The Definitions of Apocalypse

Our group has come up with a concept of what we want to explore in our video, which is at least partly, the contextual inhabitation of space. If our world is changed, how does it affect our manner, our humor, our every day movement? If the apocalypse were to destroy everything we know, how does one reframe the world so as to regain authority over it?

Here are two videos: “Lumieres” from Putative Moment

http://dvblog.org/movies/02_2009/pm/pmtrain.mov

http://dvblog.org/movies/02_2009/pm/pmobscuredbyclouds.mov

They are categorized as documentary, so their style is one of capturing realism. The films do not have effects added to them, although they do remove sound, which is an interesting technique to disassociate the audience from the text. The train video especially has the viewer expecting noise but their expectations are not met. This doesn’t so much as move a viewer away from reality, but forces the viewer to experience reality differently. The light becomes more apparent, the movement of the train intensifies, the movement spreading in radial causality against the plants, all stand out more without the sound. The sound would dull out these things and simulate a “reality” which we are all used to. When sound is removed, the definitions of the objects we are looking at changes. This also happens because of the title, a literal renaming of what we are supposed to be looking for. It is not a train or a moon, but “Lumieres”. Calling them lights changes their prescribed function in the world, and therefore their possibilities are changed.

I think this is what our video will try to do. I don’t know since we haven’t filmed it yet, and these things have a tendency to change drastically to best laid theory. But interaction with the world in an unprescribed manner is our goal, something which most writers are trying to do anyway, only with words instead of video.