Explorations of Visual Representation: Towards a Language of Movement

Introduction Since the invention of cinematography experimental cinema has undergone continual advances in both technology, aesthetics, and content. With the development of digital interactive technologies, these conventions are being challenged and reshaped. This paper examines the graphic representation of abstract interactive cinematic elements that seek to explore movement, time and space and build upon the graphic tools !lm-makers used in the early 20th century to express these elements and affect the cinematic language of movement into the 21st century. Early pioneers of experimental !lm, such as Eggeling, Richter, Ruttmann explored a metaphorical and symbolic visual language of abstraction that de!ned spatial dynamics and temporal layering of movement, time and space (Le Grice 1979). These early explorations into the language of movement were conceptualised through unique systems of graphic representation that combined signs and symbols. They explored abstraction in the moving image though an “equivalence of opposites” (Richter 1952) analogous with musical and dance notation resulting in a "uid abstraction of geometric, organic and anthropomorphic forms. Later we see expansion of these considerations by Eisenstein in his seminal work on montage. These and other early !lmmakers worked within the technical constraints of 2D and 3D representation available at that time. Today, digital technology provides !lm-makers greater "exibility to determine the cinematic modalities of the aesthetic, narrative structures and forms of interactive engagement. This is evidenced through the rich spectrum of experimental interactive cinematic artworks that has emerged in the late 20th century. Digital technology has also provided new ways of making schematic representations of moveExplorations of Visual Representation: Towards a Language of Movement Chris Bowman (au)