I’ve been thinking about the many masks I’ve worn on this platform; I say “masks” because I’ve just started to read a book on ‘Atomic Bomb Cinema’ where the author draws parallels between the act of writing, as literally reflected in his shadowy form on his computer screen, and the method of acting in Japanese Nō theatre: “Before going on stage, the actor sits before a mirror, with mask in hand, and meditates. This creates a state of ‘ma’ or emptiness within him, thus allowing the spirit of the character he plays to fill the vacuum…Through the actor, the tormented spirit can tell his story, achieve catharsis, then return to the other world and rest.”
I’ve made myself available to a good number and variety of spirits over the years. If you’ve been following for long enough, you’ve seen me take on the masks of mystic, memoirist, activist, and archivist; I often thrive within the confines of a “script”: – here, a road trip, there, an Advent calendar, here again, twenty weeks of gratitude in #twentytwenty.
Sometimes these scripts come from within; most times they come from without. And ever since I graduated myself from smartphone to more sophisticated optical instruments, these spirits have multiplied: here, heavy metal thunder, there, the flat style of sober documentary, here again, the liminal dis-ease of the voyeur.
In media studies, a caption is called an “anchor” because it tends to tie down the polysemy of a picture in authorial intent, but lately, I’ve enjoyed playing with different combinations of image and text. It’s almost like an act of re-photography; I think a lot of people here recognize that aspect of “post-production,” whether intentionally or not. But since I’ve always seen myself as primarily a writer, the act of “unmooring” (of loosening the anchor) is both liberating and uncomfortable.
The author I’m reading doesn’t end his description there: “But the actor, who has his own story, is not just a vehicle for the spirit.”
We can think about design as an act of “possession” – something from without takes hold of our interior experience. Whether it’s the four pillars or the five layers or the six qualities of user experience, isn’t that what designers want to do? To cast a spell and bewitch you?
A long time ago, I read a book that distinguished art from design by their degree of visibility (or “palpability,” as the case may be): you’re not supposed to notice a good design. A good design should just recede into the background of your everyday use. Art, on the other hand, demands attention – and maybe even tedium, at least in that author’s estimation.
I don’t know enough about the theories of either to land on one side or the other, but what I do know is that “good” design seeps into your skin; it creates affordances, but it also generates probabilities – you are more likely to use the tool the way its designed, and so, you are more likely to behave in ways it wants you to.
I say all this not to talk about design, per se, just as I showed up to this festival with very little interest in any particular design; I say all this simply because I can see how the tools I use change the ways I behave. In other words, the masks I wear fill my emptiness (‘ma’) with their spirits.
And so, I wonder about the scripts I do or do not follow if and when I pick up one tool instead of another.
You can see the way a camera will possess a person when you see them interact with the world through its lens. Back when I used a smartphone, its very shape encouraged me to look for surfaces and patina – a graphic interface with the world. Now that I peer through a viewfinder, things have changed.
As I ran around Lake Union Park looking for shots, I became acutely aware of every other Tom, Dick, and Harriet with a DSLR around me, peering through a frame within a frame or contorting to grab that expression or another. It actually made me feel ill and less sure of my reasons for being there.
This feeling was fleeting; once behind my laptop screen, another spirit invaded me, and a new script came into play. And here I am, collating, curating, contorting still.
I don’t have a point or conclusion to draw from these reflections; it’s just important for me to remember those words about the proverbial actor in the Nō theatre of Japan: “the actor, who has his own story, is not just a vehicle for the spirit.”