Page 50 - Studio International - June 1974

the four films and the most playful. A rapid
montage of still-shots of assorted telephones,
each with its own ringing tone, is followed by a
simulated vertical 'blur', to converge on
successive frames of a woman moving to
answer the call. When she eventually 'reaches'
the phone, the film ends. Thus the film's form
mimics the hiatus of machine-human interface —
'the slipping time between the dialled number
and the hello at the other end' (Brand). Apart
from its links with the sequential analysis of film
material begun in Moment, Touch Tone Phone
Film impresses primarily as a wittily anecdotal
metaphor.
Brand's most recent film Angular Momentum,
however, signals an ambitious return to
abstraction. Described by the film-maker as
`further studies in continuous colour motion',
its strategy immediately recalls that of Rate of
Change: a chromatic visual sequence
accompanied by concrete soundtrack. The main
difference lies in the creation of a synthetic
`image', an irregular strip running continuously
along one edge of the frame. This was initially
made by scraping the emulsion from a length of
exposed film (Image as absence of emulsion'),
which then served as a 'stencil' for the addition
of colour to both parts of the strip in printing
(`strictly speaking colour as selective absence
of emulsion'). The resulting sequence runs
from a pink/black contrast, through a wide
gamut of combinations, to a final reversal of the
opening field/strip colours; while the
soundtrack modulates steadily from a wall of
`white noise' to a pure sine-wave.
Compared with Rate of Change, the effect is
richly sensuous: the edge strip evokes variously
Lichtenstein's paintbrush stroke and Sharits's
rephotographed scratches. For the spectator it
poses considerable problems; in relating 'local
event' to temporal flow (one experiences the
urge to slow down or arrest the rapid sequence),
and in responding simultaneously to
`accidental' information (the strip texture) and
`systematic' development (colour combinations).
Angular Momentum confirms Brand's ability
Part of the 'generating strip' for conceptual aim (and origin ?) is provided by to develop convincing conceptual/sensory film
Angular Momentum 1973
Hollis Frampton: structures, which are also genuinely self-
organization: its two-tone 'fog-horn' motif `The illusion of movement is certainly an sufficient and self-defining art works. And his
repeats regularly as the tones vary in accustomed adjunct of the film image, but that early achievement within the structural
interval through consonance and dissonance. illusion rests upon the assumption that the rate paradigm attests to its continuing vitality.
In fact, the sound-track turns out to be just as of change between successive frames may vary IAN CHRISTIE
`unmotivated' as the visual image, and equally only within rather narrow limits. There is
September 3-16, at the National Film Theatre and
mechanical in its origins. The shifting interval nothing in the structural logic of the filmstrip the ICA, London. Simon Field, one of the
between the tones was produced by removing that can justify such an assumption.' co-organizers, kindly provided the filmstrips from
the governor mechanism from a tape recorder By its suppression of any conventional which the illustrations are taken (photographs by
Bob Girling).
when recording the second tone, so that the developmental articulation, Rate of Change Bill Brand's films are now in distribution with the
changing ratio between the tape diameter on effectively reveals the basic modality of the film London Film-makers' Co-operative.
the two spools produced a varying speed experience: temporal process. The spectator is Paul Sharits, introduction to a course in film
(pitch). Thus against the fixed time-base of the finally driven, through aesthetic frustration, to production at Antioch College, 197o. Reprinted as
`Words per Page' in Afterimage 4, Autumn 1972.
sound-motif's repetition, the free variables of contemplate the film's intrinsic subject, its 3 Ibid.
pitch, hue and rate of change are set in motion. homogeneous 'time-shape' in relation to his Bill Brand, notes accompanying the Festival
Brand enigmatically describes Rate of Change own heterogeneous temporal consciousness. screening. All subsequent statements by Brand are
from this source, as is the diagram for Moment.
as 'an acceleration of colour perception, a If Moment and Rate of Change can be seen as Sharits, loc. cit.
colour correction', which might suggest that it Brand's avowedly didactic films, his 1973 work 6 Hollis Frampton, 'For a Metahistory of Film:
seeks primarily to extend the viewer's capacity appears to take a more subjective direction. Commonplace Notes and Hypotheses', Artforum
1971.
for sensory discrimination. But a clue to its Touch Tone Phone Film is both the shortest of Ibid.

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