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a r t i s t ' s A r t i c l e The Semiotics of the Moon as Fantasy and Destination
M i c h a e l B e t a n c o u r t
T This essay surveys a 20-year period of the author’s studio-based Sitney’s discussion of “absolute animation” (a.k.a. abstract research into “spatial montage” and windowing, elaborating on his film/visual music) identifies this transcendent tradition RAC use of space imagery in a symbolic system describing the critique of through discussions of artists such as Len Lye, John Whit- BST fantasy::reality through symbols that are still used in the contemporary A ney and Harry E. Smith. The visionary iconography Sitney world---how the mythic dimensions of interpreting the “heavens” collide and contradict contemporary scientific interpretations. “Visionary” art discusses provides a way to address how our interpretations is the dynamic focus, with the Moon as the central icon, providing a unconsciously reiterate earlier symbols through forms with direct means for the author to consider ambiguities and complexities multiple meanings (Fig. 1). My imagery invokes, then cri- of symbolic transformation: earlier descriptions of heavens and tiques through conceptual dissonance, Sitney’s “visionary” Earth provide a visionary subtext to scientific exploration. The author tradition in both abstract art and visual music. These forms considers himself a “revisionary” artist whose work engages the implicit have a direct relationship to the esoteric ideas of Robert semiotics of visionary film/visual music to problematize the pseudo- scientific theories found there. Fludd, whose “musical monochord” described a pseudo- scientific organization of the solar system through an analogy with Pythagorean musical intervals [2] (as Scott Montgom- I grew up in the 1970s fascinated by NASA’s Apollo program; ery’s history of the Moon/lunar imagery noted, Pythagorean the Moon is a central image in my work. My collage novel, concerns have been linked to interpretations of the Moon Two Women and a Nightengale, functions as a codex for my since the 5th century BCE [3]). Whitney’s theory of digital later, critical motion pictures. Mine is not the personal, “vi- harmony shares this Pythagorean foundation for audiovisual sionary” aesthetic based in the Romantic poetics described synchronization [4]. My use of this tradition is semiotic and by film historian P. Adams Sitney, whose bookVisionary Film has become increasingly explicit: Glitches and technical er- linked the historical “experimental” or “avant-garde film” to rors/flaws act as signifiers for earlier conceptions of the same earlier abstraction and transcendentalism: images. It enables the critique of pseudoscientific interpreta- tions with contemporary ones: this contradictory reversibil- The preoccupations of the American avant-garde film- ity of signs is inherent, an aspect I developed systematically makers coincide with those of our post-Romantic poets in my film Telemetry (2003–2005). and Abstract Expressionist painters. Behind them lies Concepts of “Heavens and Earth” provide a visionary sub- a potent tradition of Romantic poetics. . . . The graphic text to scientific exploration. Culture is a layering, where new cinema . . . continued its evolution with diminished force ideas and interpretations form “sedimentary layers” over ear- throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The coming of sound to lier ones, contradicting them, forming new meanings for old film inspired several attempts to visualize music through symbols. This principle organizes the historical material in cinematic abstractions and to synchronize visual rhythms my book Two Women and a Nightengale (1996–2004) whose to music [1]. imagery is a reference point for my later movies: Telemetry and the shorts Aurora (2001), Illumination (2001), Contact Light (2012) and the Dark Rift (2014). These ideas also emerge Michael Betancourt (artist, historian, theorist, curator), Savannah, GA, U.S.A. Email:
See
Article Frontispiece. The final collage (no. 56), from Two Women addresses both space and the Moon, Star Fish (2012) and and a Nightengale (1996--2004). (© Michael Betancourt/Artists Helios | Divine (2013) both draw on this iconography, ad- Rights Society, NY) dressing the fantasy::reality dialectic posed by the Moon
©2015 ISAST doi:10.1162/LEON_a_00919 LEONARDO, Vol. 48, No. 5, pp. 408–418, 2015 409
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00919 by guest on 30 September 2021 in an implicit fashion, through its practical exploration of precedent double—the Sun. The reversibility and established forms arranged in of signifiers in these systems is what juxtaposed and composited struc-
reimagining the moon informs the semiosis they generate. tures on screen. I create movies employing the formal language Fantasy::Reality (iconography) of abstract film/visual My research is bifurcated between music—those visual forms common the studio (art object) and my work to hallucinations identified in 1932 as historian/theorist. The opposition by psychologist Heinrich Klüver fantasy::reality structures my move- as “cobweb, lattice, spiral, and tun- ment between theory and practice. nel” [6]. Klüver’s synaesthetic form- Semiotician Umberto Eco’s chapter constants are the implicit vocabulary “Interpreting Serials” in The Limits of of the visionary tradition—apparent Interpretation provides a theoretical in Sitney’s analysis of alchemical protocol for selecting imagery and symbols in Smith’s films [7] and ob- structuring their assemblage into servable throughout the field of ab- antithetical signifying systems where straction and visual music [8]. This semiotic system of established “tran- the quotation is explicit and recog- scendent” meanings emerges via for- nizable, as happens in post modern mal structures. Klüver’s synaesthetic literature and art, which blatantly form-constants establish a “vocabu- and ironically play on the intertex- lary” I presented in an earlier essay tuality . . . aware of the quotation, [9] as a formal taxonomy; since my the spectator is brought to elaborate interest is neither formal nor vision- ironically on the nature of such a de- ary, but semiotic and conceptual, vice and to acknowledge the fact that this taxonomy enables the linkage one has been invited to play upon to visionary art; “transcendence” is one’s encyclopedic knowledge [5]. the most apparent part of “fantasy” Recognizable imagery performs as in the fantasy::reality opposition. signifier (earlier, quoted work) in a While my work often returns to new context, changing its meaning. themes of space, scientific imagery is This immanent identification is es- the antithesis to this “transcendent,” sential. Archival material provides which is always linked to fantasy (the inspiration and raw material: I draw Moon and lunar imagery). heavily on nineteenth-century im- This unstable relationship is de- agery, scientific footage produced by pendent on the immediate organi- NASA/JPL, and public domain foot- zation visible in a particular piece. Meaning emerges from the precise age from the Library of Congress and Fig. 1. Michael Betancourt, (top to bottom) stills from Prelinger Archives. Explicit quota- Aurora (2001), Mushroom (2001), Contact Light configuration of elements. Semiosis tion enables a synthesis, drawing (2012), Helios | Divine (2013), the Dark Rift (2014). proceeds from the dynamic of cur- attention to my reuse. However, in (© Michael Betancourt/Artists Rights Society, NY) rent vs. past uses, creating the range Eco’s theorization, this recognition of potential interpretations. The is central; his implied protocol for quotation is the start of opposition of fantasy::reality (an intentionally ambiguous the semiotic process. The fantasy::reality conflict depends duality) guides editorial selections. The Moon provides a on contradictory recognitions—immanent use versus its readymade source of imagery and symbolic forms: vision- historical meaning. By recognizing this contradiction, the ary art is a limiting fantasy, structuring and redirecting in- audience becomes aware of the fantasy qua fantasy within terpretation. It tempers the complexity and ambiguity of the interrelated, yet distinct, signifying systems: present through the collision of mythic and scientific forms; the Moon is indexical, an ambivalent symbol unifying the 1. the visual music tradition with its synaesthetic critical dimensions of my work. counterpoint of sound and image 2. quotational materials functioning as collage Discussion 3. scientific and pseudoscientific (visionary/alchemical) Two Women and a Nightengale uses of the same symbols with This collage novel is one of two that I composed in the mid- different meanings. 1990s that remained unpublished until 2004. While Two Semiosis depends on the manipulation of recognizable Women and a Nightengale and Artemis: A Tragedy in Col- signifiers (the archival materials) and enables an engage- lage employ many of the same 19th-century engravings as ment with the meaning of this visionary tradition through source materials, Nightengale poses a critique of visionary
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00919 by guest on 30 September 2021 art (especially Surrealism) using the Moon as a symbol for concerned with the Moon (Fig. 2). It has a simple, schematic mythic wonder. plot in which a woman pursues her lover (chased away by I produced all my collages by physically cutting and past- her sister) through a sequence of strange landscapes. Each
ing together steel point engravings from clip art source books main character is a personification of language: Rose (whose reimagining the moon published by Dover, as well as careful selection from the Do- name is an anagram of Eros) has butterfly wings and grows ver editions of Gustave Doré’s illustrations for the Bible and progressively older as the story advances; the Nightengale, The Divine Comedy, thus ensuring all the materials would Rose’s boyfriend, is literally a bird; Marcella, Rose’s sister graphically match in style, even when taken from very dif- (who appears to be the antagonist for much of the story, but ferent sources. The finished collages were subjected to two who saves Rose at the end), has the head of a dog. The spell- phases of hand retouching: (1) retouching with an ink pen ing “nightengale” is not a mistake or typo—it transforms the to blend and bridge details on the paper collage; (2) digital nightingale into a something suggesting agency, action. scans were retouched to eliminate flaws introduced by the Direct quotations and allusions to historical Surrealism scanning process, but this retouch did not reconfigure the appear throughout: the description at the start of Chap- paper collages. ter 3—“The day unfolded like a white tablecloth”—is a Two Women and a Nightengale contains five chapters with quote from the first Surrealist manifesto; Rose and Marcella 56 paired images and captions on facing pages; 16 of them are each owe their names to Marcel Duchamp/Rose Selavy; the
Fig. 2. Moon and lunar imagery (collages nos. 12, 44, 45, 46, 50, 53) from Two Women and a Nightengale (1996–2004). (© Michael Betancourt/Artists Rights Society, NY)
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00919 by guest on 30 September 2021 Telemetry Telemetry (2003–2005) is the longest of my abstract movies, running 32 minutes and synchronized to a score made from reimagining the moon sonified electromagnetic radiation. (A 9-minute excerpt was exhibited in 2003.) It is the middle part of the Alchemy tril- ogy that includes Year (2003) and Prima Materia (2006), both silent. Only Telemetry contains both sound and astro- nomical imagery, although all three are visual music. Telemetry begins with archival NASA/JPL footage, a col- orized solar flare from October 1971 that functions as an “overture.” Telemetry is a series of twenty-four 1- to 2-minute modular sections named for Greek letters, grouped into four “movements,” each with its own visual character (Fig. 4). Only Tau, the climax, approaches 3 minutes in length. Each move- Fig. 3. Confusion of the living and nonliving (collages nos. 48, 52) ment is separated by variations on a “train” of circles containing in Two Women and a Nightengale (1996–2004). (© Michael multicolored arcs colliding (Eta, Xi, Upsilon), released sepa- Betancourt/Artists Rights Society, NY) rately as Radio-Activity (2004); Nu became Neutrino (2006). Modular organization allows for an episodic, rhythmic composition of contrasting sections. Imagery and soundtrack Nightengale (both the character and the plot) is a reference are in counterpoint, but each section includes singular mo- to Max Ernst’s painting Two Children are Threatened by a ments of direct synchronization where sound and image con- Nightingale (1924). The quotations work to critique the ir- verge. Individual animations assume a symphonic character rationality posed by the plot, but also address Surrealist through their juxtaposition and arrangement. The source for “creativity.” These historical references become explicit in this soundtrack is a library of “sounds from space” created as my later work, but Two Women and a Nightengale was my part of the plasma wave physics project directed by Donald first systematic attempt at this type of organization. Visual Gurnett at the University of Iowa that studies solar flares themes introduced in this book reappear later in my movies. and cosmic radiation. These “noises” from space are records The Moon is these characters’ destination, literally looming over the story. The final chap- ter tells what happens once they arrive: It is a site of fantasy run amok. It is “loony,” “madness,” but also banal, prosaic and am- bivalent, filled with objects that masquerade as the un/familiar and uncanny since distinctions between the living and the non- living are unclear (Fig. 3). This Moon is the fantasy invoked by Surrealism, a reference point for imagery and plot that structures the collision of fantasy::reality. Rose is saved by Marcella at the climax that reveals this Moon as the impediment to her understanding of who/what Nightengale is. Collisions of fantasy::reality condition and restrict our interpretations, an idea developed more explicitly in my movies.
Fig. 4. Frame group from Telemetry (2005). (© Michael Betancourt/Artists Rights Society, NY)
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Fig. 5. “Digital harmony,” in Telemetry, adapted from John Whitney’s system: Alpha (top), Beta (2005) (bottom). (© Michael Betancourt/Artists Rights Society, NY)
of electromagnetic solar radiation. I used this material in Center, but digitally composited to create something visually Telemetry to address symbolic ideas of the universe itself by unique. Analog and digital technical failures were prioritized proceeding from Alpha to Omega: the film begins with a over seamless and successful results as the source materi- Greek letter Alpha and concludes with an Omega. The Alpha- als for the finished movie, reflecting the role of glitches as a to-Omega organization has specific esoteric and religious dramatization of culturally mistaken beliefs. overtones—in the Orthodox Church it refers to the begin- The third movement (Omicron, Pi, Rho, Sigma, Tau) ning and end of the world. This organization finds a correla- strongly contrasts with sections before and after it. Run- tion between fantasy and the scientific: Some Greek letters ning only 30 seconds, the Rho module presents a series of (i.e. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Pi, or Phi) also mean some- contemplative, landscape-like views recalling the smooth, thing in mathematics or science. Others dramatize physi- rounded-off topologies of the Moon from lunar maps, but cal phenomena. Kappa, for example, is used to refer to the broken into a series of individual windows (Fig. 6). The as- astronomical phenomenon of Red Shift, literally shown by sociation of contemplation with the Moon coincides with colors changing directly from blue to red. In my movie Phi, the role it has in my work. The Heavens are metonymic forms are organized around the golden section, even though with enlightenment (itself a pun on the unseen light described the movie has the standard 4:3 aspect ratio. Contemporary by the soundtrack). Crossing these windows of imagery is a discoveries bring earlier mythic fantasies into sharp focus. spinning form that repeats more slowly each time, shock- As Telemetry progresses, it shifts from monochromatic ingly interrupting this sequence’s reverie. It streaks from left to multicolored and “messy,” finally returning to a precise, to right, synchronized to increasingly complex sounds with sharply geometric organization. Alpha, which begins the each slower repetition—an indication of understanding pro- movie, has the only voiceover. Autotuned to middle C, the duced by prolonged meditation. voice says, “Earth auroral kilometric radiation.” When two The final movement (Phi, Chi, Psi, Omega) is a calm re- yellow rings moving in opposite directions intersect on flection. The Omega section reiterates/expands on Tau. The screen, the score begins—an autotuned electrical screech development of Telemetry follows from the conceptual colli- harmonizing with other sounds as these rings become im- sion of irreconcilable fantasies about space with the realities agery evoking a magnetic torus. found there. Humans have been trying to understand the The first movement (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsi- heavens for centuries; the multiplicity of meanings for the se- lon, Zeta) is an abstraction of dynamic processes produced ries “Alpha to Omega” maps these ambiguities directly as the with John Whitney’s system of differential motion—“digital shift from outward-inspired imagery (the torus ofAlpha, the harmony” (Fig. 5). These monochromatic sections become red shift inKappa ) towards interiorization (the lunar reverie increasingly complex as they develop. Visual and audible vio- of Rho, the climax of Tau) and static contemplation (Omega). lence structures each sequence around a collision of anima- As in Two Women and a Nightengale, fantasy::reality is an tion, color and sound almost painful to hear. ambiguous duality where earlier fantasies collide with more The second movement (Theta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda, Mu, contemporary knowledge; the Moon is the index-point for Nu) presents a violent, inhuman domain made based on ana- this conjunction, presenting the only meditative moment in log video processing created with Nam June Paik’s Wobbula- a “vision of cosmic dynamism and balance” (as critic David tor while I was artist-in-residence at the Experimental TV Finkelstein described Telemetry in 2005) [10].
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reimagining the moon of face, Moon and rocket. (© Michael Betancourt/Artists RightsSociety,of face,Moonandrocket.(©MichaelBetancourt/Artists NY) RightsSociety,(2003–2005). (©MichaelBetancourt/Artists NY) Fig. 7. Fig. 6.
Opening imagefromContactLight(2012)showingcombination fromTelemetryStill fromRho,evokinglunarmapsandimagery Reception/Transmission missions was limited to immediately recognizable shots; the Telemetry provided the basis for my radio/video installation flare of the rocket engine provided a perfect bridge to Mé- Reception/Transmission (2006). The Alpha and Omega sec- liès’s footage. Central to these visuals was the use of static tions, solar flare overture and the three punctuating elements imagery: (1) a picture of lovers in the Moon from an 1890s reimagining the moon (Eta, Xi, Upsilon) were excluded from the final arrangement, metamorphic postcard—this optical illusion was the movie’s as was the silent section Chi, leaving 20 modules. These in- inspiration, (2) a three-minute sequence of digitized film dividual parts were then reorganized into a permutation set containing scratches and punch holes that contrast with the of shorter, approximately 10-minute blocks entirely indepen- glitched and digital character of the materials (carefully posi- dent of their original sequencing. tioned to overlap with the Moon, linking it to these “errors”) The work was broadcast using a 1 milliwatt transmitter and (3) material from NASA/JPL’s archives (a contemporary (allowing for reception up to 100 feet from the antenna); satellite image of the Earth; footage from Apollo 11, the first the only way to hear this soundtrack was on a radio, and mission to land there in 1969; and Apollo 17, the last, in 1972). its reception would often contain “echoes” of other radio Scientific footage was seamlessly combined with the fourth broadcasts bleeding through. This chance mixing of syn- image, a single shot from Le Voyage dans la Lune, Méliès’s chronized and unsynchronized audio was the reason I used iconic film: his capsule hitting the face of the Moon in the eye. this technology: It took the radio waves that were the founda- Three images of the Moon—the metamorphic postcard, tion of the soundtrack and turned them back into electro- Méliès’s face of the Moon and NASA’s documentary foot- magnetic radiation, enabling a free mixing of their content age—were continuously composited together, merging their with other, more familiar sounds. This idea is reflected by different (yet graphically similar) depictions; I used them in- the installation’s title—Reception/Transmission. These ran- terchangeably for the Moon seen from the Earth. The open- dom elements—the bleed-through of other channels—drew ing shot is metonymic for this entire fantasy: Aldrin’s face attention to those unseen radio waves (light) also traveling merged with the Apollo rocket launching in Cape Canaveral within the gallery, shifting the focus away from the projected (Fig. 7). The optical illusion appears on screen as a lunar disk image towards what was unseen, yet present. that is consumed by the rocket exhaust as the takeoff fills the The movement from the visible towards the invisible made screen with swirling white glitched blocks—scientific discov- the implicit critique in Telemetry apparent: the ways that our ery banishes the fantasy, but only momentarily. measurements and expectations condition what we see and The anthropomorphic character of NASA’s lunar lander understand. The disembodied sounds on the radio were becomes obvious: It resembles a giant machine-head rolling synchronized with the projected video but were haunted by backwards on screen before descending to the surface, an ghostly echoes of human broadcasting, bringing this rela- example of how our historical fantasies overlay and influ- tionship into sharp focus. ence our reality. This recognition structured the choices and development of Contact Light. It is the focus of my critique. Contact Light “Databending” enabled the opposition of fantasy::reality Contact Light (2012) is a 2-minute short that explores a via a fusion of archival materials. Compressed digital video singular symbol—the Moon, icon for contradictions of files were altered using a hexadecimal editing program to fantasy::reality in my longer works. It is my most explicit pre- introduce miscodings and other glitches into the file itself, sentation of this critical dialectic. Contact Light is made from creating visual “noise” and cascading visual break-up. Data- 19th- and 20th-century depictions of the Moon, Georges Mé- bending comes very close to corrupting the video completely, liès’s famous fantasy film Le Voyage dans la Lune from 1902, resulting in a total loss of imagery. When it succeeds, one and the reality of Apollo 11 in 1969. The title comes from Buzz image flows into the next without clear boundaries, suggest- Aldrin saying, “Contact light. A very smooth touchdown.” ing fantasy spilling over into reality. This fluid connection This archival “remix” juxtaposes a range of historical visualizes the conceptual combination of lunar landing and sources and combines the ghostly music bleeding through Méliès’s fantasy. Once all the source materials were ready, in Reception/Transmission with plasma wave sounds and they were composited using Adobe AfterEffects. Finally, I historical audio from Apollo 11. Jules Verne’s predictions in used digital frame-by-frame hand animation to make all the his novels From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and Around individual elements “fit” together perfectly, correcting mi- the Moon (1870) anticipated the real Apollo program (locat- nor flaws in the compositing process. In the finishedContact ing the launch facility in Florida, the time it takes to get to Light, the haze of glitches is a reminder of the uncertainty of the Moon and that the Moon is barren, lifeless), yet Méliès memory and of our inherited fantasies of the Moon as the overlays his film journey with fantasy, even dressing the as- myth of the “man in the Moon” becomes the reality of “man tronomers in wizard costumes more appropriate for magi- on the Moon.” cians than scientists. The shot of the face of the Moon fromLe Voyage dans la Lune provided a coherent summary of these Star Fish fantastical elements, one that would be instantly recognized. The silent, 2-minute-long movieStar Fish (2012) gets its title These recognitions of real document and historical fantasy from a nuclear test code-named Star Fish Prime, which was were required for the association of fantasy::reality. In select- conducted in low Earth orbit on 9 July 1962. This explosion ing footage, I focused on evoking both historical fantasy and was so powerful that it ruined the equipment meant to mea- documentary reality (Color Plate A). Footage of the Apollo sure it and disrupted electrical infrastructure in the Hawai-
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00919 by guest on 30 September 2021 ian Islands hundreds of miles away, thereby introducing the showing the Sun, another, the Earth spinning, (5) a graphic general public to the electromagnetic pulse that destroys Sun face (Fig. 8) based on the seven-pointed Sun partially technology. But the designation “star fish” has another sig- appearing in the Flammarion engraving from 1888 [11], and
reimagining the moon nificance: the starfish is also an ancient alchemical symbol (6) video feedback produced by a digital camera interacting for transformation—starfish were animals believed to fuse with an analog TV set. The iconography of Star Fish com- opposites (sky/sea)—a connection that influences the other bines three signifiers: nuclear explosion—Sun face—glitch, imagery in this movie. Both the starfish and the Sun operate all of which signify/are destruction. This triad governs the as counterpoints to the Moon of Contact Light—Sun::Moon selection of source materials around graphic matches—the are traditionally antithetical in alchemy. My focus on these circular Sun face—always located in the same position on ambivalences directs attention towards coincidences of screen, facilitating a fluid movement between source materi- meaning that emerge autonomously from our culture. The als: ground-level, airborne and orbital views of the Earth, Sun starfish also appears in Two Women and a Nightengale as a and orbital nuclear explosion. character who gives nonsensical advice, reappearing in the Transforming this “raw” material required several phases final image (Article Frontispiece) suspended between the of databending following the recursive protocol diagramed Earth and the Moon (replacing the Sun, in an alchemical in Fig. 9. The initial footage was glitched to varying degrees symbol of transformation). This substitution/linkage antici- to eliminate/distort its content, resulting in several pieces pates the connections made in Star Fish—but the “change” of footage where only swirling black-and-white pixels re- this character offers is purely banal. These connections are mained. This material was composited with Adobe AfterEf- readily explored in visual art, which is why my studio prac- fects. Once a preliminary edit was made, the material was tice functions in parallel to my work as historian. databent again. The result was then remixed with the pre- As with Contact Light, Star Fish is a remix of new foot- liminary edit. I repeated the whole process, creating a series age, static imagery and archival materials organized around of new variations that minimized the visibility of the editing. glitched graphic matches. The montage employs repetitions This new work was finished using hand animation, allow- and combinations of familiar imagery (distorted, degraded) ing for absolute control over individual frames. During this drawn from archival footage: (1) nuclear test films of the phase, small errors were corrected and new elements added. 1950s, including the Star Fish Prime nuclear test (material Star Fish begins with a high-resolution movie of the Earth selected based on its familiarity), (2) a short film of Betty spinning in a space filled with expanding red circles and an Page wrestling another woman on the floor, (3) several adver- ominous countdown going from 10 to 1, each number pro- tising graphics used by drive-in movie theaters in the 1950s, gressively more glitched; at the end of this countdown, the in particular the warning/countdown before the show began, Earth dissolves into glitched blocks. This dissolution and (4) two astronomical videos produced by NASA/JPL, one momentary restoration (to be destroyed again) is a constant cycle. Nuclear tests are connected to an earlier, destructive alchemy— presented by the graphic Sun face, the “Black Sun,” an alchemical sym- bol related to the starfish—that con- sumes (glitches) everything. In Star Fish, glitches destroy the “world” on screen. In Fig. 10, based on the famous image of a house be- ing destroyed by the blast from a nuclear explosion [12], glitches ap- pear to be the force that blows up this middle-class home—flying out through the sides of the house as it disintegrates, finally dissolving the entire image into darkness. Because Star Fish is silent, it enabled more complexity in the visual sequences, allowing for a faster pace as looped
Fig. 8. “Sun face” (top left), based on the alchemical seven-pointed Sun, from the “Flammarion engraving” (1888) (top right); (bottom) stills from Star Fish (2012). (© Michael Betancourt/Artists Rights Society, NY)
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Fig. 9. Protocol for recursive compositing and glitching of motion picture footage. (© Michael Betancourt/ Artists Rights Society, NY)
imagery permutes all possible combinations of source ma- and the matrix of the Euro-American cultural imagination’s terials. memory. Contact Light presents a positivist transcendence, but Star Fish focuses on the destructive dimensions of those same Conclusion symbols: “the Sun” has contradictory meanings of creation Studio-based research enables a fluid engagement with ex- and destruction. It replaces transcendence with apocalypse— isting iconography; it is theoretical by necessity, but prac- a connection made explicitly by the code name for the nuclear tical in praxis. My ongoing explorations treat the history test itself, “Star Fish Prime”—a potential implementation of of visionary art as a semiotic system where the collision of the nuclear destruction being “tested.” Star Fish and Contact fantasy::reality is its meaning. This issue appears as the am- Light engage the same alchemical symbols, exploring their biguous relationship between earlier interpretive systems implicit meanings when confronting modern uses of those and their relationship to scientific exploration. The dynamic same forms. Bringing these (unconscious?) connections focus of my work—not as a visionary but as a revisionary art- created by contemporary reuse of alchemical symbols into ist—emerges through the ambiguous and complex semiosis focus organizes my critique: These forms structure how we of this historical relationship: mythic interpretations of the describe unrelated phenomena—alchemy is pseudoscience “heavens” collide with contemporary scientific ones. Space
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Fig. 10. Glitches destroying the middle-class house in Star Fish (2012). (© Michael Betancourt/Artists Rights Society, NY)
imagery provides a direct means to consider mutually exclu- duction over a long period using different software, tools sive interpretations of the same imagery. The central image and media, as well as my formal development. In spite of to my critique is the Moon, a polyvalent symbol revealing these differences, my works cohere around the same icons, this conflict. aesthetic protocols of juxtaposition and combination and The critical foci of these works was a central part of their theoretical critiques. Writing an analytic/critical discussion planning process, even though the particular, unique aes- of my key works provides a different perspective where I ex- thetic problems posed in each piece were immediately deter- ternalized myself from my own work; my movie the Dark Rift minate of their morphology and structure. The high degree owes its production to my writing this article. of technical variation among these works reflects their pro-
References and Notes 9 Betancourt, Michael. “A Taxonomy of Abstract Form Using Stud- ies of Synaesthesia and Hallucinations” in Leonardo (Vol. 40, No. 1, Unedited references as provided by the author. 2007) pp. 59–65. 1 Sitney, P. Adams. Visionary Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 10 Finkelstein, David. “Telemetry” in Film Threat (posted August 1979) p. ix, 229. 25, 2005, retrieved December 12, 2013);
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Michael Betancourt, frame group from Contact Light, 2-min film, 2012. The haze of glitches is a reminder of the uncertainty of memory and of our inherited fantasies of the Moon. (© Michael Betancourt/Artists Rights Society, NY)
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