A concrete experience of nothing

Paul Sharits's flickerfilms

WILLIAM S. SMITH

In Paul Sharits's 1968 filmN:0:T:H?N:G, a line clear, as he said, "even to the most naive viewer/'3 Yet, drawing of a lightbulb pulses intermittentlyon screen when set inmotion, in the midst of a screen flickering in an (fig. 1). The image recurs as part of animated apparently irregular, unpredictable patterns, the images sequence that extends over the course of the film. The can seem random as well. In a 1974 interview Sharits a lightbulb gradually transforms inways that suggest discussed his film from six years earlier, specifically as a play between its status sign of illumination and emphasizing this potential disjunction between his on itsunderlying dependency another bulb, the one compositional process and what the viewer perceives emitting light from the projector. As Sharits described it, on screen. "They are markers," he said of the lightbulb "upon retracting its light, the bulb becomes black and, images, "real metric markers?markers of time. But they are are impossibly, lights up the space around it.The bulb emits markers which you experientially unable to one burst of black lightand begins melting; at the end relate to."4 of thefilm the bulb isa black puddle at thebottom of Sharits's flicker films are rarely discussed in terms as as the screen."1 The sequence is striking it is simple, if of what they render experientially inaccessible. The a only because, aside from the brief appearance of chair relatively sizeable bibliography devoted to Sharits's photographed in the process of tipping over, the bulb is work tends to focus instead on what his films reveal, the only representational image in the thirty-six-minute especially about the nature of film as a medium. film. N:0:T:H:l:N:G one long Otherwise, is comprised "The effect is literallydazzling," critic wrote of of sets of entirely alternating monochromatic frames. the flickering in Sharits's films, "the oscillating colors The animated the lightbulb, retracting of light,and the not only foreground the pulsing lightbeam, they also drippingof theblack puddle all happen amid fieldsof reflexively remind the viewer of the physical limitof the color that flash and one another on at displace screen, frame and of the surface on which films are projected."5 a times frantically enough to produce stroboscopic effect In the late 1960s, Sharits described his own work in or "flicker." these terms. N:0:T:H:l:N:G, he said, would "strip As he had done with all of his films from that period, away anything (all present definitions of 'something') Sharits "scored" or out frame of "mapped" every standing in theway of the film being itsown reality."6 N:0:T:H:l:N:G to an according elaborate compositional Yet even as Sharits attempted to purge his work of what he to music. In a statement he process similar, said, writing called "non-filmic codes," the underlying reality of about the Sharits described how film, N:0:T:H:l:N:G the medium proved irreducible to a presentation of film follows a chromatic structure on symmetrical modeled frames, screens, and lightbeams. Despite the insistent, a Buddhist mandala.2 even Long stretches of warm-colored "dazzling" forms that his works could assume, frames and then retreat a gradually approach from cool in his theoretical writing from the 1970s Sharits also colored center. The lightbulb image, in all of itsdifferent suggested how his films could be considered in terms of this structure at intervals. or phases, punctuates precise what they displace withhold. Informed by research When the film strip is taken off of the projector reels and examined as a static object?a practice central to Sharits's work?the of these intervals becomes 3. in regularity Sharits, "Statement/' Drawing Distinctions: American Drawings of the cat. Seventies, exh. (Munich: Alfred Kren, 1981), p. 171. 4. Sharits in Linda Cathcart, "Interview," inDream Displacement and Other exh. cat. New Projects, (Buffalo, York: Albright-Knox Gallery, 1. P. Sharits, cited in P. A. Film: The American Sitney, Visionary 1976), unpaginated. Avant-Garde (: Oxford 386. University Press, 1979), p. 5. S. Liebman, Paul Sharits (St. Raul, Minn.: Film in the Cities and 2. Sharits, "N:0:T:H:l:N:G/ From an for a Film Application Grant," Walker Art Center, 1981), p. 11. Culture, no. 47 (1969):15. 6. Sharits (see note 2), p. 15.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Tue, 14 May 2013 13:39:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 280 RES 55/56 SPRING/AUTUMN 2009

into systems and information theory, Sharits developed a theoretical framework within which these moments of withholding?the "experientially unable to relate to"?were not just an inherent part of his films, but were also a precondition of their reception.

N:0:T:H:l:N:G is the last in a series of flicker films on based mandala structures, including Ray Gun Virus (1966), Piece Mandala/End War (1966), and T,0,U,C,H,l,N,G (1968), which Sharits made between 1965 and 1968/ The 1960s were something of a golden age for flicker films. Peter Kubelka produced what is to __B^mI%^''^ _____ generally considered be the first,Arnulf Rainer in 1960, and premiered The Flicker in New York in 1966.8 While Sharits was neither the first nor only artist to make flicker films, his engagement with the formwas the most sustained and complex. Beginning with Ray Gun Virus and culminating in N:0:T:H:l:N:G, he layered the flickerwith color, sound, and representational imagery. That there should be such a genre as the "flicker film," and that Sharits would be far from alone inworking within it,speaks to the ambitions of a loose network of experimental filmmakers whose work has been given the equally loose critical moniker "structural film."9 a , key filmmaker within this burgeoning counter-cinema, described the movement as one to reconsider and recover an entire history of film that had become mistakenly bound to that of the photograph.10 That is, they sought to start again where filmmakers of the 1920s, like Hans Richter, Oskar Fischinger, and Viking Eggeling had leftoff, when advanced painters and sculptors looked to film for the most progressive

7. Word Movie/Flux Film (1966) and Razorblades (1965-1968) a also employ flicker effect but without the mandalic structure. 8. Victor Grauer's Archangel and John Cavanaugh's Blink, two other flicker films, were also made in 1966. 9. The term "structural" has at least three separate meanings, which are often confused. P. Adams Sitney coined the term "structural film" in 1969, referring to works wherein "the shape of the whole film is predetermined and simplified, and it is that shape that is the primal impression of the film." Peter Gidal's use of the term "structuralist/ materialist film" refers to those works that dialectically engage the in renounce viewer order to the illusion of commercial film. Finally, structural in relation to Sharits's work tends to have a third meaning an associated with analytical approach to film derived from Claude Levi-Strauss's structural anthropology. a 10. H. Frampton, "For Metahistory of Film: Commonplace Notes in and Hypotheses," Circles of Confusion: Film, Photography, Video, 1. Paul 1968. Film stills. Figure Sharits,N:0:T:H:l:N:G, Texts, 1968-1980 (Rochester, N.Y.: Visual Studies Workshop Press, Reproduced with permission from the Paul Sharits Estate. 1983), pp. 110-111.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Tue, 14 May 2013 13:39:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Smith:A concrete experience of nothing 281

in the arts.11 mean . . . developments visual This would them through acts of honing down the materials film to purging from everything that tied it industrial involved and often through revealing the process of ... entertainment, including the basic function that had making the locus of attention returns to thework most been associated with the medium historically: as such, as object and as art."17Cornwell cited Sharits's the representation of naturalistic motion. Itwould also flicker films as manifestations of this shift away from mean using film to interrogate the medium itselfwith the illusionistic representation and towards a consideration in critical rigor evident postwar painting and sculpture. of film as an object. as Just Frank Stella explored formal tautology with his Framing cinema in these terms, however, also meant or striped paintings Jasper Johns approached conceptual stretching modernist ideals to encapsulate not only tautology with his maps and targets, Sharits argued that an object, but a mechanical process as well. In order his films could sustain themselves by making reference to represent motion, a film stripmust be divided into to the of itself.12 are only process filmmaking individual frames that exposed to light serially in the the late 1960s and itwas camera Throughout early 1970s, and then projected back. No matter the rate of common for critics to discuss Sharits's and work, projection, the division between the frames will always structural cinema in as a continuation a general, of produce mild, even imperceptible flicker.When made the developments in painting and sculpture that had visible, thisslight delay might be considereda mistake emphasized self-description. By the early 1970s many or an intrusion into the illusion of cinematic motion. of the critics interested inAmerican avant-garde film, Through the dissonant juxtaposition of monochromatic like of the filmmakers many themselves, including frames, however, Sharits's films emphasize these came from fine art than Sharits, rather film-specific "mistakes," positioning them at the center of a self backgrounds.13 Clement Greenberg, as much as any referential cinema. of the editors at Film Culture or Cahiers du cinema, The flicker can seem to articulate the interface informed the criticism of Sharits's work at time.14 the between the static celluloid strip divided into frames In a 1972 Studio International article, for instance, and the projector that sets those frames inmotion?the Regina Cornwell identified "some formalist tendencies mechanical process that defines cinema. Because film is in the current American cinema."15 a medium mass avant-garde Though closely tied to entertainment and capital, "formalism" did a to develop meaning specific film "revealing" itsmaterial and mechanical basis also took in a few here Cornwell used the term to on a and instances, political ethical dimension. "De-mystifying contextualize American cinema of the late avant-garde the process of filmmaking," as the artist and critic Peter 1960s within a historical of art trajectory American that Gidal argued, forced the viewer to realize the constructed had more than earlier.16 "Like the nature begun twenty years of the filmic image.18The spectacle of cinematic exhibited in and in the other tendency painting arts," projection and the layers of ideology latentwithin it she wrote, "recent film-makers have chosen modes of could be brought to consciousness through thismode of reduction of the technical-formal options available to cinema as self-criticism. one Displacing mode of illusionism, however, may have cleared theway for another, of a more 11. perhaps See the discussion of film, for instance, in L. Kassak and L. intractable nature. "The flicker filmwas invented to stop Moholy-Nagy, Buch Neuer Kunstler (reprinted; Baden: Lars Verlag time," as Rosalind Krauss it an Miiler, 1991), unpaginated. put recently, echoing 12. "Words article from the 1970s she wrote on Sharits's Sharits, per Page," Afterimage 4 (Autumn, 1972), early work, in Film no. 65-66 and reprinted Culture, (1978):31. "this stoppage, the reasoning went, would make it 13. Sharits came from a in and to look background painting occasionally possible past the illusion and actually 'see' the discussed his work in those terms. See J. Interviews/ Lebensztejn, "Eight basic unit of the film, the real support of the medium: Statements," Art inAmerica 63, no. 4 1975):67-69. (July-August, the frame."19This 14. there was some single however, the Although certainly overlap between structural reasoning, begs film and other "new waves of cinema" on both sides of the Atlantic. See Sharits's of use reading Godard's of color inContempt "Red, Blue, Godard," Film no. 4 17. ' Quarterly 19, (Summer 1966):24-29. R. Cornwell (see note 15), p. 111. 15. R. Cornwell, "Some Formalist Tendencies in the Current 18. P. Gidal, "Theory and Definition of Structural/Materialist Film/' American Film," Studio International no. 948 in Structural Avant-garde 184, Film Anthology ed. P. Gidal (London: British Film Institute, (October 1972):110-114. 1976), pp. 1-21. 16. uses formalism in connection with what has also 19. R. Sitney been Krauss, "Pulse" in Formless: A Users Guide, ed. Y. A. Bois called American cinema, the work of Deren and R. Krauss personal especially Maya (New York: Zone Books, 1997), p. 161. See also Krauss, and Stan See (note 1), 369. "Paul Sharits: no. Brakhage. Sitney p. Stop Time," Artforum 11, 8 (April 1973):60-61.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Tue, 14 May 2013 13:39:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 282 RES 55/56 SPRING/AUTUMN 2009

question: Why not just turn the projector off inorder to immediate "presentness" of the modernist painting and look directly at the "real support of the medium," the sculpture he champions, Fried argued thatMinimal a an art structures an single frame? In conflating projection and object, for the viewer empty experience of over Sharits's critics also confused what appeared on screen space that unfolds time. By their "mere" presence, create are during the flicker filmwith the material support of the Minimal objects situations that dependent medium. (In factwhat they saw was a sequence of forms upon the viewer. Rather than exploring the possibilities that alluded to the structure of the film strip.) Flicker and limitations of specific media, these objects films are difficult to describe because they require a epitomized for Fried the dissolution of the boundaries critical and intellectual rubric that can accommodate between media. Fried famously called this condition a both a static object and a process that takes time to "theatrical." Although film is temporal, hybrid art, as commence. and therefore strictly speaking theatrical well, Fried This iswhat Sharits indicated in a 1970 statement exempted itfrom his larger critique: when he described the "problematic equivocality There is,however, one art that,by itsvery nature, escapes of film's as cinema's most basic 'being,'" "perhaps theaterentirely?the movies. This helps explain why issue."20 Film's stems from the ontological "equivocality" movies ingeneral, including franklyappalling ones, are on screen is an effect fact thatwhat happens produced acceptable to themodernist sensibilitywhereas all but the by an elaborate process that normally stays hidden. most successful painting, sculpture,music, and poetry is as In order for film to exist as a temporal experience, the not. Because cinema escapes theater?automatically, itwere?it a welcome and to film strip, the "thing" that the artistmade, has to be fed provides absorbing refuge a sensibilities atwar with theaterand theatricality.At the through machine sequestered away in the projection a as a same time, the automatic, guaranteed character of the booth.21 Examining the film strip at standstill, string refuge?more accurately, the fact thatwhat isprovided is of tiny frames, offers an equally partial understanding a fromtheater and not a triumphover it,absorption of the material basis of the medium. The on refuge sprockets not conviction?means that cinema, even at itsmost film serve as an intractable reminder the side of the strip is not a art.24 experimental, modernist of its imminent mechanical activation. Hollis Frampton Fried movies as antitheatrical reiterated the problem from an artist's perspective quite guardedly accepted a because he saw their as succinctly: "The act of making film, of physically precisely equivocality use Sharits's term?as a inherent assembling the film strip, feels somewhat likemaking objects?to property to the medium. the kinds of that an object: that film artists have seized the materiality Nonetheless, practices structural filmmakers would to Fried as of film isof inestimable importance, and film certainly proposed appear invites examination at this level. But at the instant the misplaced attempts to force modernist ideals where they filmic do not film is completed, the 'object' vanishes."22 The belong. time?either Viewed a lens of Fried's of object available for analysis at any given through conception or film modernist art, Sharits's films a true the fleeting onscreen display the still strip?offers present problematic. into a more While faithful to and critical of only a partial glimpse complex system, remaining rigorously the nonetheless an elements of which always exist elsewhere. medium, they produce experience the of Michael Friedoutlined thedifficult implications of of space and time contingent upon presence to vanish?in "Art the viewer. An embodied viewer was from film's equivocality?its tendency inseparable and Sharits's of film, as he made clear in a 1969 and Objecthood," his well-known, often-glossed conception of statement at the film festival in Knokke-Le 1967 critique of Minimalism. The relevant part experimental Zoute, While to "abandon imitation Fried's argument here is his description of modernist Belgium. moving In contrast to the and illusion" in his work, Sharits to engage what art's incompatibility with duration.23 sought an he called "a higher drama," animated by interplay between 20. Sharits (see note 12), p. 36. 21. For a discussion of the equivocality of mechanical reproduction celluloid, two-dimensional strips; individual rectangular seeT. "Hand-Made and in relation to photography, Crow, Photographs frames; the nature of sprockets and emulsion; projector 62 Homeless Representation," October (Autumn 1992):128-129. 115. 22. Frampton (see note 10), p. Time in the Art of the 1960s 23. P. Lee, Chronophobia: On MIT 62-75. Lee also discusses 24. M. Fried, "Art and inArt and (Cambridge, Mass.: Press, 2006), pp. Objecthood," reprinted her ambitions for a and Reviews of Fried's passage about film in these terms, though Objecthood: Essays (Chicago: University Chicago well the cinema. Press, 1998), 148-172. The is on p. 164. revisionist critique of Fried's article extend past pp. quote

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Tue, 14 May 2013 13:39:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Smith:A concrete experience of nothing 283

operations; the three-dimensional lightbeam; environmental "dream machines" repeatedly attested, a flickering light reflective screen illumination; the two-dimensional surface; could, when viewed under the rightcircumstances, the retinal screen; nerve and individual optic psycho facilitate a meditative state, similar to that produced by and consciousness.25 physical subjectivities hallucinogens.30 Films could control the rate of flickers with more and careful than a dream In his statement, Sharits charts a progression of inquiry precision timing the effect.While such a that links the celluloid strip (film'smaterial support) to machine, thereby increasing could the mechanisms of social control that the retinal screen (the physiological site of vision). Sharits trip disrupt of vision, at least and on often drew such parallels between the mechanical permeate regimes temporarily an individual such a close interaction between cinematic projection and the physical process of seeing. level, the film and the viewer's could be as "Flashes of projected light initiate neural transmission body threatening well. A title card at the of Conrad's as much as they are analogues of such transmission appearing beginning The Flicker warns audiences that that the systems," he wrote, "the human retina is as much as famously effects could cause seizures. Such 'movie screen' as the screen proper."26 These analogies stroboscopic warnings are still to of Sharits's between the eye and the film apparatus, however customary prior screenings works, the the film on the metaphorically Sharits may have meant them, speak to disclaiming way may operate directly viewer's Sharits's like those of other structural a longer history of junctures between cinema and the body. films, seemed to show how into the scientific study of human vision. filmmakers, investigations filmmechanism could Stroboscopic effects like the ones produced by be, simultaneously, investigations into the nature of human Sharits's filmswere used in the nineteenth century perception, extending and not in an benevolent to study the phenomenon of afterimages?the subtle ultimately, perhaps entirely manner, to consciousness as well.31 retention of an image on the retina. These experiments Sharits's flicker as one critic succeed in suggested the viability of the cinematic illusion of motion films, wrote, our substance in the firstplace, but, more broadly, such research also "reincarnating perceptual by affirming, and the of consciousness grounded the visible "within the unstable physiology imitating, reifying process itself."32These kinds of which draw and temporality of the human body."27 Itfollowed that by statements, upon a were not to manipulating the body physically perceptual experience popularized phenomenology, unique of Sharits's and often followed could be disciplined. Or, conversely, as recreational descriptions films, about "material and the of drug culture in the 1960s promised, those perceptions preambles supports" reality film frames.33 Both the of film and itsmore could be expanded.28 Commentators equated the color materiality informP. Adam afterimages retained amid the rapid juxtaposition of psychophysiological implications Sitney's influential definition of "structural film."With that frames in Sharits's filmswith psychedelic hallucinations. highly term films that insist an "overall An advertisement forone of Sharits's screenings offered Sitney designated upon that is and and it is thatwith films like Ray Gun Virus, "LSD may become shape," "predetermined simplified, that which is the on the film."34 obsolete."29 As Brion Gysin and other investigators of shape primal impression In turn, this shape would be determined by basic camera operations, edits, and the physical limitations of the film stock; the shape of Piece Mandala/End War in this 25. Sharits, "General Statement for 4th International Experimental sense would emerge from the Film Festival, Knokke-Le Zoute," Film Culture, no. 47 (1969):13. single-frame arrangements 26. Ibid., 13. 27. The quote is from J.Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and in the Nineteenth 30. For a Modernity Century (Cambridge, Mass.: discussion of the political implications of dream MIT 70. For a discussion of the roots of cinema in Press, 1990), p. machines, psychedelic culture, and physiology in relation to Conrad's see F. A. see B. physiological experimentation, Kittler, Gramophone, Film, films, Joseph, Beyond the Dream Syndicate (New York: Zone Typewriter, trans. G. Winthrop Young and M. Wutz (Stanford: Stanford Books, 2008), pp. 304-313. 115-122. Kittler University Press, 1999), pp. cites Edgar Morin's 31. J.C. Lebensztejn, Ecrits sur l'art recent: Brice Marden, Malcolm observation that to the screen a moviegoers "respond projection like Morley Paul Sharits (Paris: Editions Aldines, 1995), p. 153. to . . . retina inverted the outside that is remotely connected to the brain," 32. S. Field, "Film is ?," Art and Artists 6, no. 9 (1971):26. 121. 33. a p. described his seminal filmWavelength, forty 28. Experimental film facilitated many comparisons to drug culture, five-minute zoom across a Manhattan loft space, as "a summation and See G. Cinema York: of nervous implicit explicit. Youngblood, Expanded (New my system, religious inklings and aesthetic ideas." In The E. P. Dutton, 1970). Collected of Michael Writings Snow, ed. M. Snow and L. Dompierre 29. Itwas advertised as such at a 1971 at screening the University (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1994), p. 40. of Victoria, Vancouver. 34. Sitney (see note 1), p. 369.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Tue, 14 May 2013 13:39:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 284 RES 55/56 SPRING/AUTUMN 2009

^_^3E__E______I1____" i s! j j be" ' 11 * i _PH_P _11 *?EE 1 ": _____tli___^^ ! gEHff" i" J ?E1

i Ti i__E__E__fi _B3_i_ SU 'iii _B

Figure 2. Paul Sharits, P/ece Mandala/End War, 1966. Film stills. Reproduced with permission from the Paul Sharits Estate.

a that build towards symmetrical "mandalic" chromatic metaphors/' he wrote, "either lack the immediacy of ... progression (fig. 2). the color flickers or they overpower theirmatrix are . . . Equally important to this shape in Sitney's account and instigate a psychological vector which the form the primal impressions that emerged from the material cannot accommodate as satisfactorily as the trance film an support of the film. Sitney posited almost transcendent or the mythopoeic film/'37The imagery that punctuates openness between human consciousness and the film the flicker films, inother words, seems to require a level apparatus, arguing that "the cinematic reproduction of interpretation that, for Sitney, both conflicts with was of the human mind" the unifying pursuit of the the "primal" psychological affect of the film and also American avant-garde. Structural film, including Sharits's disrupts the purity of the structure. work, he wrote, approached "the condition of meditation Itshould be noted that the psychologizing tendencies and evokes states of consciousness without mediation; evident in thewriting of Sharits's critics of the 1960s and that is,with the sole mediation of the camera."35 early 1970s stand inopposition towhat is now a much a on more Perhaps it is because he placed such premium the familiar application of psychological principles never immediacy of this experience that Sitney was to film criticism.38 Lacanian psychoanalysis offered a entirely pleased with the role of representational images sophisticated framework for understanding the type of recur in a that Sharits's work: the depictions of couple "higher drama" that Sharits sought to develop between sex having inPiece Mandala/End War (fig. 3) and the the film apparatus, eye, and consciousness. In contrast scenes a man recurring of young being cut with scissors to the direct connection between a viewing subject or scratched in T,0,U,C,H,l,N,G (fig.4). Sitney implied and the film that Sharits's critics envisioned, Lacan's that these images?of the cutting and joining of human work on vision emphasized interruptions. For instance, bodies?could be metaphors of film itself.36But "these

37. Sitney (see note 1), p. 389. 38. 35. Ibid., p. 370. Exemplified, for instance, by C. Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: 36. Krauss also discusses the images in these terms inDream Psychoanalysis and the Cinema, trans. C. Britton, A. Williams, B. A. Displacement and Other Projects, exh. cat. (Buffalo, N.Y.: Albright Brewster, and Guzzetti (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, Knox Gallery, 1976), unpaginated. 1977).

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Tue, 14 May 2013 13:39:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Smith:A concrete experience of nothing 285

* ^B^^fc^^ ^ 1.

Figure 3. Paul Sharits,Piece Mandala/End War, 1966. Film Figure 4. Paul Sharits, T,0,U,QH,l,N,G, 1968. Film stills. stills. Reproduced with permission from the Paul Sharits Estate. Reproduced with permission from the Paul Sharits Estate.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Tue, 14 May 2013 13:39:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 286 RES 55/56 SPRING/AUTUMN 2009

scotomization, which refers to a literal blind spot on the terms yet, Sharits anticipated that the answers would retina, became in Lacan's work a fundamental means of have as much to do with what films can withhold as with the of metaphorizing the intractable meconnaissance that splits what they reveal. Despite representational images and divides the subject.39 Dismantling the illusion of the lightbulb inN:0:T:H:l:N:G, the sign of illumination so "the wholeness that cinema could produce inorder to cover he carefully planned throughout, Sharits insisted, a not will in a over this fundamental splitwas motivating concern of filmwill 'mean' something?it 'mean', very French film criticism in the 1960s and 1970s.40 Sharits concrete way, nothing."44 Meaning, and the concrete is at in Sharits's films. did not take up Lacanian principles explicitly in his production of itsabsence, stake we to Sharits's own theoretical writings. As we'll see, however, his If shift the criteria with which evaluate he information-theoretical analysis of the medium troubled work towards the kind of functional analysis applied, a in a itbecomes clear that as much as Sharits's films the possibility of "primal" experience of film way produce of and also thatmay parallel Lacanian thought.41 dazzling experiences light space, they a moments or that call into Sharits's flicker films have long been situated in generate of loss, blind spots, of a critical discourse that imagines how a filmmechanism, question the position viewing subject. reduced to itsessential components, can become fully to these blind and how present for the viewer in a way that seems to transcend In order understand spots function in Sharits's flicker it is to itsown equivocal nature. As Krauss has observed, they films, necessary consider his theoretical from the 1970s. summarizing much of Sharits's reception, "it is the writings early as a His most statements about film the trajectory fromwhat could be thought of relative original postdate and Sharits has described the visual or structuralist 'purity' to the corporeal dimension mandala series, years after he finished N:0:T:H:l:N:G as a of seeing that is ultimately at stake in the flicker immediately in work.45 After he medium."42 Ifwe follow those two strands of thought to "major turning point" his 1970, we is a avoided the flicker effect and towork their point of intersection, however, what find largely began on his series of "locational films" that contradiction: a seemingly unmediated experience, like multiprojector a be in a and that the one described by Sitney, emerging from process could displayed gallery emphasize as a medium. the of thework. itwould be a designed to reveal the properties of film spatial experience Still, to isolate the flicker films from these later It is clear from his writings of the early 1970s mistake simply Because of the limited that, faced with these contradictions, Sharits began strands of thought.46 relatively for itwas to reevaluate his cinematic investigations. Instead distribution networks experimental films, only film in material in the 1970s that Sharits's flickerworks were screened of questioning what constitutes raw, a and discussed in art and film Their date terms, Sharits began to explore instead what medium widely journals. mark a of for a does, which ismediate communication.43 How film of production should point departure or the transmission and discourse rather than a closure of one. specifically facilitates hinders developing In 1970 Sharits was associate at reception of meaning became the pertinent question. appointed professor it in these Antioch inYellow Ohio, and In 1968, though perhaps without conceiving College Springs, charged an Sharits with developing undergraduate film program. two the now taught at Antioch for years before joining Vision in Twentieth 39. M. Jay,Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of assembled Gerald legendary media studies faculty by and Los of Century French Thought (Berkeley Angeles: University York at Buffalo.47 O'Grady at the State University of New California Press, 1994), pp. 360-362. 40. Ibid., pp. 456-491. "Blinded 41. See Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter; J. Elmer, Lacan 44. Sharits (see note 2), 15. Me with Science: Motifs of Observation and Temporality in p. no. Politics of and 45. Sharits had of a crisis while completing and Luhmann," Cultural Critique, 30: The Systems something personal N:0:T:H:l:N:G in Baltimore. He also from his wife at that time. He Environments (Spring 1995):101-136. split recounts this transitional from 1968-1970 and to the 42. Krauss, "Moteur!" in Formless: A Users Guide [see note 19), period leading of his 1968-1971 film S:TREAM:S:S:ECTION:S:ECTION:S: p. 137. production Work of Art Bulletin SECTIONED in 43. J.Hay, "Interventions: The Mediating Art," //-UR(i)N(ul)LS:TREAM:S:S:ECTION:S:S:ECTION:S: no. defines the mediations as "the S:ECTIONED(A)(LYSIS)JO: '1968-70/" Film Culture, 65-56 89, no. 3 (September 2007):435. Hay create between (1978):7-28. broader capacity of artworks to transformative linkages 46. Conrad remarked in a letter to Gerald "Mr. the viewer and the world inwhich both viewer and artwork operate." Tony O'Grady, as a can framework N. Sharits is one of the very few filmmakers whose work whole Hay's definition follows the analytical proposed by Stanford be as a holistic Cited in (see Luhmann, Art as a Social System, trans. E. M. Knodt (Stanford: readily approached tangibly body." Joseph note 30), 379, n. 92. University Press, 2000). p.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Tue, 14 May 2013 13:39:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Smith:A concrete experience of nothing 287

a But even in the short time that Sharits was there, Yellow the time. Moles glosses, and occasionally rehearses, Springs became an important and unusually active node wide body of theoretical literatures information theory a in a network of experimental filmmaking and theory then with specific focus on aesthetics.54 But forwhatever developing outside of traditional cultural centers.48 It technocratic promises in the field of art that thework's was inYellow Springs that his thinking about film shifted title seems to suggest, Moles never quite defines what away fromwhat he considered "formalist tactics" of could be considered an aesthetic in any conventional the 1960s and he began to understand filmmaking as way. His diagrams and equations instead map the or "propositional (rather than formal or expressional)."49 contours of certain kinds of information that resist An academic environment may have facilitated even confound the normal channels of transmission and this new direction. Some of Sharits's most interesting reception. theoretical statements from the time take the form of Moles defines information in general as originality or course proposals and academic statements of purpose, complexity. Information is the part of a message that which he subsequentlypublished inthe journalFilm cannot be anticipated by a recipient; itdraws attention Culture.50 Inone of these statements from 1970, he by virtue of being unexpected. Information, however, introduced his class with a directive: "I would like you, can never be effective wholly on itsown; a message in this 'course,' to regard your art as research, research in entirely comprised of original elements would be, Moles contemporary communication and meaning systems."51 argues, indistinguishable from random background We know from his extensively footnoted statements noise. Communication succeeds only if information can that Sharits was conducting research for himself; his be contrasted against what Moles calls a "repertoire" on bibliographies from the early 1970s include books of predictable elements.55 In language, for instance, phenomenology, structural linguistics, general systems redundancy is ensured by grammatical rules, and a theory, and cybernetics, and his "course" reflected that limited repertoire of phonetic sounds understood by a turn. By distilling these different research methodologies community of speakers. InMoles's structural approach, a new as into approach he designated "cinematics," meaningful communication is constituted by the an Sharits hoped to instill in film instruction academic difference between originality and redundancy. With intellectualrigor that was perhapsonly impliedin his sophisticated models based on this basic schema, Moles statements loftier of the 1960s.52 theorizes that every message can be analyzed by its ratio one As the primary text for of his early "cinematics" of originality to redundancy. Such an analysis would courses, Sharits assigned Abraham Moles's Information ostensibly provide the means to optimize that ratiowhile Theory and Esthetic Perception53 Moles's book, still transmitting a coherent message. originally published in France in 1958, is a concise What Moles describes as aesthetic information, on primer the then-burgeoning science of information however, works against optimization and efficiency. and serves as a suitable into at glimpse Sharits's interests Aesthetic messages not only have a much higher quantity of originality than "semantic messages," are but they also organized around redundancy of a 47. For a discussion of the role of this department in shaping what different nature. Rather than a standardized repertoire of would become "media studies/' see Buffalo Heads: Media Study, words and sounds, individual receptors (people) bring Media Practice, Media Pioneers, 1973-1990, ed. W. Vasulka and P. to a own work of art their unique set of experiences. Weibel (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008). 48. These rather than an abstract set of rules, Hollis Frampton spent time inYellow Springs and made Yellow experiences, "a different of an artwork as Springs, portrait of the filmmaker Paul Sharits, in particular response configure aspects either to he one afternoon in 1971." or energies generated May redundant original.56 To use an example thatMoles 49. as Sharits, "Cinema Cognition: Introductory Remarks, 1975," cites, someone who has heard Beethoven's Ninth Sonata in Film Culture 65-66 reprinted (1978):77. times would have a 50. Most multiple different, presumably of Sharits's writings from the early 1970s are collected in Film Culture no. 65-66 (1978), an issue devoted to his work. 51. Sharits (see note 12), p. 29. 52. 32. 54. The work Ibid., p. develops similar research inC. Cherry, On Human 53. Sharits recounts the book in a statement Communication: A a a having assigned Review, Survey and Criticism (Cambridge, of purpose forthe Center forMedia Study/SUNY at Buffalo,"A Mass.: Technology Press of MIT Press, 1957) and C. E. Shannon and Cinematics Model for Film Studies in W. Higher Education," reprinted in Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication (Urbana: Film no. 65-66 A. Culture, (1978):62; Moles, Information Theory and University of Illinois Press, 1949). Esthetic trans. E. Perception, J. Cohen (Urbana and London: University 55. Moles (see note 53), p. 12. of Illinois Press, 1966). 56. Moles (see note 53), pp. 128-129.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Tue, 14 May 2013 13:39:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 288 RES 55/56 SPRING/AUTUMN 2009

most more subtle, schema formaking a distinction between most difficult to transmit." Although of Moles's someone come originality or redundancy than who hears it examples of aesthetic information frommusic, for the firsttime, which is not to say a work can ever be he described this limit, this un-transmittable excess of in terms: "We know what this fully depleted, or made totally redundant, aftermultiple complexity, visual well . . . It to us like a repetitions. Instead, the Beethoven connoisseur can draw message will look like. will appear from thework information thatwill be different from gray perpetually agitated, foggy undulation with little, what will be communicated to the novice. capricious, constantly changing outlines. Inover-all can itwill from This framework explains how works of art appearance, be indistinguishable background a for its mediate experience in a virtually limitless number noise, with uniform probability distribution to of ways. What an artwork communicates ismutable, elements."60 Flicker films always threaten approach a most difficult to transmit because information is perceptible only in relation to such condition. The message as is a of not because itoverwhelms redundancy; communication depends much upon limit communication, the absence of information as itdoes on information our eyes and ears physically with excessive sound itself.At the same time,Moles's theory acknowledges or light,but because it represents the total absence InMoles's a of that the reception of aesthetic information is also always of redundancy. theory, message pure information "lacks it contingent upon an individual's prior experiences, unadulterated interest"; inspires to Such was a common of Sharits's their "sociological background."57 It is not hard boredom.61 critique see the inverse of this conclusion: that an artwork's films, though one often only aired from the back of an it. the room complexity exceeds individual subject's grasp of during post-screening question-and-answer sessions with the artist.62 The fundamental premise underlying Moles's work is a Boredom is a in Sharits's flicker films because that "the individual receptor has limited capacity (H0) specter cultivate a tension between the and the for the apprehension of information (originality) (Moles's they unexpected in between information and emphasis).58 Aesthetic communication, thismodel, predictable, redundancy. They test the of would be dependent upon that limitingoperation. self-consciously possibilities communication, in 1958 and do so in a that the structures of Moles's theory is an abstract one, and it they way only hybrid This becomes most in was far from fleshed out. Yet his approach to aesthetic film allows. clear, T,0,\J,C,H,\,N,G, has from which is the flicker film that includes problems through information theory implications 1968, only verbal The soundtrack is a for understanding how Sharits's flicker filmsmediate language.63 looped recording communication. In a 1971 article on structural film, of the poet David Franks repeating theword "destroy." most astute critic of Over time the sound of Franks's voice becomes Annette Michelson, perhaps the gradually as a series discrete American film, characterized flicker films in a way unrecognizable spoken of words, a an effect Sharits intensified out The that echoes Moles's concept of originality. She maps by editing pauses. as "an seem to recombine to form other words and trajectory of American avant-garde film attempt syllables one is and are to situate film in a kind of perceptual Present, image phrases?"this girl gone" "history" commonly heard?before to at or sequence succeeding another in rapid disjunction, ceasing express all, indicating only of frame as sound.64 Moles's we tending, ultimately in the furious pace single Using terminology, might say as a the is redundant because itfollows construction, to devour or eliminate expectation that message highly conventions of These conventions then dimension of cinematic experience."59 The bare single simple language. frame construction, inwhich any fragment of time could the succeed any other with equal probability, opens a of in film. possibility of total negation redundancy 60. Moles (see note 61. Itwould be a of 53), p. message wholly composed original 61. Ibid. an event thatMoles terms "the message elements, 62. Such a comment was recorded in "An Evening with Raul Sharits, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1969," MoMA archives. 63. Sharits also worked with written language inWord Movie/Flux is which is of a of words that flash so 57. Ibid., p. 132. As Moles writes, "esthetic information Film, composed string by rapidly since itvaries to his that itbecomes difficult to between the letters as form and randomized and specific to the receptor, according distinguish and a which in turn letters as carriers of repertoire of knowledge, symbols priori structuring, meaning. 64. Sharits his films to the elements of relate to his sociological background." frequently compared and about for cinema to 58. Ibid., p. 157. language speculated ways "legitimately a that seems to be on in 59. A. Michelson, "Toward Snow Part 1," Artforum 9, no. 10 (June become 'meaningless' syntax," process display See Sharits (note 32. 1971 ):32. T,0,U,C,H,l,N,G. 12), p.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Tue, 14 May 2013 13:39:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Smith:A concrete experience of nothing 289

more break down and morph into complex, unexpected to take in thework's full complexity allows different meanings. Finally, through repetition, theword perceptual strands of the film to emerge and recede. deteriorates into a wave of sound apparently unmoored Sharits's films demonstrate how, inorder to receive a to structures a the of language, thus becoming difficult message at all, something has to be overlooked. While to message transmit. Moles's theory suggests that this overlooking is part of Yet, recounting such an experience in a linearway all communication, in Sharits's films, the viewer can belies the aware complex interplay of sound, color, and image become not only that it is happening, but that it in the film.The color sequences and representational is necessary. both images follow serial, repetitive patterns, although In the same syllabus he presented to his students at can they also produce original and astonishing effects. Antioch, Sharits described his interest in information An of Franks as a image shirtless and framed in three-quarters theory part of more general departure from the view recurs throughout the film. But italso varies in humanistic thought that had informed his earlier at times to unexpected ways; he holds scissors his theoretical work and the reception of his films in the or a tongue, his face is scratched by woman's hand (fig. 1960s: 4). The monochromatic to the can background images Iwould like to thatcurrent research seem as as suggest methodologies random those inN:0:T:H:l:N:G, but again, such as general systems, informationand communication also follow a mandala structure. The they symmetrical theory,structuralism, cybernetics, and otherswhich are overall effect of T,0,U,C,H,l,N,G is the interaction more involvedwith "form/function"than with "content/ between these separate but parallel channels, each of substance" are not isolated non-humanistic fads. Because which follows itsown serial are logic. Because they largely they increasinglysignificant inanthropology, linguistics, each on own natural repeat, track of information its might sociology, economics, science, community communication and induce boredom through total redundancy. Combined on planning, transportations systems, a film medicine, and so are strip and projected, however, where they mutually engineering, psychology, forth,they one seem defining our environment and, as such, must have inflect another, T,0,U,C,H,l,N,G can boring they reason: significant implications forculturally relevant art.68 for the opposite itsexcessive complexity. Sharits used derived terminology apparently Sharits sought to synthesize these various research fromMoles to describe how he conceived of the in methodologies both the production and analysis between channels. In a comment about of an relationships his films, ambition he felt could align his work N:0:T:H:l:N:G, which could be with equally applicable broader social developments. Admittedly, the to he noted that "where the visual T,0,U,C,H,l,N,G, relationship between Sharits's abstract films and, for is redundant, the is active and image auditory image instance, community planning or transportation may as the visual becomes active the seem image (begins falling), fairly attenuated. What Sharits perceived, however, becomes redundant."65 This balance was that his auditory oscillating films challenged the position of the viewing would not be the artist could in necessarily something subjects ways that did have implications forother into a as program film, but would be, Moles's theory kinds of social interactions. determined the viewer's limited suggests, by capacity By re-reading the projected flicker films in relation to as a receptor for these In his information we saw heterogeneous signals. theory, thatmultiple configurations short essay on Sharits's flicker films,Gidal describes the of thework a could emerge from highly complex flux of of non-interference of various levels of and sound. "impossibility light Beginning with his firstflicker film, Ray But what thisweb of interference Gun perception."67 keeps Virus, Sharits displayed his films inways that further from most becoming overwhelming?"the message destabilized any single, unified mode of observation. In difficult to transmit"?is a certain of to economy perception addition projecting one print of a film, Sharits cut a inherent in the viewer's limited Our second into capacity.67 inability print strips of equal length and then pressed those between two clear strips pieces of Plexiglas (fig. 5). 65. Sharits in R. quoted Cornwell, "Paul Sharits: Illusion and These grid-like objects, which Sharits called "Frozen Film no. Object/' Artforum 10, 1 (September 1961):61. Frames," showed the entire film at a glance and invited 66. Gidal (see note 18), 94. Gidal's is in reference toWord p. quote close of the Movie/Flux Film. inspection relationships between individual 67. To this the science of extent, information that developed in the 1950s bears resemblance to the scientific discourse of attention that in the late nineteenth as developed century, discussed in J.Crary, Vision," October 68 1994):24-27. "Unbinding (Spring 68. Sharits (see note 12), pp. 29-30.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Tue, 14 May 2013 13:39:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 290 RES 55/56 SPRING/AUTUMN 2009

Figure 5. Paul Sharits,Dream Displacement and Other Projects, 1976. Installationview. ?Albright Knox Gallery. Image courtesy of theG. Robert Strauss, Jr.Memorial Library,Gallery Archives, Albright Knox ArtGallery, Buffalo,New York. Photo: JohnO'Hern.

frames.69Though historians of film have generally used object and projection which became integral to Sharits's Frozen Film Frames as convenient illustrations, Sharits practice in the 1970s. At his 1976 retrospective at the came to regard the objects as equivalent to his projected Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, Sharits included film, and in fact inseparable fromwhat he considered projected films, Frozen Film Frames, and a series of "the work" to be.70 drawings on graph paper (fig. 6). The latter,which Sharits In the early 1970s Sharits began to show his works called "scores," or maps for the film, could be viewed a in galleries, a context that both allowed him to expand as "all-over" drawings or "read like book, from upper his films into space, as with his "locational films," and leftto right,one line after another from top to bottom."72 present more and varied manifestations of them.71 In Sharits's view, the entire arrangement comprised the are Though the flicker films generally still shown in record of an ongoing research project: cinemas, and frequently without Frozen Film Frames, Ina museum-gallery space Ican display togethernot too facilitate the of a film as both they presentation just the outcome of an investigation (i.e., a filmor a film piece composed of several ongoing, recycling,variational permutational films-in-relation-to-each-other) but the 69. Sharits, "Exhibition/Frozen Frames: Regarding the 'Frozen whole thoughtand making process which has formed the Film Frame Series: A Statement for the '5th International Film Festival/ film(s) (the infrastructural"blow up"). Inproximate spaces in Film 65-66 Knokke, December 1974," reprinted Culture (1978): one can observe: scores which have generated a film; that 81-82. filmcan be viewed as an object (seen as physical strips 70. Ibid., p. 82. 71. Sharits, "Statement Regarding Multiple Screen/Sound 'Locational' Film Environments?Installations," reprinted in Film Culture 65-66 (1978):79-81. 72. Ibid., 82.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Tue, 14 May 2013 13:39:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Smith:A concrete experience of nothing 291

1

______

Figure 6. Paul Sharits,Dream Displacement and Other Projects, 1976. Installationview. ?Albright Knox Gallery. Image courtesy of theG. Robert Strauss, Jr.Memorial Library,Gallery Archives, Albright-KnoxArt Gallery, Buffalo,New York. Photo: JohnO'Hern.

and encased in the serially arranged plexi-glass sheets); and, of such a system, the objects that Sharits displayed of of that film projection my analysis object.73 would be mere traces of a dispersed, ongoing process of and a film. The presentation of a film as a series of component generating continuously analyzing Sharits's references to general systems theory and parts risked invitingmisinterpretation; the grid-like nonhumanistic research to a Frozen Film Frames could easily be understood as methodologies speak trend in aesthetic that in the late aesthetic objects. Sharits warned that "the esthetically thinking emerged 1960s. The concept of systems, drawn from the social minded critic may find such an all-at-once presentation and life sciences, had enormous cultural currency in of concept disconcerting or troublesome because it the arts at the time.75 In his well-known 1968 essay refuses to locate meaning inone object or hierarchy of "Systems Esthetics/' the artist and curator Jack Burnham objects."74 While a gallery context allowed Sharits to contextualized contemporary art in relation towhat he reveal much more of the material support of film, his saw as a broad transformation from an "object-oriented displays of film frames, drawings, and projectors hardly to a systems oriented culture." In the "super-scientific" consolidated the practice of filmmaking around self world that Burnham described, emanates, contained forms. Rather, these objects and projections "change not from but from the way are done."7b demonstrated the multiple interrelated forms that can things, things emerge from the medium of film conceived, in Sharits's terms, as a "conceptual system." Understood as part 75. See Lee (note 23), pp. 62-75, for a discussion of the various, often exuberant, manifestations of a "systems" aesthetic. no. 73. Sharits (see note 49), p. 78. 76. J. Burnham, "Systems Esthetics," Artforum 7, 1 (September 74. Ibid. 1968):30-35; Burnham's emphasis.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Tue, 14 May 2013 13:39:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 292 RES 55/56 SPRING/AUTUMN 2009

The rhetoric of systems theory in the 1960s, including Luhmann, that the nature of this "unseen" assumed Burnham's, carried with ita sense of optimism about central importance as a precondition for "seeing" the possibilities for refining social interactions through anything at all. To observe the social systems Luhmann as means a logical study and the role of art in that process.77 As conceives defining modernity making radical a Benjamin Buchloh has argued, however, this optimism distinction among complex network of relationships. a to was deeply imbued with the logic of late capitalism. Such distinction, according Luhmann, necessarily as one a Even artistic appropriations of a systems aesthetic? produces blind spots, indicating aspect of means reflected most acutely for Buchloh in the minimal system for observation also excluding another.81 serve In own a grid?could only to reinforce the control of his theoretical writing, Sharits approached market structures.78 Sharits's embrace of systems theory, similar conclusion from the perspective of continental to then, may only reaffirmcinema's links to industrial philosophy. At Antioch and Buffalo, he struggled a a structural of art?precisely what his films seemed to escape when develop model for reconciling analysis understood as materialist interventions or as part of a filmwith a phenomenological experience?two modes a he to be both for psychedelic project. While systems analysis of Sharits's of observation that found necessary as films requires abandoning those points of escape understanding his work and mutually incompatible.82 in whom referenced in a illusory, Sharits's interest in nonhumanistic research does Only Derrida, Sharits vague find a means of how one not simply affirm the bind that Buchloh laments. Instead, footnote, did he describing structure film while Sharits's film systems succeed inmaking visible the might both "read" the of the strip itas a holistic contingent role a subject assumes when interactingwith also simultaneously perceiving experience and sound. In the of Husserl that Sharits complex systems. But the films do so, paradoxically, by of light critique Derrida's of structures affirming the blind spots inherent in such interactions. cites, interweaving linguistic reconciles itself in terms of Systems models, in aesthetics and other disciplines, and phenomenology only a absence and blindness.83 developed at the expense of the changing relevance of These theoretical ambitions that human subject as a category, with all of itsphysiological suggest although a the between the connotations. Justas the art object dissolved into Sharits described relationships of his film as such network of conceptual or procedural relationships, various parts systems "absolute," an not a that the notion of a person "viewing" an artwork seemed assertion does necessarily imply unity a can be observed.84 The flicker films are constructed an increasingly inadequate way to describe "system so to the most basic internal of cinema: interface."79The corporeal dimension of seeing central according logic to Sharits's work would also, in this sense, designate the source of closure from the full complexity of the 81. For a concise narrative of work. The of this shiftare apparent system's theory's conceptual implications already see N. K. the Cut: The of Narrative "in a evolution, Hay les, "Making Interplay in Burnham's formulation that, systems context, in and System, orWhat Systems Theory Can't See," Observing or invisible share ed. W. Rasch and invisibility, parts, equal importance Complexity: Systems Theory and Postmodernity itwas in thework C. of Minnesota with things seen."80 However, only Wolfe (Minneapolis: University Press, 2000), pp. Niklas 137-162. of a later generation systems theorists, including 82. Sharits (see note 53), p. 68, n. 14. He cites J.Derrida, Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs, trans. D. B. Allison (Evanston, III.: Northwestern University Press, In "Cinema as (see note 49, 76), Sharits writes: 77. Sharits cites L. von Bertalanffy, Robots, Men and Minds: 1973). Cognition" p. "Two are and are 'bound' Psychologyin theModern World (NewYork: George Braziller,1967) subpremises implied they cybernetically inwhich and first, that 'cinema' is a and, second, that as an example of predicting "a 'unitary theory' 'body' together: conceptual system; one there is in the levels 'mind/ in their formal or structural aspects, are comprehended by submerged meaning primary-material ('support') in note 9. of the cinema Ifthis is true, then both the kind of (anti 'neutral' conceptual system/' "-UR(i)N(ul)LS" (see 45), p. apparatus. From the Aesthetic 'structural' Levi-Strauss and 78. B. Buchloh, "Conceptual Art 1962-1969: phenomenological) analysis proposed by the kind of earlier Husserl of Administration to the Critique of Institutions," October 55 (Winter 'phenomenological' analysis proposed by must be somehow as as this 1990):105-143. interfaced, improbably may appear." The of these two modes is discussed inA. 79. The concept thatwould come to dominate systems-theoretical apparent incompatibility "Art and the Structural inOn the Future of Art research after the 1960s and that describes this relationship is Michelson, Perspective," to also marks an (New York: Solomon R. Museum and Press, 1970), "observation." Shifting from seeing observing Guggenheim Viking An observer makes a distinction 37-60. acknowledgment of contingency. pp. 65: "There is duration to the and it between one side of a form and not the other. Inherent in every 83. Derrida (ibid.), p. blink, closes the observation is a blind spot. See Luhmann (note 43), pp. 54-101. eye." 84. Sharits note 82. 80. Burnham (see note 76), p. 32. (see 69), p.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Tue, 14 May 2013 13:39:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Smith:A concrete experience of nothing 293

single frames arranged serially on a film strip and then set inmotion. Yet from a position outside of the film?our only position?these relationships can be characterized equally by disjunction. Encountering N:0:T:H:l:N:G in this systems context could mean, as we have seen, clearly understanding the metric spacing of the lightbulb icon within a grid, and then, as Sharits noted, being "experientially unable to relate" to that coherence in the projected manifestation of the film.As much as the various parts of the film apparatus, or even the relationships between those parts, in the situations Sharits stages these experiences of misalignment become visible; indeed, they may be what the films communicate.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Tue, 14 May 2013 13:39:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions