We have continued to examine how various artists use time as
a material in their works. Through the artistic process, artists display their
perception of time and help us expand our understanding of the subject. Time is
something that we are involved with everyday, but is still very difficult to
define.
In class we watched the movie Momento, directed by
Christopher Nolan. The film is a story about a man named Leonard who suffers
from short-term memory loss and uses photos and tattoos to try and hunt down
the man who he thinks raped and killed his wife. The movie shows how important
our sense of time is and displays the relationship between time and memory.
Leonard can remember everything up until the accident with his wife, and then
can only recall the last couple of minutes. Leonard can’t do anything to
prevent this memory loss and has to use pictures with notes and tattoos to save
the information that he needs to know. The movie shows how if we had no memory,
we would have no sense of time. When Leonard’s mind goes blank, he does not
know where he is, what he is doing, or how much time has passed. This loss of
memory-and sense of time-is a truly frightening idea.
I think it is really interesting to think about how
photographs reflect time. In a podcast on RadioLab, Unlocking the Secrets of
Time, they discuss how Leland Stanford owned a horse and had a photographer
take photos of the horse running to see if all four of its legs ever left the
ground at the same time. I think these photos are really interesting because
the men needed to use a camera to slow down time and take a precise image. Even
though the horse runs right in front of their eyes, it is only with the use of
the camera that they can really see exactly what is happening.
In Ways of Seeing, by John Berger, he also discusses
photographs but in a different way. He talks about how photos reflect the
photographer’s way of seeing or his/her perspective the photographer’s subject.
Berger also discusses how photos are used to reproduce images of paintings. He
says when paintings are reproduced it destroys the uniqueness of the image and
the meaning of the original painting changes. I am curious about whether Berger
believes that both paintings and photographs have the same ability to reflect
the artist’s way of seeing and give a view of the past? Also, even if there were
no reproduction of paintings through photographs, would it be possible for the
meaning of a painting to stay the same?
We have also been doing more art exercises lately and have
practiced moving our thinking from the left hemisphere of our brain to the
right. When we shift from our left to right brain we transition from logical
thinking to our spacial thinking. This crossing over allows us to more
accurately draw what is in front of us because we focus on drawing what we
actually see and not how our left brain tells us a nose, hand, or object should
look. When artists use their right brain, they feel absorbed in the work and
can loose their sense of time completely. This feeling is very similar to what
I experience playing soccer. When I am “in the zone” everything around me seems
to disappear. I am so focused on the game that I am not thinking about anything
else. I am not aware of how much time is left in the game or what the fans are
saying. It is almost like I move without even really thinking. It is during
these moments that I play my best soccer.
We also did a project in which we were to show on a note
card a place that is lost. I printed out images on the computer and recreated a
memory from when I was little. In my old house, we had a window seat that I
remember sitting in watching the rain fall. This place is lost because we no
longer live there and it is unlikely that I will ever return to it. But I can
always imagine myself sitting there, experiencing the passing of time with
every raindrop that glided down the window.
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