15/67: TV (1967)

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1. 

   Eddyspeeder

   Interpretation of the YouTube description: he just applied mathematics and leaves the onlooker to interpret the outcome whichever way they want. He did at least three things:
   
   RANDOMIZE: The film is comprised of five sequence, all shown 21 times. Nowadays you can among others use Excel, SPSS or a graphic calculator for that. Excel got me a string starting with 4512135545... Kren just put all shots in that order.
   
   SHOT LENGTH: The YouTube description isn't clear on this so he could have done it at random, but it seems more logical if he also applied a certain standard procedure, as he needed to know the length of them to calculate the blank spaces. He could also have done this by once again applying random numbers, but now to determine the seconds of each shot. Then the film structure becomes something like: 4(2s) 5(2s) 1(3s) 2(4s) 1(2s) 3(3s) 5(2s) 5(2s) 4(4s) 5(4s)...
   
   SPACE LENGTH: This can be any approach:
   - Average the length of the shot before and after, divide by a constant.
   - Divide the length of the shot before (or after) by a constant.
   - Or since the description talks about them being "equal, except..." he could have also applied a formula only to the longer sequences.
   
   So eventually you'll need to make sense of a structure that looks a bit like this:
   4(2s) [.5s] 5(2s) [.5s] 1(3s) [.625s] 2(4s) [.875s] 1(2s) [.625s] 3(3s) [.625s] 5(2s) [.5s] 5(2s) [.75s] 4(4s) [1.0s] 5(4s)...
   
   Now from my background as Cognitive Psychologist: around that time (1967) there was a fascinating shift (a revolution actually - see links below) on the prevailing theory on how our brain deals with language; from 'structural linguistics' to 'transformational grammar'. Perhaps with this short, Kren showed that considering language a mathematical sequence is nonsensical and tedious to watch? That would then be both in terms of the visual language displayed, as well as the 'story' we make of it.
   
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#Contributions_to_linguistics
   http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/19720629.htm 12 years 9 months ago
2. 

   BlueVoid

   @Eddyspeeder I really appreciate the effort you put into understanding this. It's so easy to write off a film as awful, but to really attempt to understand it is a lot more valuable.
   
   That said, even after reading your very insightful interpretation, I still find this utter garbage. 12 years 5 months ago
3. 

   marienbad

   two words to all you haters: structural, film 10 years 12 months ago

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