The most immediate relation "Der Lauf der Dinge" bears to noise music is that it is art (with a distinct sonic component) made of cast-off materials, or "junk" as we have been discussing in class. The piece makes this apparent from its first image - a dangling, full trash bag. No effort has been made to aestheticize the components of the subsequent Rube-Goldberging. Cans are rusty, bottles stained, wooden components visibly singed, presumably by previous runs of the chain reaction. While the cinematography renders many of the apparatus beautiful - bubbling foam surging across a metal surface, dancing flames on a spinning tetherball - the individual objects are as-is. Many of them are the cast-off products of industry, though this possible link to "industrial" music is tenuous because the sonic result is so different from what we would recognize aurally as examples of the genre "industrial." Luigi Russolo, however, might approve of the use of only sounds generated by industrial materials.
If "noise" as a broad concept contains connotations of perceived threat or danger, those elements are present here as well. Many of the materials used - trash, fire, spilled petrochemicals, fuses, saw blades, etc. (is that bubbling stuff toxic? Did they use dry ice?) - present a real danger to humans in other, less controlled circumstances. "Der Lauf der Dinge" is thus sound(ing) art made with potentially dangerous junk; that sounds like noise to me.
Additionally, the artists do not adopt a clear position toward their use of dangerous junk - are they valorizing the danger? Taming it? Finding a subversively aesthetic use for the waste products of industry? Doing something cool with stuff that is cheap and suggestive? All of the above? The inherent ambivalence of message encoded in the choice of materials and method of deploying them relates this work strongly to other forms of noise.
I find it very interesting how different are our reactions to Der Lauf der Dinge. Yes, your description of the film's material as dangerous junk is so truly correct. But surprisingly, while I always seem to be the one asking 'why?' when listening to music, I didn't feel the need to question the filmmakers' intent. It made sense to me after the first 30 seconds that the film was what it was in a very existential way. I think the reason I didn't question it was that after the initial reaction, the rest of the film is competely unavoidable. So I really only had about 30 seconds to question the intent at the very beginning of the film, and I spent them determining what exactly I was seeing instead. I spent the rest of the viewing following the events in a very matter of fact way, mesmerized by the inevitability of it all. I would be curious to know how you processed the film while we were watching it?
ReplyDeleteI think that while the film was playing, my experience of it was similar to yours. The way it is filmed is so sensuous and the reaction chain seem so smooth and inevitable that I really didn't feel the need to analyze it while it was happening. But later, when reflecting on Jay's prompts, the connections to noise became more apparent. I guess this raises the question of whether one's perception of a work is "supposed to" be influenced by information beyond the experiential surface - similar to the questions raised in class about glitch, although unlike glitch, in this case the "below the surface" elements that make it seem noise-y are at least visible in the work itself.
ReplyDeleteI think Mira is spot-on by saying that the question "why?" becomes useless in Der Lauf der Dinge. Plot is such a huge part of film-making that it is difficult for us to judge films purely as works of art. That is to say that in films that have intricate plots, we forget to consider the "true" temporal existence of the film (its proportions in a set time frame, in this case 30 minutes). In Der Lauf der Dinge, the projected time frame is almost equivalent to the true time frame, asides for a couple minutes that were omitted so that we didn't have to watch something melt, or some chemical reaction. I think this true-to-life time frame is part of what gives Der Lauf der Dinge this "existential" character, in which the plot seems simply driven by fate (or chance), instead of being manipulated by an external force.
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