, the preferences, and the desires of society. There have been earlier outerings of the human senses in technological form. Externalizations of our senses, such as the wheel, and the phonetic alphabet, of radio and photography, also constituted closed systems which invaded the open system of our senses with tremendous transforming power."

"As this image invades our lives, we suddenly discover new cravings for new kinds of order in our immediate environment and in our daily lives. Our sense of taste and texture is altered at once in food and in clothing. What becomes satisfyingin our involvement in the learning process suddenly takes on new contours and new rhythms. After centuries of packaged learning and visually organized curricula, men suddenly rediscover the primacy of dialogue and interplay of mind as indispensable to insight. Insight, itself, is a revolutionary demand, the typical 'closure' of man experiencing the TV image."

"So shaped in the new participational mode, the entire population suddenly develops a distaste for the older consumer values, and insists on new design in which the consumer is an integral part of the making process. With the TV image, our age-old separation of sense and functions terminates."

"There are good reasons for this, of course. Most obvious is the overall quality of television programming, which is generally regarded as being unworthy of serious critical interest. It is surely true that most of what appears on television is mediocre or worse. But the same is true of every medium, every art form."

"I have come to the conclusion that the main reason we refuse to take television seriously is because it is so important to us. It is noteworthy that film studies did not begin to be respectable until television arrived to replace the movies as the country's dominant mass medium. In fact, there is an almost direct parallel between the decline in movie attendance after World War II and the rise of film studies. In this light, it is intriguing that television studies seem to be gaining acceptance just at the time when a whole range of new technologies-including cable, satellites, and the video-disc-are beginning to challenge the dominance of the networks." [quotes taken from understanding television, p. xiii]

With the above being said, perhaps now is a good point in this essay to explain one of the two essential theoretical foundations which underlie the philosophy of creative block theater:

creative block theater is an attempt on part of the digital video artist to bring art (in the fullest sense of the word) to the medium of television. A medium which has been blocked from "serious conceptual study" and as a result now faces "an artistic triviality as profound as its social impact."

And as I always say: "the content is not the medium!" It is ridiculous to me that people put down the medium of television simply because the content of television is mostly crap. Just because there are trashy romance novels for sale at every supermarket in the country doesn't mean that all books are crap, now does it?

"We have been so hypnotized with the commercial and entertainment qualities of press, radio, movie and TV that we have been blind to the revolutionary character of these toys." [quotes taken from the essential Mcluhan, p. 308]

"at the beginning, cinema was a tool for study. it should have been a tool for study-for its visual, and very close to science and medicine. the camera has a lens, like a microscope, to study the infinitely small, or like a telescope, to study the infinitely distant. having studied that, you could then convey it in a spectacular fashion." [quote taken from digital babylon, p. 3]

"Vertovrevealed the new possibilities open to man's cinextended perception. He called this mechanically extended perception "cine eye." Through his viewfinder Vertov saw space shift with lens changeFilm allowed man to experience what was hitherto beyond his perception"

"the nexus of image/reality is the catalyst of a whole branch of video art that might misleadingly be called documentary, but is, I suspect closer to some sort of reality repairTrapped as we seem to be in the cliché of alienation, we seek corroboration of our existence, and video is on its way to being a mirror for masses. The displacement of reality into conventions of representation leads us to paraphrase Descartes- I appear on the screen, therefore I am."

"I'm an eye. A mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you a world the way only I can see it. I free myself for today and forever from human immobility. I'm in constant movement. I approach and pull away from objects. I creep under them. I move alongside a running horse's mouth. I fall and rise with the falling and rising bodies. This is I, the machine, maneuvering in the chaotic movements, recording one movement after another in the most complex combinations. Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I co-ordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever I want them to be. My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus I explain in a new way the world unknown to you." [quotes taken from ways of seeing, p. 17]

In the book (i.e. Vineland. by thomas pynchon), 24fps is the moniker of an underground militant-feminist filmmaking collective who seek to overthrow the Fascist corporate super-structure through exposing their evils on film. Their manifesto:

"A camera is a gun. An image taken is a death performed. Images put together are the substructure of an afterlife and a judgment. We will be the architects of a just Hell for the Fascist pig. Death to everything that oinks!" Of course, as a band, we don't advocate death in a literal sense. However if we HAD to, I think we could definitely start with Fascists. "

And of course the camera isn't a gun, per se; it doesn't shoot bullets...the insight I had on this is that the camera is a *consciousness* gun. Before the camera all events in our lives only lived subjectively in people's memories...but with the invention of the camera, events could for the first time be captured and once they were captured they no longer only existed subjectively in the memories of the participants of said event. They were forever captured for everyone to see; past events then became objective. The camera never lies, as they say....

Since By Man : nothing can connect with us deeper than a great photo, or painting, or film, or story, or song. this is art, this is human emotion, this is people's ideas communicated through a creative medium. what can be more powerful than that? human success and suffering cannot be more powerfully communicated by any other means. this is some powerful shit. if we don't use the arts to win the fights that need fighting, then I don't know what. I mean, you better fucking recognize that they are using it against us right now and they are winning. artists and designers are selling their souls, and in turn selling you your own fucking smile right back to you. you think if CEOs made television commercials they'd work as well as they do? fuck no. we, the artists, are the ones with the power and we need to be careful how we use it. this pen is a bomb. this camera is a gun. this computer is weapon. this art is a tool."

"The French New wave filmmakers, certainly at the beginning, saw film as a weapon, as an aggressive social political tool. The energy in the early New wave was an energy of aggression, not in terms of violence like it was in America, but in its emotional and ideological assertions" (p. 126, digital babylon).

"Like the printing press [the cinematographic camera] it is a technical device for the multiplication and distribution of products of the human spirit; its effects on human culture will not be less than that of the printing pressThe gestures of visual man are not intended to convey concepts which can be expressed in words, but suchnon-rational emotions which would still remain unexpressed when everything that can be told has been toldJust as our musical experiences cannot be expressed in rationalized concepts, what appears on the face and in facial expression is a spiritual experience which is rendered immediately visible without the intermediary of words." [quote taken from the essential mcluhan, p. 308]

"the elementary and basic fact about the TV image is that it is a mosaic or a mesh, continuously in a state of formation by the 'scanning finger'. Such mosaic involves the viewer in a perpetual act of participation and completion." [quotes taken from the letters of marshal mcluhan]

"The people who videotape with their small television camera recorder units everything from the local school board meeting to a friend brushing his teeth, are also somehow closer to the essential quality of the medium and its aesthetic potential than those who spend millions on filming historical extravaganzas for television. Although videotaped, such unspectacular efforts nevertheless reflect life in a state of becoming, and when done with seriousness, integrity, and love, they manage quite frequently to elevate the ordinary moment to a significant statement about human dignity and joy." [taken from understanding television, p. 131]

It is interesting that everyone is up and arms about cleaning up the physical world environment because it is polluted but nobody thinks to clean up the TV environment which is polluted as well. Duncan Blewett in his unpublished essay psychotronic engineering touches upon the fact that our psychic environments can be and are polluted in the same way the physical environment is and he goes on to suggest that TV be used as a way to better society; pointing out that since the 50s it has rapidly changed western society and that of the entire globe and there is no reason the medium cannot be used to change the globe in positive ways.

"television is too important to ignore. The critic John Leonard has claimed that "television is now our only way of talking to each other about who we think we are." What he means, I think, is that television has not only become our primary channel for information and entertainment, but also the principal source of the imaginative forms through which we perceive ourselves and the world."

"In the final analysis, American television is worth studying because it is a vivid and authentic expression of American cultureTurning on the TV is like tuning in to the collective consciousness of the country." [quotes taken from understanding television, p. xiv]

"He emphasizes that children are attracted to videotaping because of the ubiquity of this medium in their lives. He points out the contradiction between the psychotherapeutic goal of having goal of having clients gain a clearer view of themselves and the counseling method of only 'talk therapy.' The videotape provides the client with direct visual observation and self-confrontations that are essentially free from distortion. When viewed between sessions, Gardner thinks that videotape is a psychotherapeutic booster shot, a reiteration of the therapist's message for both children and their parents." [taken from videotaping as a counseling technique with families]

creative block theater is an attempt on the part of the digital video artist to reconnect with his environment (i.e. people, animals, plants, and inanimate objects) through the medium of television, thereby freeing himself from the "cliché of alienation" in which postmodern society has imprisoned him.

A part of my environment that the show helps me reconnect with are my relationships with people: family, friends and strangers. Every person I interview for my show represents another human I make contact with that I otherwise would not if I weren't making a television show. The stranger I would normally pass in the street, avoiding eye contact or at best a polite nod and hello now, becomes a part of my television show.

The other way I connect with people through the show is through the viewing audience. Television is a mass medium and as a result I share my creative spirit with a large number of people.

"It's terrible how few moving, original films are being made. I think Dogme is trying to counter that kind of thinking. I'm not saying that film should be a commercial venue, or that it's not a mass media. I'm okay with that. If you disagree, you should make books or paintings. What mattersis that you do your best to tell the story. For yourself, and for the people." (p. 73, digital babylon).

The filming and inclusion of one's parents in a television show was first made popular by the tom green show and jackass. I think this represents an important development in the art of television, for this act brings the generation gap to the fore for all to see and examine. It also brings the parent child relationship to the fore and allows me to further examine my own relationship with my parents and stimulates the viewer to examine their own. And it also helps me and my parents become closer through, once again, the television medium. When I film my parents for inclusion in the show, we have an experience together that we normally wouldn't have if I were not filming a t.v. show and said experience is then shared with a larger audience.

"animals are always the observed. The fact that they can observe us has lost all significance. They are the objects of our ever-extending knowledge. What we know about them is an index of our power, and thus an index of what separates us from them. The more we know, the further away they are."

"Public zoos came into existence at the beginning of the period which was to see the disappearance of animals from daily life. The zoo to which people go t meet animals, to observe them, to see them, is, in fact, a monument to the impossibility of such encounters. Modern zoos are an epitaph to a relationship which was as old as manthey proceed from cage to cage, not unlike visitors in an art gallery."

"The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond. They scan mechanically." [quotes taken from about looking, p. 24-26]

My connection with plants is done by exploring the nature that surrounds us in our everyday life. A nature that we have lost connection with and seldom take notice of because of our modern day technological society. What I seek to draw attention to in this regard are the bugs in your house, the ants in your front yard, and the birds in the trees seen out your front window. The nature that constantly surrounds us but we seem to seldom appreciate.

Please note that I'm not bashing technology, it can be used, if you will, for the forces of good or evil. And the fact that I am using a new technology to reconnect with nature and my environment is a significant point of the show. I am attempting to show that technology can be used to bring us closer to nature, not divorce us from it.

"Technologies never do anything you don't make them do. Nothing else produces poetry, beauty, truth, drama, tension or human feelingsnothing other than the human mind and the human heart. Digital technology doesn't do that. It doesn't do anything on its own." (p. 37 of "Digital Babylon")

"Technology can't do anything on its own. You have to force it to start swinging, maybe even dancing. (otherwise we'll all end up as dancers in the dark). The power, the poetry and the imagination are only in the hands of the people who have learned to use their tools. There is an abundance of new tools just lying around. We have to start shaping the future cinema with them." (p. 39, "Digital Babylon")

To understand my rational for including seemingly random shots of inanimate objects, such as a pot of boiling water, a trash can, a candle, dirt on the side of a building, etc, it helps to turn to the scene in the popular movie american beauty, where the character Ricky explains the beauty of the plastic bag blowing in the wind to his girlfriend.

The point behind these type shots is based on a Zen Buddhist way of looking at the world. Certain Buddhist teachings suggest looking at things with a 'beginners' mind, to see them as you are seeing them for the first time. And it is my theory that anything in 5 second incriminates is interesting. So when my viewers see a pot of boiling water in my show for 4 seconds they are entertained, when they normally wouldn't be entertained by a pot of boiling water in their everyday life. It is in this way that I want to help introduce a new way of looking at the world to my audience; to see the Zen in everything, to realize that every moment of our lives are infinitely interesting, entertaining, mysterious; for isn't the mere fact that there is something and not nothing a miracle in itself!?

A viewer of my show once remarked: "I've been watching your show and so far all I've seen is a pot of boiling water and some pasta." And to that I replied: "sounds like a personal problem to me."

Auteur (derived from the French word for author) theory in film has to do with a director who also writes the movie. This is in contrast to a movie that has a separate writer and director. Woody Allen is an example of an auteur. Auteur theory in film was an important development in film because up until that point movies had separate writers and directors.

Can one imagine that in the production of a painting a separate person decided the content of the painting, a separate person decided what brushes to use and a separate person did the actual painting. If this was the case, it goes without saying, that the finished product would no

With creative block theater I attempt to take auteur theory one step further. Not only is the show written and directed by the same person but the show's cinematography and editing is done by the same person. creative block theater, as a painting, is the product of one person's creative spirit.

And the fact that one person alone creates the show is also symbolic of another philosophical underpinning of the shows philosophy. Which is that man is utterly alone in the universe. As I live my existence ultimately alone, so I create my show alone, no crew, just me and the camera. the happening

Many of the shots in creative block theater can be said to be "happenings" which came grew in popularity in the art world during the 1960's. Herbert Zettl in his essay television aesthetics states:

"the 'happenings' of the 1960s were an attempt to work with the instantaneousness of the moment, the now. But the stage was the wrong medium for such events. It was not 'a new form of theater,' as Michael Kirby claims, but rather events that'state their freedom from time in their deliberate impermanence.' The proper medium for happenings is obviously television. Perhaps we can even say that live television is a happening." [quotes taken from understanding television, p. 131.]

"In 1970, Nam June Paik bought the first half-inch videotape recorder sold to a consumer in New York. He taped scenes from his taxi on his way downtown, played back the tape at the Café Au Go Go in the Village, and proclaimed, 'As collage technique replaced oil paint, so the cathode ray (television) tube will replace the canvas.' The video movement was underwayAnd like the new video consciousness, the new technology had its roots in television." [taken from understanding television, p. 377]

"What I think is great about this technology [a technology that has revolutionized the recording of images and sound electronically, so that you and I, with much greater ease and lower, cost can simply go out and shoot a broadcast-quality movie] is that now everyone is capable of the same quality as everyone else. It really levels the playing field. It means that you better have something besides the capability of a digital camera and a digital editing system. It means you better have true talent as a writer, a director, an actor or whatever because that's really what's important. These terrible hacks producing crap product are finally gonna be left behind once and behind for all!"

"And with the advent of DV filmmaking, and the provoking production concept of Dogme 95-a ten point vow of cinematic purity cooked up by Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg-a new wave of images and experimental ideas have come to the fore, challenging the terrain of independent and Hollywood filmmaking on all levels. And quite possibly giving rise to a regeneration of pure form once againAnd as more and more seasoned auteurs legitimize the medium, stepping behind the DV lens for a look-see, that formerly shabby second cousin to celluloid is looking like a one fabulous and sexy cinematic beast." (from the intro to 'digital babylon')

"the digital revolution is going to free up the studio system-that's how I look at it. As a production company, we can now go out and make our own movies. I can go out and buy a little camera and, for the cost of ten minutes of celluloid footage, produce an entire feature and that frees me up to make a filmits an exciting medium." (p. 22 'digital babylon')

"experienced filmmakers are at least as enthusiastic, if not more so, about DV. They completely understand; the genie is out of the bottle and it's not going back in." (p. 26 of 'digital babylon)

"I believe that the digital revolution, of which we are witnessing but the first phase for the last few years, is not that much based on evolution as we all might like to believe. I have the impression it's rather a reconstructing cinema from scratch."

"The 'new technologies' however are not just an extension of film, even if they introduced themselves as such at first. They don't just add a dimension, the way sound did. They will not be incorporated; rather, they are taking over. They are about to replace 'film'. I am not just referring to the material, to celluloid. I am referring to everything you and I know about our craft, our art, our industry. The entire landscape of film is about to be shaken up completely. Its past is no longer its future." (p. 36 of digital babylon)

"Today a technological storm is raging, the result of which will be the ultimate democratization of the cinema. For the first time, anyone can make movies. But the more accessible the media becomes, the more important the avant-garde. It is no accident that the phrase 'avant-garde' has military connotations."

"Today a technological storm is raging of which the result is the elevation of cosmetics to God. By using new technology anyone at anytime can wash the last grains of truth away in the deadly embrace of sensation." (p. 40, digital babylon).

"I've seen these flow charts that trumpet the great thing about DV. They say, "Here's your camera and your set and you capture and it goes into an Avid or a G4 PowerBook and boom! Boom! Make your movie and boom! Right to the Internet, no studio executives, no development, no previews, no bla, bla, bla." (p. 127, digital babylon)

"The joy of the Digital Revolution is that one can use a camera the way in which one uses a word processor. In a way, it's what Godard had always asked for-please make me a 35mm camera that I can put in my glove compartment. He also always said, quite sagely, that filmmakers should own their own cameras. That's never been possible unless you are a very indulgent or very successful filmmaker and even then, the size of the equipment would be daunting." (p. 136 digital babylon.)

Well, if you've read this farI hope the above was sufficient enough to persuade you to at least watch the show! For more information on creative block theater please go to:http://www.creativeblock.homestead.com