Page 47 - Studio International - October 1970

object that lures the worker into daydreams, year was a study of the behaviour of people
an immoral object. on an escalator in a large department store in
It is comforting to think that such an object Milan, using a hidden camera.
cannot possibly find a wide or easy market. Check Mate of 1965 was a different sort of
What retailer would ever take on the task of experiment—an attempt to find out how
repeatedly convincing his prospective custo- many variations can be obtained from the
mers of the validity of an object that can only same image during the printing of the film.
be looked at or sniffed? It should be pointed The subject (two men playing chess) was
out that the object in discussion is also fragile, chosen to give multiple visual information on
short-lived, delicate, susceptible to draughts variations that were obtained by many means,
and sudden temperature changes, cannot be all of them during the actual printing process :
placed in the hands of children because of its starting from the positive and negative,
thorns, must be treated with care, is expensive, altered by physical, chemical, heat and light
and has to be kept with the lower part im- action.
mersed in water that should be changed every Another line of research— colours seen and
day. unseen, and the effect of the after image, was
And that is not all—besides being completely the subject of After Effects of 1968. Based on
useless, this object is very complicated to use. the effect of endogenous colours, colours that
[Published 1963. To be republished shortly are born within the human eye in response to
by Penguin in a collection of Munari's stimulation of the same point of the retina for
writings entitled Art as Trade.] about ten seconds. The stimulation in this
case was a chromatic light source. The film is
FILM of course in colour, but only half the colours
For me there is a notable difference between seen by the spectator are actually present in
experimental or 'avant-garde' films, and re- the film, the other half being projected on to
search films. The former are born of pre- the screen by the spectator's eye.
conceived ideas, the origins of which lie in the
field of pure art: in fact experimental films XEROX
have been made that are abstract, surrealist, If we are to achieve an art by all (and not an
pop, etc. Either this, or they are founded on art for all, as a famous French critic recently
literary or philosophical concepts. wrote) we must find instruments that facilitate
Research films evolve from experimentation artistic activity, and at the same time put
with scientific or technical data as applied to methods and means of operating at every-
cinematic language and techniques, and prob- one's disposal. The bourgeois concept of
lems of visual perception. The construction of Great Art hand-made by the Genius for the
a research film is rigorously based on exact rich has no sense in our era; art for all is still
data which also determine the very length of this sort of art at a lower price, carrying with
the film. The construction of an experimental it the spirit of genius and leaving everyone
film, on the other hand, is based on the else with a feeling of inferiority.
personal taste of its creator, who also deter- The technological possibilities of our time
mines times and sequences subjectively. permit everyone some sort of activity, and
The first of my films done completely with enable everyone to produce objects of
polarized light, and without the help of mon- aesthetic value.
tage was I Colori della Luce (`The Colours of They make it possible for everyone who can
Light') of 1963, realized, like all my films, get over his artistic inferiority complex to
with the help of Marcello Piccardo. The exercise his long-humiliated creative instincts.
colours of the film were obtained by rotating One of the duties of the visual operator will
analyzing filters slowly, quickly, in jerks, etc. be to experiment, to seek out instruments suit-
Electronic music was composed for this film able for general use and to pass them on, with
by Luciano Berio, and the composition of both all the 'secrets of the trade' that facilitate their
film and music was begun together. Elec- operation. Rank Xerox machines can help
tronic music plays the same role in the field of anyone express himself. Invented to repro-
music as polarized light does in optics. duce images, today they can produce them.
Films of 1964 included Moire, which demon- Naturally, like all other means, they too have
strated how the moire pattern is formed and their limitations, but if one thinks of the
disrupted. Two or three transparent typo- mechanical limitations of the piano, for
graphic grids were placed one on top of the example, with which a long note is impossible
other and slowly rotated until the patterns ... yet no-one would deny that the piano is a
were formed and then disappeared. Sonoriza- suitable instrument for the production of
tion was by Pietro Grossi with uniform sonorous works of art. As with any other
sonorous bands of various frequencies, which, means, it is therefore a question of operating
when superimposed, create sonorous moire within certain limitations, and of not aspiring
effects. Also of 1964 was Inox: coloured to immediate masterpieces.
light reflected off sheets of stainless steel [July 1970 at Munari's instigation a Rank
(inox). The animation of light was obtained Xerox machine was installed in the Central
by slightly deforming it by bending. Sulle Pavilion of the XXXV Venice Biennale, for
scale mobile ('On the escalator') of the same the use of the public.]