A Lecture by Hollis Frampton

Ruby Man
Ruby Man
Sep 4, 2018 · 2 min read

Hollis Frampton’s performance piece “A Lecture” discusses a film from the perspective of a viewer. In the article he is reenacting Michael Snow’s film with visuals for viewers such as the red cellophane and pipe cleaner. “A camera is a machine for making footage. It provides me with a third eye, of sorts, an acutely penetrating extension of my vision.” This quote in specific struck out to me because a photo could sometimes capture much more than what the human eye are able to see, it is also able to hold a special memory forever. He talks about a white rectangle in his article as well. I interpreted the white rectangle as a person’s perspective on what they see. In this case it is the film. That is why he says “For the sake of variety in our modulations, for the sake of more precise control of what and how much we remove from our rectangle, however, we most often use a specifically devised material called: film.” This explained the ideology that each person has their own “rectangle” which is our perspective. The “rectangle” is more so seen in film and art since it is something that is very opinionated unlike math or other subjects. My own experiences in relationship to the “rectangle” Hollis Frampton mentions is often times the different views on a particular subject. For example, it could be seeing a movie with my friends and having a completely different perspective on the movie. Often times after watching the movie we would have conversations and they would bring up a point that I had missed because I was watching it in my “rectangle”. Overall I found this article very interesting and mind opening. Hollis Frampton used a simple method and gave visual to Michael Snow’s meaningful prerecording to enhance the viewer’s “rectangle” on the film.

    Ruby Man

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    Ruby Man