The Matter of Vision. Peter Wyeth

laughing man

      The sad baby

      The sinister man

      The sad baby

      The syllogism looking/looked at/reaction figure

      ignites the narrative movement

      Add to this sound and

      a character never says what s/he means

      Dialogue is a game of chess

      Not a telling of the story.

      Bogart tells Ingrid he hates her

      But we know he loves her.

      Cinema!

      x

      Film Theory

      The eye evolved to track motion

      We follow motion because of survival

      Emotion arises from survival

      The arc of a film

      is the trace of Emotion

      The brain follows Emotion

      as the eye follows motion

      (Neither are conscious)

      We cannot avoid empathy

      (Neither is that conscious)

      The body/brain shadows the hero

      we go through what s/he goes through

      (Shared Circuits)

      The brain connects diverse stimuli

      to survive.

      It is not a question of reality

      but of representation.

      The least unlikely explanation

      for the co-presence of the various stimuli.

      A story

      is making the best of what we see.

      Narrative is the native mode of the brain.

      The Classic Hollywood Cinema

      created a perfect engine of meaning

      The Ideal Narrative

      Each scene changes

      the emotional status of the hero

      Cinema is change

      as life is change

      The ideal script

      has one change after another

      scene after scene

      Marnie.

      From Culture to nature

      reverse-engineering Cinema

      Cultural evolution

      (after Darwin)

      from nature to culture

      A science of culture

      The Logic of Nature

      The logic of culture

      Cinema

      51Karl Kraus, Werke, Vol III, p. 161.

      52The emphasis is on modern societies

      53It is an important distinction that it is not LCR themselves, but their ‘ideologies’ that are the issue.

      54All the (externally oriented) functions of the brain are movements (of blood, electrical synaptic connections etc), that are the substance, as it were, of Emotion.

      55in the sense of created through evolution.

      56Emotion is an effect whose cause is the external world, external to the body, a response to the threat of a predator – or the opportunity to be that predator.

      57A useful distinction between the Automatic and the non-conscious could be with the autonomic nervous system as the latter – perhaps internal regulation v external orientation as a boundary, with the Automatic more externally-oriented.

      58The area outside consciousness is the major part of the brain. Consciousness is the minor part, an effect of the major part.

      59The raw figures are from Information Science in the 1950s. For caveats, see Consciousness in Commentaries.

      60Vision responds quickly to threats and opportunities - which create emotional responses.

      61We have only representations in our brains, as against the idea of a real world that we can perceive as a whole.

      62Joyce’s famous phrase, followed by the less-known follow-up, which might be interpreted as thought occurs in Vision.

      63Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens, Vintage, New York, 2000. p.188.

      64Language, in common with everything human, evolved only for survival. Sound as survival alarm, as with Vision, suggests that concern over the sighting of a possible predator would use the help of sound over distance to warn others.

      65Of the LCR trio, Consciousness is particularly about its image rather than its reality, see Commentaries discussion.

      66Consciousness is suggested here as an epiphenomen of brain function, rather than strictly a causal agent in itself. Part of a chain of causation and therefore with a causal role, but a contingent rather than autonomous one.

      67Although this is my view, I have had conversations with well-known neuroscientists who I was surprised to find took the same view.

      68I tend to this view, although the interconnectedness of the pair makes it a difficult call.

      69That is an effect of the operations of the brain.

      70Again this is suggesting that the role of consciousness is less active than we assume, more on the receiving end.

      71That is to say the brain creates Emotion as a sign of a survival-threat contained in information perceived.

      72The notion here is that the brain utilises the resources of consciousness for the primary aim of avoiding threats to survival.

      73Dietrich Trinker, Aufhahme, Speicherung und Verarbeitung von Information durch den Menschen, Veroffentlchungen der Schleswig-Holsteinischen Universitatsgesellschaft, Neu Foge, nr 44 (Kiel: Verlag Ferdinand Hort,