Films of Rose Lowder


Submitted March 7, 2011 The Experimental Experience in the Films of Rose Lowder by Tara Merenda Nelson Experimental films are often identified by their unique method for revealing the frame structure of film. Various techniques to expose the film frame have been experimented with, from Stan Brakhage's scratching the surface of the film to Paul Sharits's repetition of single frames for several minutes. Experimental film can be described as film that experiments with various techniques to expose the frame-by-frame structure of film. However, these cinematic experiments are not purely scientific, interested in exploring the physical limitations (and possibilities) of the celluloid format. What makes experimental film interesting is its discourse with perception, and how it uses technique to arrive at the formulation where meaning is made. French filmmaker Rose Lowder has been a prolific practitioner of perceptual experiments with 16 mm film since the 1970's. She has composed more than 50 films, mostly in and around her home in the bucolic region of Avignon, France. Lowder's films explore not only her surroundings, but also the experimental landscape of meaning by uniquely using the frame structure of film as a canvas that reveals new perceptual opportunities. Lowder's precise, frame-by-frame technique quietly approaches the natural world, creating new perceptual relationships to light, color and motion. The creation and contextualization of images is an intrinsic part of art making for all disciplines. It has been the practice of many artistic endeavors to contain an image within a well-defined frame in order to control context and create an evocative, accessible experience for the viewer outside the frame. What this frame is made of, how it contains the subject, and where the next frame begins can be of as much importance to the implication of the artwork as the content of the work itself. Many questions about the “significance” of art arise around the delineation of the frame, the threshold between the image that is being shown and the implication of meaning that the presentation of the image creates. What makes a work of art meaningful is subjective. However, identifying and articulating the sensational forces that influence perception and contribute to the composition of meaning remain an important conceptual dilemma of our time . As a relatively new medium in the art world, the cinema has enormous potential to influence the perceptual experience of an audience. The illustrative powers present in the cinematic encounter are great, and have a unique ability to imbue the viewer with a sense of significance. Part of this power lies in the environment created by the cinema, which requires the audience to cut itself off from the distractions of the “real world” and turn its full attention to cinematic experience . But there is much more to cinema than the viewing arena (which can arguably be called a “frame” in which film is viewed). Film, which in a celluloid format projects most commonly at 24 frames per second, has perhaps the strongest reliance upon the frame structure of any other image format. But the film frame differs from the conventional frame of the two-dimensional work of art; rather than defining the border of the image, the film frame is the image itself. The border is, in a sense, invisible. In traditional narrative film, the projected sequence of the images allows for the seamless illusion of motion, opening the door for the message of the film by showing the story. In non-traditional, experimental films, the sequence is often non-linear, using techniques that directly interact with the relationship between the image and the surface upon which it exists. Rather than showing the story, the experimental film often reveals the films' structure – the frame itself - and in doing so incorporates the mechanism of cinema (light, motion, image) to the experience of the film . The experience of cinema as a wall of moving pictures that reveals a meta-world is reliant upon two very straightforward functions of the human nervous system: Persistence of Vision and the Phi Phenomenon. When the retina is exposed to a flash of light, such as a single frame of projected film, the excitation of light persists on the retina for longer than the stimulus. This persistence of vision is what allows for the perception of motion from what is actually a series of static images, separated by brief darkness in the experience of analog film. The Phi Phenomenon is linked to persistence of vision, and refers to the propensity to view two sequential images as a modification of a single image – spatial displacement is perceived as motion . Persistence of vision and the Phi Phenomenon comprise the biological basis of the cinematic experience. These forces are also the breeding ground for experimental cinema, as they are tools used by many filmmakers to access the perceptual mind by interacting with the organism of the body. The films of Rose Lowder deal directly with this human experience of film. Through her technique of composing and exposing the film one frame at a time, alternating between a limited number of subjects (sometimes by simply re-framing and changing perspective on the same subject), she builds a sequence of images that will be experienced as a unity of diverse objects when projected. While the subject of frame 1 may be a sunflower, frame 2 a sailboat, frame 3 a peach tree, the projected object – thanks to persistence of vision and the phi phenomenon – is a single object pulsing with all three images at once. The visual and perceptual effects of this technique on the viewer are profound. By engaging a biological response that is otherwise unconscious, Lowder's films allow the viewers to confront their own perceptual mechanism in order to ask themselves “ how do I see what I am seeing?” It seemed to me that if you wanted to create, not reality --that's not interesting at all; you might just as well see reality--but if you want to make a work of film art that is as rich as what one is used to in reality, you have to enrich the film image somehow. One way is to continually focus on slightly different focus points that allow you to see around the corners of things just a bit. In certain scenes in Rue des Teinturiers , you'll notice that at some points you can actually see through the flowering laurel tree trunk in the middle of the balcony. You are seeing behind it as well as it , because one of the focus points is giving you what is behind the laurel's trunk and another focus point is the trunk itself, and still another is in front of the trunk. Because I use all these focus points over and over, you see multiple things in the same space, which in reality is physically impossible. ( from Rose Lowder Interviewed by Scott MacDonald, Millennium Film Journal No. 30/31, 1997 ) The single frame technique of Lowder's films is the framework by which she creates a meaningful experience for her audience. But the content within the frame is the life force of her films. Lowder was born to British parents in Peru, where she spent her childhood. She was trained as a painter, which provided her with a formal training in form and composition. Her intimate experience with the natural world in South America taught her “to become visually conscious at an early age” (MacDonald). In her films, Lowder chooses pastoral subjects that are rich in vibrant color, basking in golden sunlight, sometimes swaying in the breeze, other times floating gently in the ocean. She is meticulously deliberate with her compositions, taking pains to approach each subject systematically, yet spontaneously. I have shot many reels of film, and I build on my past experience, but each reel covers new ground. To me, a project isn't interesting if I know exactly what's going to happen. I could film a flowerpot, but that would be cinematographically totally boring. I want the subject that I'm filming to be living its own life. One of the solutions of conventional cinema is to choose dead things and move them around. Even the actors: traditional narrative requires the actors to do exactly what they are directed to do. I don't want a docile subject. When everything is under control, it's dead. My filming processes are set up as a dialogue with reality. ( from Rose Lowder Interviewed by Scott MacDonald, Millennium Film Journal No. 30/31, 1997 ) Lowder lives and works in Avignon, a region famous for its quality of light and pastoral landscapes that have inspired artists for hundreds of years. Drawing from the pattern, color and texture of the lush landscape of Avignon, Lowder focuses her lens on the world outside her window, capturing nature in pure and radiant moments. One of her best known films, Rue des Teinturiers (1979) , was shot over a six month period from the balcony of her home overlooking the Rue des Teinturiers. Using twelve rolls of film, each shot on a different day and from a distinct vantage point on the balcony, Lowder extends the spatiotemporal landscape of the avenue by focusing on a new point-of-interest for one, two or three frames. In her 2001 film, Voiliers et Coquelicots , rich saturations of color dominate the screen: a field of red poppies dancing in the breeze is juxtaposed with images of white sailboats skipping across deep blue waters on a bright summer day. In her Bouquet series (1994-2010), Lowder composes thirty one-minute films, each exploring a new landscape (hillside terraces, a field of wildflowers, goldfish ponds, fishing ports) and a variation on her frame-by-frame technique. In Bouquet 26 (2003) flashing frames of flowers and fields are interrupted by serene moments of conventional shots of farm animals grazing in sunlit fields, while Bouquet 10 (1995) leaves single frames periodically unexposed, allowing for an extended retention of the previous image. In each of these examples, Lowder brings the surface of the screen to life with a saturation of color, shifting constantly from one image to the next, lingering just long enough to allow a conscious visual connection, while changing so quickly that the object of one image seems to move through the next. The visual intensity of experiencing Lowder's films is unforgettable, and provides an opportunity for a new understanding of one's own perceptual mechanism. In composing and projecting images in this way, Lowder opens a dialog between the viewer and the screen upon which the light is reflected, and allows the viewer to become conscious of the act of becoming conscious of the image – to see himself seeing . In doing so, the viewer may comprehend vision in a new, more meaningful way . Much has been said about the language of cinema, which for the purpose of this paper can be defined as a visual language that transcends purely representational communication through the use of cinematic techniques (framing, editing, angles, etc). The interaction between viewer and movie-screen can be understood as a relationship between the biological function of human vision and the mechanism of the cinema. But what happens when both the viewer and the film itself become self aware ? Lowder's films reveal an inherent ability to create an illusion by deconstructing their own structural framework, and in doing so create a new, more profound illusion, one that incorporates the illusion-awareness of the viewer. This new consciousness is a purely visual form of communication, and relies solely on the perceptual abilities of the optical mind . This brings us closer than ever to the way in which meaning gets made in the films of Rose Lowder. Through interacting with the frame and providing succinct, identifiable cinematic images, saturated with color and whizzing across the screen in state of constant agitation, Lowder challenges the viewer to assess the perceptual threshold through which the mind must pass to arrive at meaning. Without introduction or explanation, Lowder's films clear a path for this movement of the mind, while providing a stimulating experience of beauty in the natural world. And it is precisely this journey – this movement of the mind - that allows for a meaningful experience of the films. When the film is understood to be a composition of individual frames, and the screen is acknowledged as a surface for the reflection of cinematic light, and the nervous system is accepted as the primary arbiter of the cinematic illusion - the perceptual mind is free to realize the symphony of the optical experience of Rose Lowder's films. The mind is able to move beyond the technique alone. And where the mind can move, there is meaning . In his seminal masterpiece The Phenomenology of Perception , philosopher M. Merleau-Ponty writes, “Movement forms the basis for the unity of the senses”. The films of Rose Lowder are perhaps the most appropriate example of this idea. Her self-proclaimed “dialog with reality” is masterfully executed through a studied approach to capturing the light, color and motion of the natural world frame-by-frame, to be recombined and newly articulated as reflected light on the movie screen. But what moves in the experience of a Rose Lowder film are not only the wildflowers, poppies, peach trees and sailboats on the screen, but also our own minds, hearts and the senses that make us sentient creatures of the world. There is little more one can ask from a work of art. Tara Merenda Nelson Boston, Spring 2011 End notes “ The subject of perception will remain overlooked as long as we cannot avoid the alternative of natura naturata and natura naturans , of sensation as a state of consciousness and as the consciousness of a state, of existence in itself and existence for itself”. (M. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception , p. 208) “ A movie theater, with its enforced darkness and rigid direction of focus is, in this wide-open arena, a special cauldron for brewing new meaning. For here, an audience can be placed in the circumstance of forced attention to something that may mean nothing at all. The idea of reference can be thrown wide open when the focus of attention is so tight.” (Daniel Barnett, Movement as Meaning in Experimental Film , p.37) “ However, there is an alternative view of cinema that honors and mines the sequence of frames as prior to the sequence of shots. It also recognizes the screen as a surface upon which light is projected, before seeming to become a window into another world. “(Barnett, 16) (Barnett, 14) “ However, when the surface of the screen is articulated to generate meaning, where the signifiers, so to speak, are not so much objects and actions, as qualities inherent in the character of the light and the way it is moving, when the surface of the screen takes on the persona of an abstract expressionist painting (whether the images themselves are representational or not), or the rhythm of the movement of light becomes equivalent to the rhythm of a musical expression, then the entire nature of the referential act changes.” (Barnett, 38) “ Seamless image swapping – this is the heart of the machine, the heart of the illusion and the companion to the frame line in pivoting perception into another dimension. If, when we think about the relatively simple illusions of cinema, we remember how many complex interactions have to take place within our nervous systems for the world to simply appear to us, we can see how cinema can give us a meta-perch from which to think about, evaluate, and even critique the more complex illusions of reality.” (Barnett, 96) Barnett, 11 To see previews of Rose Lowder's work available for distribution from Light-Cone Paris click here Author: Tara Merenda Nelson ~ Artist, filmmaker, curator, and graduate student at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Around the table from tara nelson on Vimeo. Rose Lowder USA Tour 2011 February 7th-19th http://roselowder.blogspot.com/

Submitted March 7, 2011

The Experimental Experience in the Films of Rose Lowder
by Tara Merenda Nelson

Experimental films are often identified by their unique method for revealing the frame structure of film. Various techniques to expose the film frame have been experimented with, from Stan Brakhage's scratching the surface of the film to Paul Sharits's repetition of single frames for several minutes. Experimental film can be described as film that experiments with various techniques to expose the frame-by-frame structure of film. However, these cinematic experiments are not purely scientific, interested in exploring the physical limitations (and possibilities) of the celluloid format. What makes experimental film interesting is its discourse with perception, and how it uses technique to arrive at the formulation where meaning is made.

French filmmaker Rose Lowder has been a prolific practitioner of perceptual experiments with 16 mm film since the 1970's. She has composed more than 50 films, mostly in and around her home in the bucolic region of Avignon, France. Lowder's films explore not only her surroundings, but also the experimental landscape of meaning by uniquely using the frame structure of film as a canvas that reveals new perceptual opportunities. Lowder's precise, frame-by-frame technique quietly approaches the natural world, creating new perceptual relationships to light, color and motion.

The creation and contextualization of images is an intrinsic part of art making for all disciplines. It has been the practice of many artistic endeavors to contain an image within a well-defined frame in order to control context and create an evocative, accessible experience for the viewer outside the frame. What this frame is made of, how it contains the subject, and where the next frame begins can be of as much importance to the implication of the artwork as the content of the work itself. Many questions about the “significance” of art arise around the delineation of the frame, the threshold between the image that is being shown and the implication of meaning that the presentation of the image creates. What makes a work of art meaningful is subjective. However, identifying and articulating the sensational forces that influence perception and contribute to the composition of meaning remain an important conceptual dilemma of our time .

As a relatively new medium in the art world, the cinema has enormous potential to influence the perceptual experience of an audience. The illustrative powers present in the cinematic encounter are great, and have a unique ability to imbue the viewer with a sense of significance. Part of this power lies in the environment created by the cinema, which requires the audience to cut itself off from the distractions of the “real world” and turn its full attention to cinematic experience .

But there is much more to cinema than the viewing arena (which can arguably be called a “frame” in which film is viewed). Film, which in a celluloid format projects most commonly at 24 frames per second, has perhaps the strongest reliance upon the frame structure of any other image format. But the film frame differs from the conventional frame of the two-dimensional work of art; rather than defining the border of the image, the film frame is the image itself. The border is, in a sense, invisible.

In traditional narrative film, the projected sequence of the images allows for the seamless illusion of motion, opening the door for the message of the film by showing the story. In non-traditional, experimental films, the sequence is often non-linear, using techniques that directly interact with the relationship between the image and the surface upon which it exists. Rather than showing the story, the experimental film often reveals the films' structure – the frame itself - and in doing so incorporates the mechanism of cinema (light, motion, image) to the experience of the film .

The experience of cinema as a wall of moving pictures that reveals a meta-world is reliant upon two very straightforward functions of the human nervous system: Persistence of Vision and the Phi Phenomenon. When the retina is exposed to a flash of light, such as a single frame of projected film, the excitation of light persists on the retina for longer than the stimulus. This persistence of vision is what allows for the perception of motion from what is actually a series of static images, separated by brief darkness in the experience of analog film. The Phi Phenomenon is linked to persistence of vision, and refers to the propensity to view two sequential images as a modification of a single image – spatial displacement is perceived as motion . Persistence of vision and the Phi Phenomenon comprise the biological basis of the cinematic experience. These forces are also the breeding ground for experimental cinema, as they are tools used by many filmmakers to access the perceptual mind by interacting with the organism of the body.

The films of Rose Lowder deal directly with this human experience of film. Through her technique of composing and exposing the film one frame at a time, alternating between a limited number of subjects (sometimes by simply re-framing and changing perspective on the same subject), she builds a sequence of images that will be experienced as a unity of diverse objects when projected. While the subject of frame 1 may be a sunflower, frame 2 a sailboat, frame 3 a peach tree, the projected object – thanks to persistence of vision and the phi phenomenon – is a single object pulsing with all three images at once. The visual and perceptual effects of this technique on the viewer are profound. By engaging a biological response that is otherwise unconscious, Lowder's films allow the viewers to confront their own perceptual mechanism in order to ask themselves “ how do I see what I am seeing?”

It seemed to me that if you wanted to create, not reality --that's not interesting at all; you might just as well see reality--but if you want to make a work of film art that is as rich as what one is used to in reality, you have to enrich the film image somehow. One way is to continually focus on slightly different focus points that allow you to see around the corners of things just a bit. In certain scenes in Rue des Teinturiers , you'll notice that at some points you can actually see through the flowering laurel tree trunk in the middle of the balcony. You are seeing behind it as well as it , because one of the focus points is giving you what is behind the laurel's trunk and another focus point is the trunk itself, and still another is in front of the trunk. Because I use all these focus points over and over, you see multiple things in the same space, which in reality is physically impossible. ( from Rose Lowder Interviewed by Scott MacDonald, Millennium Film Journal No. 30/31, 1997 )

The single frame technique of Lowder's films is the framework by which she creates a meaningful experience for her audience. But the content within the frame is the life force of her films. Lowder was born to British parents in Peru, where she spent her childhood. She was trained as a painter, which provided her with a formal training in form and composition. Her intimate experience with the natural world in South America taught her “to become visually conscious at an early age” (MacDonald). In her films, Lowder chooses pastoral subjects that are rich in vibrant color, basking in golden sunlight, sometimes swaying in the breeze, other times floating gently in the ocean. She is meticulously deliberate with her compositions, taking pains to approach each subject systematically, yet spontaneously.

I have shot many reels of film, and I build on my past experience, but each reel covers new ground. To me, a project isn't interesting if I know exactly what's going to happen. I could film a flowerpot, but that would be cinematographically totally boring. I want the subject that I'm filming to be living its own life. One of the solutions of conventional cinema is to choose dead things and move them around. Even the actors: traditional narrative requires the actors to do exactly what they are directed to do. I don't want a docile subject. When everything is under control, it's dead. My filming processes are set up as a dialogue with reality. ( from Rose Lowder Interviewed by Scott MacDonald, Millennium Film Journal No. 30/31, 1997 )

Lowder lives and works in Avignon, a region famous for its quality of light and pastoral landscapes that have inspired artists for hundreds of years. Drawing from the pattern, color and texture of the lush landscape of Avignon, Lowder focuses her lens on the world outside her window, capturing nature in pure and radiant moments. One of her best known films, Rue des Teinturiers (1979) , was shot over a six month period from the balcony of her home overlooking the Rue des Teinturiers. Using twelve rolls of film, each shot on a different day and from a distinct vantage point on the balcony, Lowder extends the spatiotemporal landscape of the avenue by focusing on a new point-of-interest for one, two or three frames. In her 2001 film, Voiliers et Coquelicots , rich saturations of color dominate the screen: a field of red poppies dancing in the breeze is juxtaposed with images of white sailboats skipping across deep blue waters on a bright summer day. In her Bouquet series (1994-2010), Lowder composes thirty one-minute films, each exploring a new landscape (hillside terraces, a field of wildflowers, goldfish ponds, fishing ports) and a variation on her frame-by-frame technique. In Bouquet 26 (2003) flashing frames of flowers and fields are interrupted by serene moments of conventional shots of farm animals grazing in sunlit fields, while Bouquet 10 (1995) leaves single frames periodically unexposed, allowing for an extended retention of the previous image. In each of these examples, Lowder brings the surface of the screen to life with a saturation of color, shifting constantly from one image to the next, lingering just long enough to allow a conscious visual connection, while changing so quickly that the object of one image seems to move through the next.

The visual intensity of experiencing Lowder's films is unforgettable, and provides an opportunity for a new understanding of one's own perceptual mechanism. In composing and projecting images in this way, Lowder opens a dialog between the viewer and the screen upon which the light is reflected, and allows the viewer to become conscious of the act of becoming conscious of the image – to see himself seeing . In doing so, the viewer may comprehend vision in a new, more meaningful way .

Much has been said about the language of cinema, which for the purpose of this paper can be defined as a visual language that transcends purely representational communication through the use of cinematic techniques (framing, editing, angles, etc). The interaction between viewer and movie-screen can be understood as a relationship between the biological function of human vision and the mechanism of the cinema. But what happens when both the viewer and the film itself become self aware ? Lowder's films reveal an inherent ability to create an illusion by deconstructing their own structural framework, and in doing so create a new, more profound illusion, one that incorporates the illusion-awareness of the viewer. This new consciousness is a purely visual form of communication, and relies solely on the perceptual abilities of the optical mind .

This brings us closer than ever to the way in which meaning gets made in the films of Rose Lowder. Through interacting with the frame and providing succinct, identifiable cinematic images, saturated with color and whizzing across the screen in state of constant agitation, Lowder challenges the viewer to assess the perceptual threshold through which the mind must pass to arrive at meaning. Without introduction or explanation, Lowder's films clear a path for this movement of the mind, while providing a stimulating experience of beauty in the natural world. And it is precisely this journey – this movement of the mind - that allows for a meaningful experience of the films. When the film is understood to be a composition of individual frames, and the screen is acknowledged as a surface for the reflection of cinematic light, and the nervous system is accepted as the primary arbiter of the cinematic illusion - the perceptual mind is free to realize the symphony of the optical experience of Rose Lowder's films. The mind is able to move beyond the technique alone. And where the mind can move, there is meaning .

In his seminal masterpiece The Phenomenology of Perception , philosopher M. Merleau-Ponty writes, “Movement forms the basis for the unity of the senses”. The films of Rose Lowder are perhaps the most appropriate example of this idea. Her self-proclaimed “dialog with reality” is masterfully executed through a studied approach to capturing the light, color and motion of the natural world frame-by-frame, to be recombined and newly articulated as reflected light on the movie screen. But what moves in the experience of a Rose Lowder film are not only the wildflowers, poppies, peach trees and sailboats on the screen, but also our own minds, hearts and the senses that make us sentient creatures of the world. There is little more one can ask from a work of art.

Tara Merenda Nelson

Boston, Spring 2011
End notes

“ The subject of perception will remain overlooked as long as we cannot avoid the alternative of natura naturata and natura naturans , of sensation as a state of consciousness and as the consciousness of a state, of existence in itself and existence for itself”. (M. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception , p. 208)

“ A movie theater, with its enforced darkness and rigid direction of focus is, in this wide-open arena, a special cauldron for brewing new meaning. For here, an audience can be placed in the circumstance of forced attention to something that may mean nothing at all. The idea of reference can be thrown wide open when the focus of attention is so tight.” (Daniel Barnett, Movement as Meaning in Experimental Film , p.37)

“ However, there is an alternative view of cinema that honors and mines the sequence of frames as prior to the sequence of shots. It also recognizes the screen as a surface upon which light is projected, before seeming to become a window into another world. “(Barnett, 16)

(Barnett, 14)

“ However, when the surface of the screen is articulated to generate meaning, where the signifiers, so to speak, are not so much objects and actions, as qualities inherent in the character of the light and the way it is moving, when the surface of the screen takes on the persona of an abstract expressionist painting (whether the images themselves are representational or not), or the rhythm of the movement of light becomes equivalent to the rhythm of a musical expression, then the entire nature of the referential act changes.” (Barnett, 38)

“ Seamless image swapping – this is the heart of the machine, the heart of the illusion and the companion to the frame line in pivoting perception into another dimension. If, when we think about the relatively simple illusions of cinema, we remember how many complex interactions have to take place within our nervous systems for the world to simply appear to us, we can see how cinema can give us a meta-perch from which to think about, evaluate, and even critique the more complex illusions of reality.” (Barnett, 96)

Barnett, 11

To see previews of Rose Lowder's work available for distribution from Light-Cone Paris click here

Author: Tara Merenda Nelson ~ Artist, filmmaker, curator, and graduate student at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Around the table from tara nelson on Vimeo.

Rose Lowder USA Tour 2011 February 7th-19th http://roselowder.blogspot.com/