Light Cue 23

Isaac discusses his process as a director and it looks to be a promising series of essays on the mind of a director. It is interesting to note that while Isaac find its necessary to discuss process from a more abstracted metaphorical perspective, Josh Costello gives us a warts and all realism that is equally powerful in its bluntness. It might be interesting to track these two discussions as through the looking glass images of each other.

Both of these blogs point to a rise in the quality of information that is available to the modern reader. Virtually anything one wishes to know is at hand. The constraints on knowledge are no longer matters of education and memory so much as they are ability to do efficacious searches and how to use information. I like this latter point. We are witnessing an evolution of the very concept of intelligence. Memory is not at issue. Facts are not so much the concern, rather the use of knowledge is key. Sure this has always been the case, but there was always the limiter of memory. Mental processing power had to be expended not just on constructing ideas and arguments, but on remembering facts. The use of mnemonics can be useful in factual recall but you still expend brain power. The rise of modern search engines and resources like wikipedia allow the brain to only use the mnemonic key words and allow the computer to do the processing while the brain can continue on with higher level functions.

I have a terrible memory for facts. Especially detail oriented facts. However, I have a wonderful relational memory. So long as I can fit things into a structure or a conceptual framework I can operate within that framework and surprisingly recall the necessary facts. This comes in quite handy with lighting. When you are dealing with thousands of pieces of discreet information it becomes impossible to keep it all straight. But place it all in a highly structured and relation network of information and any single fact can be recalled with ease. Ask me a question I will probably forget the answer. Get me into a conversation and I will toss out all sorts of facts.

Light is wholly relational. As Albers notes, color is a deeply relational thing. In fact, it is possible to make a color appear to be its compliment depending upon the context. In order to do that a knowledge of the system is needed. But once the system is understood the factual details become unnecessary.

This is true in terms of working on a play in general. When you first start engaging a text it is useful to break it down on several levels. Scenes, beats, and so forth. With this it becomes possible to create various maps of how the play moves and find analogous maps out in the world. This leads to finding socio-historical analogues to the situations in the play. These then form the basis of a production concept. The difficulty with this is that you essentially have two systems of logic at play simultaneously. Ideally these are sympathetic systems and work well with each other, but at some point they are bound to come into conflict. After all, there are radical differences between the time of Richard III and the interval between the world wars. Yet it is a brilliant setting for the play.

Conflicts arise. How do you navigate through these conflicts? Well, its contextual. Within the hybrid system you have devised you must see what is the most logical answer. Sticking to to one system or the other will not solve the problem it will only create another. In this moment the spirit of the production comes out. The tensions in the visual language become apparent and now it becomes interesting. When Paul Sorvino says ‘Hand me my longsword’ in Romeo+Juliet we see this conflict resolved by manifesting the text in the setting. And by doing this the text and image come together as a single event. Favor one too heavily and you risk fracturing this delicate balance.

This same tension exists in our contemporary world with technologies like the internet. We have the ability to meet and form relationships with people based entirely upon the meeting of minds. Textual interactions are an almost exclusively intellectual activity. They may be emotionally charged, but the interactions are all mediated through intellect. When these interaction leave the digital and enter the phenomenal world of beings a new dynamic is formed. The screen self and the social self must confront one another. A choice must be made, not to one or the other, but towards integration of aspects.

Metaphor and blunt reality can and must coexist as integrated aspects of a single being. The human experience is a constant stream of these confrontations and every time a choice must be made. And every choice offers the possibility of integration or fracture.