M. KONTOPOULOS Projects and Collaborations
02.2007
Conversation Piece
Categories: Conversation Piece, Projects

Film editor Walter Murch, who edited many of Francis Ford Copolla’s films, developed a theory about edits while working on The Conversation (1974) He noticed that in many cases, the best place to make a cut was when he blinked. Subsequently, Murch wrote about the human blink as a sort of mental punctuation mark: a signifier of a viewer’s comfort with visual material and therefore, a good place to separate two ideas with a cut.
This sculpture is a physical test of Murch’s principle. I watched The Conversation while wearing a custom device that recorded the pattern of my blinks during the film. Using this information, I created a display in which the left mallet taps out the paattern of my blinks, while the right mallet taps out the pattern of Murch’s edits. When the two match up, the cymbal chimes for success.

PHOTOS

EXHIBITION HISTORY

  • 2007 > Three Rivers Arts Festival Gallery (Pittsburgh, PA)
12.2006
Horizons
Categories: Horizons, Projects



In the spirit of expanded cinema, I combed through a variety of Westerns and Samurai films, pulling out all of the sweeping, horizon shots in the films. Using these clips, I constructed an expanded space by stitching the horizons of each film together to theorize a new landscape that stretched beyond the film frame. The final product was a screening in a 180° panoramic theater at the Carnegie Natural History Museum (The Earth Theater).
My hope was to construct a sense of vastness and a full immersion into this new landscape, and also to search for “events”; moments where the two genres speak to one another – where large scale events are occurring across the frames. I chose Samurai films and Westerns because of the similarities between the two genres — thematically, formally and culturally. To me, they epitomize the search for meaningful connection across endless empty space and unreachable distance.

PHOTOS

EXHIBITION HISTORY

  • 2006 > Carnegie Museum of Natural History (Pittsburgh, PA)
  • 2006 > The Brillobox (Pittsburgh, PA) >> Documentation Presentation