{"id":7368,"date":"2019-09-30T12:54:59","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T10:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/?p=7368"},"modified":"2020-08-10T09:54:37","modified_gmt":"2020-08-10T07:54:37","slug":"no-voiding-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/2019\/09\/no-voiding-time\/","title":{"rendered":"No Voiding Time: A Deformative Videoessay"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"559\" src=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_00-1024x559.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7409\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_00-1024x559.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_00-150x82.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_00-300x164.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_00-768x419.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_00-696x380.jpg 696w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_00-1068x583.jpg 1068w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_00-769x420.jpg 769w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_00.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">&#8216;No Voiding Time\u2019 is concerned with the sensorium of <em>Inherent Vice<\/em> (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson), the 2014 adaptation of the 2009 novel of the same name by Thomas Pynchon. The videoessay adopts a \u2018deformative\u2019 approach, meaning that it subjects a digital copy of the film <em>Inherent Vice <\/em>to a set of parametric procedures in order, as Jason Mittell puts it (2019: 231), to \u2018make the original work strange\u2019. The analytical activity of deformative criticism is one of \u2018making-strange\u2019 through the creation of a new aesthetic object. In this case, <em>Inherent Vice<\/em> was divided into its individual component shots and sorted into four screens, with the sound retained but adjusted in volume in relation to each other shot. The result is that <em>Inherent Vice<\/em> is compressed into just over a quarter of its original length and the time of the film gets \u2018folded\u2019 back on itself: responses may precede questions in the dialogue, and a long take may continue to play on one of the four screens long after another scene that follows it in the original film.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>The commentary that follows the videoessay places &#8216;No Voiding Time\u2019 in the context of current videographic work in film studies, especially in relation to deformative approaches, and tries to define the character of the \u2018procedural\u2019 knowledge provided by the videoessay and by deformative approaches as such. It describes the parameters through and by which <em>Inherent Vice<\/em> becomes \u2018No Voiding Time\u2019, and sets out the videoessay\u2019s point of references in criticism on Pynchon and Paul Thomas Anderson, in films like <em>Timecode<\/em> (dir. Mike Figgis, 2000), and in cubist painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-vimeo wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"NO VOIDING TIME:  A Deformative Videoessay\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/341174651?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Commentary<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote td_quote_box td_box_center is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>In my vision of the Deformed Humanities, there is little need to go back to the original. [\u2026] The deformed work is the end, not the means to the end.<\/p><cite>Mark Sample (2012)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">1. The Sensorium of Inherent Vice<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s a truism to say that a film is as much concerned with the construction of an experience as it is with character, themes, plot, and so on. As Roger Ebert is supposed to have said, it\u2019s not <em>what<\/em> a movie is about, it\u2019s <em>how<\/em> it is about it. Still, in certain genres and in certain films the experiential is emphasised to a greater degree and encouraged to the perceiver\u2019s reflexive attention by the fact that aspects like plot are rendered elusive or absurd. This is the case with the action movie, say, and it is the case with <em>Inherent Vice<\/em> (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014), which, even as it narrates an investigation, immerses the viewer in the protagonist\u2019s own stoner haze. As such, the film is \u2018faithful\u2019 to its source, Thomas Pynchon\u2019s historical\/detective meta-novel of the same name (Pynchon 2009), a book complex or confusing enough to have inspired <a href=\"https:\/\/inherent-vice.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">a website devoted to the diagrammatic representation<\/a> of its five plots and its \u2018130 characters and their countless relationships\u2019. Jonathan Romney (2014a) comments that Pynchon\u2019s is \u2018a type of storytelling in which linearity is only ever superficial, in which chains of events really tend to frieze-like simultaneity\u2019. \u2018Frieze-like simultaneity\u2019 is an excellent and paradoxical phrase, because it translates the temporal unfolding of sjuzhet into something that offers itself to be grasped\u2014or at least <em>perceived<\/em>\u2014in its totality all at once (as the contents of a film or a book cannot be). The film adopts and adapts this paradoxical aspect of Pynchon\u2019s poetics, so that the haphazard enquiry carried out by private investigator Doc Sportello never arrives at a revelation of truth through its succession of conversations (about the nature of the Golden Fang) and concerns (the fates of Shasta and Coy Harlingen). When revelation is deferred and significant information proliferates to the extent that it can\u2019t be grasped, attention comes to settle on aesthetic means rather than narrative ends. As Romney (2015b) puts it of the film <em>Inherent Vice<\/em>: \u2018I found myself listening to the dialogue almost on a purely aesthetic level, as if it were abstract, like music.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2018No Voiding Time\u2019 is concerned with the\nexperience of <em>Inherent Vice<\/em>. It is an attempt to allow the sensorium that is the film (its mise-en-sc\u00e8ne, performances, editing, voices, sound effects and music) to find\ndistilled expression. I wanted to make the film more like itself, as it were,\neven as the videoessay compresses the film\u2019s duration to achieve an analytical\ntemporality, a folding time that unveils the film\u2019s frieze-like simultaneity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">2. Scholarly Deformation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In a recent essay on videographic criticism, Jason Mittell (2019: 225) talks of how \u2018the past decade has seen a set of norms and practices coalesce around what are often called \u201cvideo essays\u201d\u2019. This is true: we now have a broadly recognisable set of genres, as described in van den Berg &amp; Kiss (2016, section 3:2), ranging from the illustrated lecture to the supercut, in which videographic criticism is couched. However, there is not yet universal agreement on what constitutes scholarship in videographic criticism, and indeed van den Berg &amp; Kiss\u2019 book is in part dedicated to a critique of the \u2018poetic\u2019 mode of videoessay work in which \u2018No Voiding Time\u2019 is composed. In words that might be seen to describe my videoessay in ungenerous vein, van den Berg &amp; Kiss (2016, section 3:3) speak of \u2018videos [that] restrict themselves to the material of the case study as the sole artefact of information, and build-ups hardly venture beyond a single observation that is stressed over and over\u2019. What kind of research and scholarship, then, is \u2018No Voiding Time\u2019, and what is the character of the knowledge it provides?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The answer to the first part of the question is indicated in the videoessay\u2019s subtitle. Named in a programmatic essay by Lisa Samuels and Jerome McGann (1999), deformative criticism \u2018is a playful method that aims to deliberately transform the texts it engages\u2019 (Buurma &amp; Gold 2018: 146), and one that has lent itself to experimental activities in critical digital humanities and videographic work. Deformative approaches tend to be a combination of interpretation and creative re-elaboration; or rather, they constitute interpretation <em>as<\/em> re-elaboration or as remix. Perhaps deformative criticism is best described through examples, and I give some below, but Mittell (2019: 231) explains it as follows: \u2018Such an approach strives to make the original work strange in some unexpected way, deforming it unconventionally to reveal aspects that are conventionally obscured in its normal version and discovering something new from it.\u2019 Mittell goes on to say that the deformative approach is often \u2018algorithmic\u2019, whether in the narrow sense of operating according to a computerized step-based procedure, or in the broader sense of subjecting a work to one or more generative constraints or parameters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In their article on deformative criticism, Samuels and McGann focus especially on poetry (1999) and offer an illustrative series of \u2018deformations\u2019 of the poem \u2018The Snow Man\u2019 by Wallace Stevens. They explain that their \u2018critical and interpretive question is not \u201cwhat does the poem mean?\u201d but \u201chow do we release or expose the poem\u2019s possibilities of meaning?\u201d\u2019 (Samuels &amp; McGann 1999: 28). Taking their point of departure from a suggestion by Emily Dickinson that her poems might be read backwards, their first deformation inverts the order of the verses in Stevens\u2019 poem. In the second and third deformations, they play with the omission of certain categories of word (fig. 1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_01.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"362\" src=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_01b-1024x362.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7630\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_01b-1024x362.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_01b-150x53.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_01b-300x106.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_01b-768x272.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_01b-696x246.jpg 696w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_01b-1068x378.jpg 1068w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_01b-1187x420.jpg 1187w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_01b.jpg 1269w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption> Fig. 1: Samuels and McGann&#8217;s deformations of &#8220;The Snow Man&#8221;. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2018Approaching Steven\u2019s poetry through its non-semantic elements\u2019, they write, \u2018we want to show how its pretensions to meaning are not so much a function of ideas as of style\u2019 (Samuels &amp; McGann 1999: 37), and it is the case that deformative criticism orients itself to meaning via a concern with aesthetics. This makes it quite traditional in emphasis if not in method. Moreover, it has been argued that deformative criticism is<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote td_quote_box td_box_center is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>in keeping with the principles of conventional interpretation, in that all interpretation reformulates the sources under discussion in the act of interpreting them. As Stephen Ramsay has put it, \u2018any reading of a text that is not a recapitulation of that text relies on a heuristic of radical transformation\u2019, in which the critic has \u2018paraphrased, elaborated, selected, truncated, and transduced\u2019 the source text.<\/p><cite>Buurma &amp; Gold 2018: 146<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>What might be said to distinguish the deformative approach from conventional interpretation is its experimental character. \u2018When we run the deformative programme through a particular work we cannot predict the results\u2019 (Samuels &amp; McGann 1999: 36). And it is this experimental element of surprise that has attracted videographic practitioners like Jason Mittell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mittell\u2019s deformative experiments with average shot length (ASL) and what he calls \u2018equalized pulse\u2019 are particularly notable in this context (they are described in Mittell 2019a: 235-9, and also on his blog (Mittell 2016), where the deformed films themselves are embedded). ASL is the division of the run time of a film by its number of discrete shots. The resulting number may be taken to indicate something about a film\u2019s overall editing pace. Mittell\u2019s \u2018equalized pulse\u2019 approach involves forcing \u2018a film to conform to its own average by speeding up or slowing down each shot to last precisely as long as its average shot length\u2019 (Mittell 2019a: 236). This experiment might be performed with a whole film, though Mittell has limited himself to scenes or sequences derived from a variety of genres and historical periods, for example the Broadway Melody sequence from <em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/151095736\" target=\"_blank\">Singin in the Rain<\/a><\/em>. The result, claims Mittell (2019a: 237), is \u2018very strange\u2014but productively so, both by revealing editing strategies in the original film and by creating new aesthetic objects out of the film\u2019s raw materials.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For my purposes here, it is this claim that interests me rather than the outcomes of Mittell\u2019s equalized pulse experiments as such. His words suggest that the analytical activity of deformative criticism is one of <em>making-strange<\/em>, and one, moreover, undertaken and achieved through the creation of a new aesthetic object. But if the vocabulary of estrangement recalls Brecht\u2019s <em>Verfremdungseffekt<\/em>, then it is important to clarify that the analysis in this case operates on the affective and experiential plane and not just on the conscious or intellectual plane. At the same time, deformative criticism does not aspire to the explanatory \u2018redundancy\u2019 of conventional academic writing (as van den Berg &amp; Kiss suggest it should). Instead of making the viewer the receiver of the report and illustration of an argument, the deformative approach elicits the engagement of the viewer in determining the critical registers and analytical implications of the \u2018discussion\u2019. Ultimately, the concern with meaning is secondary to that of the creative potentials released. The question that may be raised by the deformative work is not \u2018What is it we now know?\u2019, but \u2018What next? What can be done with this?\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">3. The Videoessay: Generative Parameters<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The deformative parameters according to which \u2018No Voiding Time\u2019 was generated from <em>Inherent Vice<\/em> are set out in the table below (fig. 2-4).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_0203.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"948\" height=\"415\" src=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_0203.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7413\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_0203.jpg 948w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_0203-150x66.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_0203-300x131.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_0203-768x336.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_0203-696x305.jpg 696w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 948px) 100vw, 948px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>Fig. 2: A game of Tetris (rotated 90\u00b0 left).<br \/>Fig. 3: Generative parameters for &#8216;No Voiding Time&#8217;.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_04_annotated-timeline.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"540\" src=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_04_annotated-timeline-1024x540.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7414\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_04_annotated-timeline-1024x540.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_04_annotated-timeline-150x79.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_04_annotated-timeline-300x158.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_04_annotated-timeline-768x405.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_04_annotated-timeline-696x367.jpg 696w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_04_annotated-timeline-1068x563.jpg 1068w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_04_annotated-timeline-796x420.jpg 796w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_04_annotated-timeline.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>Fig. 4: Annotated screengrab showing a section of the timeline of &#8216;No Voiding Time&#8217; in Premiere Pro.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">4. Points of Reference and Coordinates<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The combination of multiscreen and the \u2018Tetris\u2019 editing procedure of \u2018No Voiding Time\u2019 derives from a section of a videoessay I made on <em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/290311136\" target=\"_blank\">The Battle of Algiers<\/a><\/em> (fig. 5) in which I used a mosaic format of nine screens to show the development across the film of its carnivalesque moments (O\u2019Leary 2019). My method was less rigorous (in the sense of strictly parametric) there, in that I deliberately selected the shots to use, but each shot was used only once, and the juxtapositions generated were to a great extent random. Having completed that videoessay, I wanted to try something more consistent and thoroughgoing as part of an ongoing research project into historical cinema.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_05.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"555\" src=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_05-1024x555.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7415\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_05-1024x555.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_05-150x81.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_05-300x163.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_05-768x416.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_05-696x377.jpg 696w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_05-1068x579.jpg 1068w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_05-775x420.jpg 775w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_05.jpg 1432w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>Fig. 5: Frame grab from &#8216;Occupying Time: <em>The Battle of Algiers<\/em>&#8216;.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Inherent Vice <\/em>suggested itself for the reasons explained at the beginning of this commentary, but also because it is a film made up of a high proportion of shot\/reverse shot dialogue scenes. My four-screen format would work to \u2018fold\u2019 the time of the encounter back in on itself. I thought of this as analogous to the approach to picture design known as \u2018analytical cubist\u2019, as in the examples below by Picasso and Georges Braque (fig. 6-7). Paintings like this are usually described in terms of what they do with space, but they can also be seen as modelling the passage of time (as the gaze takes in the head of another person or as one\u2019s body moves around a table), making time tangible and plastic. The videoessay title comes from a phrase heard in Sortilege\u2019s voiceover towards the end\u2014\u2018There is no voiding time\u2026\u2019\u2014and I aimed in this videoessay to treat, or reveal, time as a volume rather than a void. The treatment of time is a key issue for historical cinema of course (<em>Inherent Vice <\/em>is set in 1970), and I was also interested in what the deformative procedure would reveal about the relationship between and among the heavily edited dialogue scenes, the longer takes for which Paul Thomas Anderson is renowned, and the brief \u2018staged shots, panoramas and \u201cbig canvas\u201d moments like <em>The Last Supper<\/em>\u2019 (Romney 2015b) that allude to and ironize the film\u2019s relationship to historical cinema of the middlebrow sort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_06.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"695\" height=\"1024\" src=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_06-695x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7416\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_06-695x1024.jpg 695w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_06-102x150.jpg 102w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_06-204x300.jpg 204w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_06-768x1132.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_06-696x1026.jpg 696w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_06-285x420.jpg 285w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_06.jpg 812w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 695px) 100vw, 695px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>Fig. 6: Pablo Picasso, <em>Portrait of Ambroise Vollard<\/em> (1910).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_07.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"715\" height=\"1024\" src=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_07-715x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7417\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_07-715x1024.jpg 715w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_07-105x150.jpg 105w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_07-210x300.jpg 210w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_07-768x1099.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_07-696x996.jpg 696w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_07-293x420.jpg 293w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_07.jpg 1048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 715px) 100vw, 715px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>Fig. 7: Georges Braque, <em>The Pedestal Table <\/em>(1910).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I have said that the multiscreen format of \u2018No Voiding Time\u2019 comes from another of my videoessays, but split-screen and multiscreen are in fact a staple, even a clich\u00e9, of videographic work, and split-screen in cinema, though infrequently used in feature film, dates back to the 1920s. A famous multiscreen example of feature film was a particular point of reference in my videoessay. <em>Timecode<\/em> (Mike Figgis, 2000) uses DV cameras to record a series of intersecting stories in single takes and real time (the films lasts ninety-five minutes). <em>Timecode<\/em> follows the convention (contravened in my videoessay) that the multiple screens show parallel passages in time, but \u2018cubist\u2019 effects are occasionally generated when separate cameras, and therefore more than one of the four screens, capture the same characters from different perspectives, as in the two lower screens in figure 8, below (fig. 8-9).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_08.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"589\" src=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_08-1024x589.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7418\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_08-1024x589.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_08-150x86.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_08-300x173.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_08-768x442.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_08-696x400.jpg 696w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_08-1068x614.jpg 1068w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_08-730x420.jpg 730w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_08.jpg 1248w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>Fig. 8: Frame grab from <em>Timecode<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"585\" src=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_09-1024x585.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7419\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_09-1024x585.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_09-150x86.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_09-300x172.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_09-768x439.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_09-696x398.jpg 696w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_09-1068x611.jpg 1068w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_09-735x420.jpg 735w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_09.jpg 1896w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption>Fig. 9: Frame grab from <em>Timecode<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Aylish Wood (2008) has analysed <em>Timecode<\/em> in terms of how the multiscreen format\u2014or interface, as she dubs it\u2014operates to distribute the attention of the viewer of the film. Attention is cued in various ways: sound, of course, and I return to this in a moment; but other devices include camera movement, focus, gesture and performance, plotting and degrees of dramatic tension, and \u2018the growing awareness by the viewer of the potential connections between the different characters\u2019 (Wood 2008: 221). The competence of the viewer of <em>Timecode<\/em> in managing their distributed attention (which might dwell on one screen, or more than one simultaneously) is initially engaged by the fact that the individual screens are introduced sequentially, with the top right screen occupying the frame for almost two minutes, as dialogue and non-diegetic music compete on the soundtrack, before another screen appears, then a third a minute after that, and the fourth a minute later again. (The first screen appears towards the end of the title sequence, which has already introduced the four-screen format with abstracted imagery alluding to the filmmaking process and technology.) I chose, instead, to have the four screens appear all at once at the opening of \u2018No Voiding Time\u2019, for the same reason that I omit the black strip that separates the four screens in <em>Timecode<\/em>. The videoessay is intended to offer an experience of immersion, and I\u2019m more interested in the gestalt than its facets. (The makers of <em>Timecode<\/em> are also interested in the effect of the whole, naturally, but they are concerned to keep the facets distinct, as the film builds to a climax, in a way unnecessary for me.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Still, I have to some extent followed <em>Timecode <\/em>in cueing attention through the treatment of sound. <em>Timecode <\/em>sometimes treats sound in a purposely crude manner, abruptly dropping the volume of the dialogue on one screen, say, in order to orient attention to events in another, so that we can see but not hear the actors speak. I do this too in \u2018No Voiding Time\u2019, but in a more fragmentary manner, consistent with the editing pace of <em>Inherent Vice<\/em> itself, increased exponentially by the multiscreen folding of the original. This allows me to isolate interesting effects, as when a response precedes an enquiry, or to emphasise motifs in the dialogue. (My deformative procedure has generated overlapping dialogue throughout, in a fragmentary and nonsensical but I hope musical fashion. Notably, overlapping dialogue in feature film, as in the work of Robert Altman, is typically combined with tableau staging and single takes. This is because it is very difficult to match images and overlapping dialogue in a conventional decoupage of shot\/reverse shot.) I also mimicked the punctuation of <em>Timecode<\/em> by moments where music that is non-diegetic, and therefore not associated with any of the individual screens, comes to dominate the soundtrack. I use this effect in the videoessay, even if the music (for example, songs by Minnie Riperton and Neil Young) originates from a single screen. Again, this generates interesting effects as both the compiled songs and the composed musical score (by Jonny Greenwood) get fragmented and re-emerge unpredictably and out of the order in which they were originally recorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was not aiming for any effect of sense or coherence in the dialogue, but I did feel that an interventionist treatment of sound was necessary to aid the immersive character of the videoessay as whole. Experiments with a strictly parametric approach to my four soundtracks\u2014whether simply superimposing the tracks unchanged upon each other or trying various rules to privilege one track over another\u2014generated distracting results. It is the case, I think, that algorithmic approaches to sound and music (which have a long and complex history) can often be abrasive in effect. Mittell\u2019s deformative exercises in equalized pulse, for example, can be quite unpleasant to listen to, as sound is slowed or accelerated to a growl or screech. It\u2019s notable that in a more recent deformative work, coincidentally employing the four-screen format used in \u2018No Voiding Time\u2019, Mittell retains diegetic sound effects but overlays the whole with a rock song, so that the (very satisfying) result has much in common with rock video (Mittell 2019b). My intensive interventions in the four soundtracks of \u2018No Voiding Time\u2019, illustrated below with a screen grab of a section of the timeline (fig. 10), were in any case designed better to characterise and encourage immersion in the aural dimension of the film\u2019s sensorium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_10.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"603\" src=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_10-1024x603.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7420\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_10-1024x603.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_10-150x88.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_10-300x177.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_10-768x452.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_10-696x410.jpg 696w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_10-1068x629.jpg 1068w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_10-713x420.jpg 713w, http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/204_10.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>Fig. 10: Screengrab showing a section of the four soundtracks on the \u2018No Voiding Time\u2019 timeline. The white lines indicate adjustments to volume. Fainter vertical grey lines mark the edge of individual shots.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Rather than imposing strict arbitrary parameters on the treatment of sound in the videoessay, at least beyond the constraint that the link between sound and image was retained for every shot, I manipulated the sound with reference to a set of three coordinates (as I thought of them). These coordinates derived from my own concerns with historical cinema, from critical writing about Thomas Pynchon\u2019s historical novels, and from reviews of the film <em>Inherent Vice<\/em>. Here is a summary of those coordinates and an illustrative selection of the quotations that informed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote td_quote_box td_box_center is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><strong>1. Paranoia as cognitive mapping<\/strong> <\/p><p>A notion of polyvocal history leads Pynchon to advocate paranoia as a form of cognitive mapping. (Elias 2012: 124)<\/p><p>When Doc\u2019s long and winding investigation of a (possibly) kidnapped real-estate impresario\u2019s whereabouts leads to his stumbling across the aforementioned massive international corporatized criminal conspiracy [the Golden Fang], it becomes clear that it\u2019s actually communism\u2019s evil twin that Doc is battling\u2014that the spectre haunting the world is capitalism, natch. (Nayman 2015: 51) <\/p><p><strong>2. Scales of history<\/strong> <\/p><p>What we get is [<em>sic<\/em>] shards, some more glittering than others. (Lane 2014)<\/p><p>Anderson\u2019s movie is a sort of meta-period piece \u2014 an ironic equivalent of the Technicolor wide-screen Hollywood superproductions that enshrined classic or best-selling novels: <em>Moby Dick<\/em>, say, or <em>Lust for Life<\/em> (both 1956). (Hoberman 2015)<\/p><p>What Anderson does <em>not<\/em> do is stuff <em>Inherent Vice <\/em>with wads of period detail. It\u2019s much quieter on the senses than <em>American Hustle<\/em>, say, and, for a major studio production, it\u2019s amazingly low on establishing shots. [\u2026] Closeups carry the burden of seventies whimsy (I fast became obsessed with Doc\u2019s telephone, as green as a scoop of mint chocolate chip), whereas the background clutter is relatively spare. (Lane 2014)<\/p><p>Mainly, the movie is a series of one-on-ones between Phoenix, looking like Abbie Hoffman with mutton chops, and a mad variety of \u201960s archetypes [..].&nbsp;Thanks to this overabundance of character acting, Anderson\u2019s <em>Inherent Vice<\/em> has a cartoon density. (Hoberman 2015) <\/p><p><strong>3. Voice and music<\/strong> <\/p><p>\u2018\u201cWhat the fuck\u201d makes me happy,\u2019 says Josh Brolin. (Smart 2014)<\/p><p>The film doesn\u2019t feel narratively or stylistically \u2018orchestrated\u2019, but comes across more like a free-associative jam session, a succession of eccentric solos and spiky duets. (Romney 2015a)<\/p><p>Then there are the Byzantine complexities of the film\u2019s dialogue. True to Pynchon\u2019s text, it\u2019s hard to follow in the first place, but it is often almost drowned out by music, either by Jonny Greenwood\u2019s languid, Debussy-esque orchestrations, or by a mix of obscure surf tracks, Les Baxter exotica and cop-show TV themes, a selection prompted by the book itself. Given that Anderson\u2019s cast includes actors not exactly famed for the bell-like clarity of their delivery (Owen Wilson, Benicio del Toro), the dialogue often ceases to be audible as dialogue and becomes abstract music; in a largely whispered scene between Wilson and Phoenix, their voices float airily like flutes. (Romney 2015a) <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>I used these coordinates to orientate my material thinking in the manipulation of the four sound tracks. The first coordinate marked an interest in a \u2018paranoid\u2019 vision derived from Thomas Pynchon, emerging in formal ways as well as in the content of the film (the climax of this theme occurs in the scenes with the dentist played by Martin Short, which deformative luck allowed to play out, in the videoessay, on all four screens). This paranoid vision articulates in (to me) interesting ways with the intimate and mostly interior scale of historical representation preferred in the film (the second coordinate), which in turn finds ironic expression in dialogue peppered with repeated motifs and undermotivated inferences and connections (the third coordinate). The musicality of the dialogue, and its partial subordination to actual music, frustrates the search for sense even as it exaggerates the expressive characteristics of the actors\u2019 speech and phatic elements like coarse language. To speak of the film in this way is to interpret, of course. And, in my interventionist manipulation of the soundtracks and their relation to each other, I was performing a quite conventional interpretative activity of foregrounding certain of the film\u2019s aspects and themes. But this activity was not an exhaustive or exclusive one: the object itself (the videoessay as it exists) has more to say about, and may contradict, the emphases I make in my interpretive manipulation of the soundtracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">5. What Next?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>I have asked, above, what is the character of the knowledge provided by \u2018No Voiding Time\u2019, and so also by deformative criticism as such. The answer, I believe, is knowledge that is procedural and not only indicative. Certainly, as Mittell suggests, the deformative approach can and does \u2018reveal aspects that are conventionally obscured\u2019 about the object of study, but more exciting than the mere \u2018fact\u2019 of the aspects revealed is the potential generated for further research-creation (a term taken from Erin Manning (2016)). To use the terms attributed to Roger Ebert and quoted at the beginning of this commentary, this has more to do with the \u2018how\u2019 than with the \u2018what\u2019 of the deformative videoessay. <em>What<\/em> \u2018No Voiding Time\u2019 is about is the sensorium of <em>Inherent Vice<\/em>\u2014the film\u2019s imagining and sonification of history; but the videoessay may be more interesting for <em>how<\/em> it accesses that subject, for its own heuristic sensorium, so to speak. In other words, while I am interested in what the videoessay reveals about <em>Inherent Vice<\/em>, I am equally interested in what the study of <em>Inherent Vice<\/em> has revealed about the potential of the videoessay\u2019s method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For that reason, I want to conclude with suggestions for just three of the many possible applications or developments of the parametric approach used in \u2018No Voiding Time\u2019. Firstly, I can imagine someone with programming expertise generating a looped and increasingly \u2018chaotic\u2019 deformative version of <em>Inherent Vice<\/em>\u2014or of any other film\u2014according to the generative parameters outlined above, whereby as one of the multiple screens plays out the final sounds and images of the original film, the other screens would begin again with images from the beginning of the film, and so on, potentially ad infinitum. (Could a webpage be built to host this infinite essay? Perhaps it would be a gallery installation.) Secondly, I can imagine two or more films being treated on the same timeline according to the \u2018Tetris\u2019 procedure, so that the films combine and contrast simultaneously. I can imagine using this procedure to compare tropes and motifs from historical cinema, for example the history film\u2019s typical mix of intimate and macro scales, with love scenes and interiors combined, in the same frame, with epic battles and panning shots across historical landscapes. Thirdly, I want to imagine a version of this deformative approach that starts with the sound rather than image. What surprising relationships would be generated among the images in the multiscreen frame if, rather than the shot, chunks of sound became the unit of division on the multi-track timeline?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It may be unusual in the humanities to imagine research not as the activity of answering questions about a given topic, but as a practical enquiry into the affordances of a method. It is perfectly common in the arts, however. The example of cubism, mentioned above, is instructive: Braque and Picasso, and the very many artists who followed them in adopting cubist methods in the 1910s and 1920s, were engaged in an examination of what cubism, as a means of orientating oneself to the phenomenal world, could achieve. One learned new things about the world with cubism, certainly, but the key impulse was to test and develop cubism itself. Following this model\u2014albeit at a modest scale of ambition and influence\u2014practitioners of deformative methods in videographic scholarship can use their enquiries into film, television, games etc., to further refine and develop the capacities of deformative criticism as such. I conceive of my own applications of the parametric multiscreen method used in \u2018No Voiding Time\u2019 as one narrow but productive strand within this community of enquiry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong>* * *<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Buurma, Rachel Sagner &amp; Matthew K. Gold (2018). \u2018Contemporary Proposals about Reading in the Digital Age\u2019, in David H. Richter (ed.), <em>A Companion to Literary Theory<\/em> (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell), 139-150.<\/li><li>Elias, Amy J. (2012). \u2018History\u2019, in Inger H. Dalsgaard, Luc Herman &amp; Brian McHale (eds), <em>The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Pynchon <\/em>(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 123-35.<\/li><li>Hoberman, J. (2015). \u2018Splendor in the Grass\u2019 (review of <em>Inherent Vice<\/em>),\u202f<em>Artforum International<\/em>\u202f53:5, 63.<\/li><li>Jameson, Fredric (1988). \u2018Cognitive Mapping\u2019, in C. Nelson &amp; L. Grossberg, eds,<em> Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture<\/em> (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education), 347\u2013360.<\/li><li>Lane, Anthony (2014). \u2018Swinging Seventies\u2019 (review of <em>Inherent Vice<\/em>), <em>New Yorker<\/em>, 15 December.<\/li><li>Lynch, Kevin (1960). <em>The Image of the City<\/em> (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).<\/li><li>Manning, Erin (2016).\u2019Ten propositions for Research-Creation\u2019, in Noyale Colin &amp; Stefanie Sachsenmaier, eds, <em>Collaboration in Performance Practice: premises, Workings and Failures<\/em> (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 133-141.<\/li><li>Mittel, Jason (2016). \u2018<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Videographic Deformations: Equalized Pulse (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/justtv.wordpress.com\/2016\/01\/17\/videographic-deformations-equalized-pulse\/\" target=\"_blank\">Videographic Deformations: Equalized Pulse<\/a>\u2019, blog post dated 17 January 2016.<\/li><li><del>           <\/del> (2019a). \u2018Videographic Criticism as Digital Humanities\u2019, in Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein, eds., <em>Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019<\/em> (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press), 224-242.<\/li><li><s>           <\/s> (2019b). \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/336691810\">Object oriented Breaking Bad<\/a>\u2019. Videoessay available at https:\/\/vimeo.com\/336691810.<\/li><li>Nayman, Adam (2015). Review of <em>Inherent Vice<\/em>, <em>Cineaste<\/em>,Spring 2015, 50-51.<\/li><li>O\u2019Leary, Alan (2019). \u2018<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Occupying Time: The Battle of Algiers (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/mediacommons.org\/intransition\/occupying-time-battle-algiers\" target=\"_blank\">Occupying Time: <\/a><em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Occupying Time: The Battle of Algiers (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/mediacommons.org\/intransition\/occupying-time-battle-algiers\" target=\"_blank\">The Battle of Algiers<\/a><\/em>\u2019. Videoessay and commentary in <em>[In]Transition <\/em>6:3.<\/li><li>Pynchon, Thomas (2009). <em>Inherent Vice<\/em> (London: Penguin).<\/li><li>Romney, Jonathan (2015a). \u2018Strange Daze\u2019, <em>Sight &amp; Sound<\/em> 25:2, 18-21.<\/li><li><s>           <\/s> (2015b). \u2018It\u2019s funny. Why are you sad?\u2019 Interview with Paul Thomas Anderson, <em>Sight &amp; Sound<\/em> 25:2, 22-23.<\/li><li>Sample, Mark (2012). \u2018<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Notes towards a Deformed Humanities (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/2012\/05\/02\/notes-towards-a-deformed-humanities\/\" target=\"_blank\">Notes towards a Deformed Humanities<\/a>\u2019. Blog essay posted 2 May.<\/li><li>Samuels, Lisa and Jerome McGann (1999). \u2018Deformance and Interpretation\u2019, <em>New Literary History<\/em> 30:1, 25-56.<\/li><li>Smart, Jack&nbsp;(2014). \u2018<em>Inherent Vice<\/em>: Interview with Josh Brolin\u2019, <em>Back Stage<\/em> 55:48, 26.<\/li><li>van den Berg, Thomas &amp; Mikl\u00f3s Kiss (2016). <em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Film Studies in Motion: From Audiovisual Essay to Academic Research Video (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/scalar.usc.edu\/works\/film-studies-in-motion\/index\" target=\"_blank\">Film Studies in Motion: From Audiovisual Essay to Academic Research Video<\/a><\/em> (University of Groningen).<\/li><li>Wood, Aylish (2008). \u2018Encounters at the Interface: Distributed Attention and Digital Embodiments\u2019, <em>Quarterly Review of Film and Video<\/em> 25:3, 219-229.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VIDEO-ESSAY. Deformative criticism is a playful approach to film analysis that creates a new aesthetic object from the film being analysed. In &#8216;No Voiding Time\u2019, Alan O\u2019Leary divides Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s <em>Inherent Vice<\/em> into its individual component shots on four screens and treats the sound for musicality rather than sense. The result is an absurdist artefact that celebrates an already perplexing film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":7409,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,227],"tags":[241],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7368"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16-9.dk\/3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}