Thursday, March 5, 2009

I can remember from my childhood a strange and fun sequences of fames of time that moved around the page in interesting ways sliding around the pages. I was young and inattentive, but I could follow the flow of time and appreciate being an invisible observer of social situations. I was admittedly perplexed by some of the graphic representations and models I could follow quite avidly the story. At this point I don't believe I was aware of any instructions or guide to enjoying this artful communication,
and becoming aware of them hasn't had any profound influence on my
interpretation of the content. Although I hadn't realized in the past that the content incorporates interactive crafts and now having had to rent it from the library I cant fully construct the world the author envisions, but it does help clear up the confusion. The words and images are very carefully ambiguous so that individuals interpreting the piece can perceive intention based on personal experience and able to change with time. When examining individual frames and series of frames one must
imagine each cut as a scene (like a .gif), with small amounts of time passing even in a still picture. This is apparent with the dialog and various text representations of sounds, which mechanisms require time to operate (sound traveling in waves over space-time). The instructions implore readers to open their mind to not see static images or artwork rather see a slice of time, a small captured portion of a characters life. This idea is to be applied to the entire volume. It was a cutting edge piece of artistic expression for the time and indeed into the present.

On to Jimmy. Who is he, what is he? Is he a representation of himself through imagination as a young boy, is he just a young boy in a mind so complex and distorted throurgh experience that he represents himself as his father, of as his fathers son at his fathers age and a dieing father. Is it an oedepus complex? Is he a bord middle aged man with a violent psychotic breaks in his imagined life? Perhaps he is his father, the man responsible for his brothers brutal beating, desiring himself to be dead thearfor metaphorically killing himself as his father in imagination? Is he in love with his mom, or is it his wife, is his father himself, is he old or young? Delighfully ambiguous.

1 comment:

Adam Johns said...

Huh? I'm sorry, but that's my main response here. The questions you list at the end are great, but they're only questions - why not try to investigate and even tentatively answer a couple of them? The bulk of this response, though, is bewildering - I have no idea what parts of the introduction you're even writing about - I don't see how your discussion (mostly) of ambiguity follows from anythign in particular in the introduction. In sort, I don't see much of an argument here, and absolutely nothing in the way of evidence.