another new venture

back home, i realized i'm sitting on a gold mine of familial artifacts that date back hundreds of years. seriously.
slides, books, 8mm films, photographs, notes, poems, all which have somehow collected dust for extended periods of time, and now i'm going to unearth them in a new blog. yes, a new blog.

here is the link:

mcglone digital archives

lets hope i keep up with it.

sight and hearing, exercise no. 1

Revisiting Robert Bresson’s Notes on Sound: Sight and Hearing
to know thoroughly what business that sound (or that image) has there;
what is for the eye must not duplicate what is for the ear.
if the eye is entirely won, give nothing or almost nothing to the ear.* one cannot be at the same time all eye and all ear.
what a sound can replace an image, cut the image or neutralize it. the ear goes more toward the within, the eye toward the outer.
a sound must never come to the help of an image, nor an image to help of a sound.
if a sound is the obligatory complement of an image, give preponderance either to the sound or to the image. if equal, they damage or kill each other, as we say of colors.
image and sound must not support each other, but must work each in turn through a sort of relay.
the eye solicited alone makes the ear impatient, the ear solicited alone makes the eye impatient. use these impatiences. power of the cinematographer who appeals to the two senses in a governable way.
against the tactics of speed, of noise, set tactics of slowness, of silence.

! if you neutralize the eye, you make the ear impatient and the observer will listen attunely.
*and vice versa, if the ear is entirely won, give nothing to the eye.

click the above image to begin bressonian exercise. watch. listen / listen. watch.

backyard life

spiders and insects have always fascinated andrea and i. a few days ago we spent much of the day in her backyard with my camera, and here is some of the material. naturalism, in this context can be a rewarding hobby.

a whole new era

this is just a slight new experiment with publishing my own dv work onto this weblog. expect more artistic things in the future. but for now, this piece was filmed at the detroit zoo and serves a visual metaphor for how i feel painting my house this summer.

...and out of left field come the relief pitchers:

jwm, d.andrew, a.bazin, a.malraux, e.mounier, & p.teilhard de chardin

i. profession
by the end of june, i had outlasted the most dangerous part of my life, so far
i have now emptied myself of (some) illusions
and reemerged with both a sense of purpose
and (maybe) a little bit of confidence in my abilities

ii. meditation
andre malraux saw in art
'the eternal part of man, which emerges as the power which both enables
and impels man to transcend his human condition
to break through the world of time and appearances to a
truth
whose discovery affords him a glimpse of
eternity'

iii. formulation
art=humanity=evolution:
the evolution from one style to another shows
humanity's need to transform itself
perpetually
but
does not suggest a final goal

iv. exercise
let us view the following phrases about video gaming in their broadest
cultural
stylistic
and technical spheres:
my brother, plays halo2 on xbox *live*
interacting with digital representations of
others
when the game ends, he has a kill total of 17
winning the game, killing 17 people
digitally
in 30 seconds a new game will load and the cycle will continue until
holiday 2005, when xbox360 is released
'are you an xbox live user?'

v. optimism
teilhard's theories believed we should
renunciate the self
recognize the insufficiencies of individual consciousness
commit to the creation of a new social consciousness
believe that these times of struggle are part of an inevitable evolutionary design
which one can recognize throughout nature
(catchwords include: "progress," "evolution," "development")

vi. pessimism
the vaccuum of my consciousness tells me that the notion of "progress" is invalid
does not exist
is a human creation that has been severly abused by powerful people
whatever progress' current status
please return my phone calls and emails because i am bored of monologues

vii. correspondence
dear progress,
at this moment i believe that humanity is a searching not a proclaiming being.
in light of this, sorry for the nasty message i left on your machine in regards to the year 2008.

warmest regards,
jwm

ps. will people from detroit still believe in you after the super bowl?

viii. manipulation
the computer becomes the latern with which the programmer
peers
into the dark, seeking
a glimmer of values
expressed in style which
like the person
is not to be expressed but an inner orientation enabling an outward search