August 5, 2009

• Annals of Aesthetics, continued:

  Word and Image

  
  
  From Hall's obituary:

  "Edward T. Hall, a cultural anthropologist
  who pioneered the study of nonverbal
   communication and interactions between
  members of different ethnic groups,
   died July 20 at his home in
   Santa Fe, N.M. He was 95."
  
  NY Times piece quoted here on
   the date of Hall's death:

  "July 20, 1969, was the moment NASA needed, more than anything else in this world, the Word. But that was something NASA's engineers had no specifications for. At this moment, that remains the only solution to recovering NASA's true destiny, which is, of course, to build that bridge to the stars." -- Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff, an account of the Mercury Seven astronauts. Commentary -- The Word according to St. John:

  From Hall's obituary:

  "Mr. Hall first became interested in
  space and time as forms of cultural
   expression while working on
  Navajo and Hopi reservations
   in the 1930s."
  
  Log24, July 29:

  Changing Woman: "Kaleidoscope turning...    Shifting pattern within    unalterable structure..." -- Roger Zelazny,   Eye of Cat

  "We are the key."
  -- Eye of Cat  

  Update of about 4:45 PM 8/5:
  

  Paul Newall, "Kieślowski's Three Colours Trilogy"--

  "Julie recognises the music of the busker outside playing a recorder as that of her husband's. When she asks him where he heard it, he replies that he makes up all sorts of things. This is an instance of a theory of Kieślowski's that 'different people, in different places, are thinking the same thing but for different reasons.' With regard to music in particular, he held what might be characterised as a Platonic view according to which notes pre-exist and are picked out and assembled by people. That these can accord with one another is a sign of what connects people, or so he believed."
  

  The above photo of Juliette Binoche in Blue accompanying the quotations from Zelazny illustrates Kieślowski's concept, with graphic designs instead of musical notes. Some of the same designs are discussed in Abstraction and the Holocaust (Mark Godfrey, Yale University Press, 2007). (See the Log24 entries of June 11, 2009.)

  Related material:
  

  "Jeffrey Overstreet, in his book Through a Screen Darkly, comments extensively on Blue. He says these stones 'are like strands of suspended crystalline tears, pieces of sharp-edged grief that Julie has not been able to express.'....

  Throughout the film the color blue crops up, highlighting the mood of Julie's grief. A blue light occurs frequently, when Julie is caught by some fleeting memory. Accompanied by strains of an orchestral composition, possibly her husband's, these blue screen shots hold for several seconds while Julie is clearly processing something. The meaning of this blue light is unexplained. For Overstreet, it is the spirit of reunification of broken things."

  -- Martin Baggs at Mosaic Movie Connect Group on Sunday, March 15, 2009. (Cf. Log24 on that date.)

  For such a spirit, compare Binoche's blue mobile in Blue with Binoche's gathered shards in Bee Season.

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