Wellwellwelly...
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THE NEUROSCIENCE OF MUSIC
Why does music make us feel? On the one hand, music is a purely abstract art form, devoid of language or explicit ideas. The stories it tells are all subtlety and subtext. And yet, even though music says little, it still manages to touch us deep, to tickle some universal nerves. When listening to our favorite songs, our body betrays all the symptoms of emotional arousal. The pupils in our eyes dilate, our pulse and blood pressure rise, the electrical conductance of our skin is lowered, and the cerebellum, a brain region associated with bodily movement, becomes strangely active. Blood is even re-directed to the muscles in our legs. (Some speculate that this is why we begin tapping our feet.) In other words, sound stirs us at our biological roots. As Schopenhauer wrote, “It is we ourselves who are tortured by the strings.”
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Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of Ebert present/mubi/sounds,image interviews the documentary/fiction film maker, Sergei Loznitsa
LOZNITSA: The cinematographer, Pavel Kostomarov, and I happened upon this train station by accident. We were travelling by elektrichka from Moscow to St. Petersburg. In Malaya Vishera, which is about 150 km before Petersburg, the elektrichka service ended. We had to go out on to this snow-covered platform in 30 below weather. There was nowhere to go—the town is tiny. A path on the platform lead us to this little building with one door and no windows. That was, at the moment, the station. In the “waiting hall,” which was about five meters by five meters, there was a lot of people. There were sitting on the benches, on the floor, standing. We found our place on the floor in a corner. And that’s where the film began. It’s a very strange feeling, to be around this big mass of sleeping bodies. The trains would fly past—roaring—and then there would be silence. That moment, and the feeling of it, was what I wanted to recreate. Then we would come back there every two months for three-five nights at a time. It would have been possible to shoot all sorts of the different movies there, but that’s the one I ended up shooting.
VISHNEVETSKY: How did the people react?
LOZNITSA: The people—well, what about the people? Sometimes they showed interest. Mostly they were too worn down by life to care about crap like a camera. Criminals, when we they’d show up, would ask us not to film them. The rest were calm and understanding. We’d show up in the waiting hall in the evening and set up the camera right away. That way everybody had time to get used to it.
VISHNEVETSKY: Did all of your documentaries take that long to shoot?
LOZNITSA: Not all of them. Some movies took a month to shoot. Others took three months. It changes. You can make a film in one day. It depends on the subject or the idea. Settlement took 2 months. Factory took two weeks.
VISHNEVETSKY: A location—specifically the character of a location—is that a subject that interests you?
LOZNITSA: What interest me is the possibility of realizing thoughts with the resources that make up cinema. The rest is secondary.
VISHNEVETSKY: First the thought, then the film?
LOZNITSA: First an impression, then reflection, then realization.
VISHNEVETSKY: And when you’re not shooting a documentary, when you’re working on a screenplay—do you work the same way?
LOZNITSA: Well of course. Everything starts with an impression. How can you think about something you have no impression of?
Found here: http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/2322
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One sticks one’s finger into the soil to tell by the smell in what land one is: I stick my finger in existence — it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? Why am I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? Who is it that has lured me into the world? Why was I not consulted, why not made acquainted with its manners and customs instead of throwing me into the ranks, as if I had been bought by a kidnapper, a dealer in souls? How did I obtain an interest in this big enterprise they call reality? Why should I have an interest in it? Is it not a voluntary concern? And if I am to be compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I should like to make a remark to him. Is there no director? Whither shall I turn with my complaint?Kierkegaard (via talkwiththedead)
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Was man mit Fotos anstellen kann
Die wunderbare Welt der Fotos
Fotos sind klasse. Mit ihnen hält man bestimmte Erinnerungen und Momente fest und richtig gelagert halten die Fotos ewig. Dabei spielt es keine Rolle, ob man sie digital oder als Abzug besitzt, man muss richtig drauf aufpassen. Das gilt auch für digitale Fotos, da die Datenträger auf denen man sie abspeichern kann eine unterschiedlich lange Lebensdauer haben. Wie man seine Fotos richtig abspeichert und welche Möglichkeiten es gibt und wie man alte Fotos retten kann und ihnen neues Leben einhaucht, kann im folgenden Ratgeber durchgelesen werden.
Die Speicherart für digitale Fotos – was wählen?
Bei digitalen Fotos ist der Datenträger auf welchem man sie speichert von größter Wichtigkeit. Im Laufe der Zeit ändert sich auch die Form der Datenträger, weshalb es sich lohnt die Bilder auf Neue zu übertragen. Sehr gut halten sich die Fotos auf SSD Speicherkarten, weil denen eine außerordentlich lange Lebensdauer nachgesagt wird. Eine moderen Art und Weise seine Bilder zu speichern sind auch Online Festplatten. Dabei wird von den Fotos – wenn der Anbieter beispielsweise den Art des Speichers wechselt – immer gesichert, warum man davon ausgehen kann, dass die Fotos lebenslang auf dem Server aushalten. Trotzdem sollte man sie lieber lokal auf einen digitalen Speicher ablegen um auf Nummer sicher zu gehen.
Fotos ausdrucken und verwahren
Eine andere Art der Verwahrung, die sich in Vergangenheit schon als äußerst gut gezeigt hat ist die Entwicklung der Fotos und die Verwahrung in Fotoalben. Dort sind die Fotos nämlich gut vor äußeren Einflüssen wie Kälte, Hitze, Sonneneinstrahlung und Feuchtigkeit geschützt und bleiben sehr lange wie neu. Wenn man sich die Fotos anschauen möchte, muss man nichts anderes tun als das Fotoalbum aufzuschlagen und in den Erinnerungen zu schwelgen. Doch sind die Fotos auch im Fotoalbum nicht auf alle Ewigkeiten geschützt, weshalb es sich empfiehlt – besonders bei alten Fotos – diese zu „erneuern“.
Fotos mit der Digitalisierung erneuern
Erneuert werden die Fotos nämlich mit einer Digitalisierung. Dabei werden die Fotos durch einen Scanner gejagt. Dazu genügt ein handelsübliches Gerät, das ziemlich unkompliziert ist. Wer es sehr gut mag, kann auch ein Fotoscanner nutzen, der die Bilder in sehr großer Auflösung abbildet und abspeichert. Diese Fotos können, wenn sie dann auf dem Computer sind, mit einem Bildbearbeitungsprogramm bearbeitet werden um ihnen eine neue Frische zu geben. Sehr alte schwarz weiß Fotografien lassen sich auch aufwerten, indem sie etwa mit Farbe befüllt werden. Damit erwachen sie zum Leben.
Fotos als Poster ausdrucken lassen
Wenn man in den Urlaub fährt sieht man neue Gegenden und hübsche Landschaften und Panoramen. Manche Fotos werden dabei so gut, dass es sich lohnt sie zu bearbeiten und sich ein Poster daraus zu erstellen. Für dieses Vorhaben kann man sich an jede Druckerei wenden, die einen entsprechenden Drucker hat. Man bezahlt dafür mehr oder weniger und wie viel es genau kostet, hängt vom Papier als auch der Tinte ab, die für den Druck des Posters verwendet wird. So kann man sich seine Erinnerungen qualitativ an die Wand nageln und andauernd betrachten.
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lettertojane:
L’eclisse
How is it possible that I can keep falling more in love with this film each time I watch it? I checked out the HD version Criterion added to their Hulu channel and I have to say that it looks pretty sharp, I hope this is a sign it’s coming to Blu-Ray soon. There are a couple themes in this film that become stronger with each viewing.
Antonioni’s love for Monica Vitti
1A Online Bildbearbeitung bei Fotobello - unser Partner
I love how relationships play out in the cinema, it’s something that you just can’t say explain but it always reveals itself. There’s an undefinable quality that comes out when the director is in love with their actor, their muse. L’eclisse is the only film the two did together where I feel that Vitti is at her most natural. While she’s great in the other films, she’s definitely playing characters, there’s more of an angle involved. Here she is much more in the moment and I personally think it’s her most intimate role she ever did.
Space
It’s amazing how many shots begin and end without the characters in the frame. And I’m not talking about the beginning and endings of a scene I’m talking about every shot within the scene. I’ve seen this film dozens of times and my mind still boggles trying to figure out all the planning that goes into a couple of the scenes here. Antonioni uses this technique so effectively in L’eclisse. A lot of his other films, the film is in the characters head: L’Avventura, La notte, Red Desert, etc. all of those pretty treat the characters problems like the world revolves around them. In L’eclisse Antonioni is constantly showing how trivial the characters love life is to society.
Blocking
It’s something that no one EVER talks about in a movie, but I don’t see how it can be ignored in this film. It becomes more and more interesting how he uses blocking to not only compose a shot, but to replace lines of dialogue. The moments when the characters are acting so normal and then all of the sudden freeze up and communicate with each other just based on how and where they stand. It’s such a strange and beautiful technique that I don’t know if you could get away with today, (this is also known as part of the “Antonioni Trap” that directors get in sometimes). It’s sad fact that we value the technique side of art way more than we do the poetic side. We’ve lost a lot of our imagination and and things are much too literal. L’eclisse is my favorite Antonioni film because I feel he was able to fuse technique, poetry, and politics, and autobiography, and do it with a degree of elegance that looks almost effortless.
But wouldn’t you say that there is poetry in technique? Why separate them?
