On Vine as combinatorials

vine compilation # 8

 "Vining is a combinatorial game that pursues the possibilities implicit in its own material… The short video footage captures places the voodler//viner inside a strange loop of production: The so-called personality of the voodler//viner exists within the very act of voodling//vining: it is the product and instrument of the video capturing process. The voodler//viner's creative act becomes one of re-creation, in the sense of both a playful act and a derivative one…" 

Paraphrasing Calvino's "Cybernetic & Ghosts", Sam Renseiw, in a state of calm OCD, ammassed a great deal of short Vines lately. As this end-of-year's treat, enjoy the comprressed, chronological compilation by cliking on the icon above to re-view the undfolding of body-space morphologies. [vinecompilation # 8, 948MB, 27'22'', Quicktime/mov - other versions at blip.tv]

A happy new year to all viewers. More next year.  Best Sam R.

On voodling and the beach man's sandy burden

“Hutte, for instance, used to quote the case of a fellow he called "the beach man." This man had spent forty years of his life on beaches or by the sides of swimming pools, chatting pleasantly with summer visitors and rich idlers. He is to be seen, in his bathing costume, in the corners and backgrounds of thousands of holiday snaps, among groups of happy people, but no one knew his name and why he was there. And no one noticed when one day he vanished from the photographs. I did not dare tell Hutte, but I felt that "the beach man" was myself. Though it would not have surprised him if I had confessed it. Hutte was always saying that, in the end, we were all "beach men" and that "the sand" - I am quoting his own words - "keeps the traces of our footsteps only a few moments.”

Further compiling snipnets of quotidian (obsessive-compulsively, but with a certain research attidude ) Sam Renseiw gathers the latests (short-cut)imagery into the long awaited late-summer / fall vine compilation, feeling like an unspecified "beach man", while paraphrasing Patrick Modiano… Enjoy the extended compression by cliking here or on the image above. (Vinecompilation # 7, 19'29'' 482MG, Quicktime/mov)

On Vining Ad Herennium manner

"Now nature herself teaches us what we should do. When we see in every day life things that are petty, ordinary, and banal, we generally fail to remember them, because the mind is not being stirred by anything novel or marvellous. But if we see or hear something exceptionally base, dishonourable, unusual, great, unbelievable, or ridiculous, that we are likely to remember for a long time. Accordingly, things immediate to our eye or ear we commonly forget; incidents of our childhood we often remember best. Nor could this be so for any other reason than that ordinary things easily slip from the memory while the striking and the novel stay longer in the mind. A sunrise, the sun's course, a sunset are marvellous to no one because they occur daily.

We ought, then, to set up Vines of a kind that can adhere longest in memory. And we shall do so i f we establish similitudes as striking as possible; if we set up images that are not many or vague but active (imagines agentes); if we assign to them exceptional beauty or singular ugliness; if we ornament some of them, as with crowns or purple cloaks, so that the similitude may be more distinct to us; or if we somehow disfigure them, as by introducing one stained with blood or soiled with mud or smeared with red paint, so that its form is more striking, or by assigning certain comic effects to our images, for that, too, will ensure our remembering them more readily. The things we easily remember when they are real we likewise remember without difficulty when they are figments. But this will be essential-again and again to run over rapidly in the mind all the original places in order to refresh the images."

Paraphrasing a passage from Ad Herennium, Sam Renseiw compiled an ever growing amount of recent Vines into a nearly half-hour Voodle chronological pêle-mêle of exeptional beauty (also inserted, shorter moments of singular ugliness) for subsequent scrutiny and visual aide-memoire. Enjoy. (Vinecompilation # 6, 24'10'', 601MB, Quicktime/mov, Vimeo)

On some artfull conditions in voodles

click for video: Quicktime / .m4v for iPod/iPad / direct streaming for PC

"The necessary condition for an Voodle is sight," Janouch told Kafka; and Kafka smiled and replied: "We voodle things in order to drive them out of our minds..." My Voodles are a way of shutting my eyes..."What the Voodle reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the voodle mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially... yet, a Voodle is always invisible, it is not it that we see."

Remembering Barthes considerations that "the age of voodling corresponds precisely to the explosion of the private into the public", (or rather into the creation of a new social value, which is the publicity of the private), Sam Renseiw concocted footage from two recent, semiprivate events, into a distinct diptych voodle. View some private glimpses of jump-cutted reality by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 806, 02'24'', 41MB, Quikctime/mov - other versions at Bliptv)

Today's Bonus Lumiere Video features a quiet moment of winter after sunset-glow. (lum# 297,"moon-house-boat"15Mb, 00'59'', Quicktime/mov)

On simple intermediate space voodling

click for video: Quicktime / .m4v for ipod/iphone/ipad/ direct streaming for PC

" I sometimes dream of a simple hut [...] such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg, that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry,parlour, chamber, storehouse, and garret; where you can see so necessary a thing, as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments; "

Almost Walden, almost, and then better, still: a short visit to a neat retreat recorded as a cognitive, spatial perception inventory, speechless. View Sam Renseiw's moving demonstration of perceptually averaging in a continuous visual world via closed voodle by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 760b, 04'10'', 59MB, Quicktime/mov - other versions at Blip.tv)

Today's Bonus Lumiere Video features a similar moment of quiet cabin/wood co-relation(s). (lum # 263, "walden in wood" 00'45'', 9MB, Quicktime/mov)

Amid things that signify themselves

click for video: Quicktime version / Flash version

" At this point he faces his first critical moment: sure that from now on the world will reveal to him an infinite wealth of things, Mr. Palomar tries staring at everything that comes within eyeshot; he feels no pleasure, and he stops. A second phase follows, in which he is convinced that only some things are to be looked at, others not, and he must go and seek the right ones. To do this, he has to face each time problems of selection, exclusion, hierarchies of preference; he soons realizes he is spoiling everything, as always when he involves his own ego and all the problems he has with his own ego."

While further brooding about the endless varieties of voodling definitions, Sam Renseiw uploaded a short inconspicuous voodle, featuring urban pavement cleansing and a displaced animal encounter, remembering that : "...a thing is happy to be looked at by other things only when it is convinced that it signifies itself and nothing else, amid things that signify themselves and nothing else..". View the simultaneous event by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 441, 00'43'', 3.3Mb, Quicktime/mov - Streaming Flash version for PC at blip.tv)