lacuna report07

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LACUNAGUS CUMMINS | SEPTEMBER 2010

AIMTITLE - LACUNA

DEVELOPMENTSCREEN CHOREOGRAPHYLANGUAGE & NARRATIVELEVY FLIGHT v BROWNIAN MOTIONSTRUCTURE OF LACUNAOVERLAYING SEIZURE MAPSPRODUCTIONPOST PRODUCTIONSOUNDTRACKCRITICAL EVALUATION

CONCLUSIONREFERENCES

AIM

I intended to produce a video that explored the automatic behaviour o complex partialtemporal lobe epileptic seizures, and related this behaviour to the borders o consciousness.

A complex partial seizure is a focal seizure that causes impairment or loss of consciousness,a typical example is a temporal lobe seizure that results in an ictal phase of unconsciousnessand automatic movement, followed by a postictal phase of partial consciousness andimpaired cognition in the form of temporary dysphasia and amnesia.

TITLE - LACUNA

Regarding the title; I ound the word lacuna while researching orms o amnesia, and itbecame the working title o the project. It comes rom the Latin or pool or gap, and isstrongly appropriate or this piece. It means: Blank space or missing par A small cavity, pit, or discontinuity in an anatomical structureI consider it as reerring to the gap in the consciousness continuum.

DEVELOPMENT

I developed the piece in a series o sessions with perormance artist Nat Wyatt: We observed medical videos o my seizures and discussed interpretation I directed her movement using seizure maps I lmed her to study her movement


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Seizure maps are plans o my movement during seizures, created by a manual motioncapture technique consisting o extracting a sequence o jpegs rom a hospital video, andplotting movement o my head and limbs using a vector graphics programme.

Ater these sessions I was able to make notes rom the videos o Nat to improve hermovement. We would watch videos o previous sessions together and I would tell her whatmovement I liked and what movement I didnt like. We established movement cycles (whichin themselves were not unlike analogies or ictal movement, which is rather cyclic.) ThenI mediated, commenting on good and bad parts o cycles, eliminating the bad parts andencouraging the good parts. When the cycles were lmed, the good cycles were extracted.I also made movement maps o Nats perormance in development as tools to work rom,

which also became progressively cyclic.

Nat Wyatt


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SCREEN CHOREOGRAPHY

Prior to shooting the video I attended a programo screen Dance/Video/Improvisation at Bristol lmcompany Picture This, curated by Kyra Norman (LightFantastic) and Beth Alden on 25/6/10, and an artiststalk rom Katrina MacPherson on 26/6/10. I began to

see the work I was developing as a orm o screenchoreography; I hadnt regarded it in this way beore.As a result, a new area o research was unlocked anda new context established.

LANGUAGE & NARRATIVE

Mimetic language and nonverbal cognition t easilyinto the picture o a seizure, the mimetic language

both communicates the presence o a seizure andrepresents nonverbal thought. I experimentedwith the Dub ramework in my previous InvisibleArchitecture project, attempting to strip narrativeaway in a short lm Pin Lane. I had limited success;verbal narrative was replaced with semiotics, stillarranged in the orm o linear narrative. Now Ireplaced it with gesture and movement, and reducedthe narrative structure to close to zero. This representsan earlier stage in human evolution, beore thepressure o society required verbal language, when

mimetic and prosodic vocalization suced. (Logan2010) The vestigial remains o this are released duringa seizure through automatic movement and gutturalsounds.

The Dub framework refers to the use of the dubconsciousness model. In reggae an initial version ofa song includes bass, drums, vocals and melody. ADub version strips away vocals and melody leavingthe bass and drums. I use this as a model for the

loss of consciousness during a seizure, during whichverbal thought and language cease, leaving thebodys life sustaining functions, and fragments ofnonverbal thought. The bass and drums represent thelife sustaining functions and the vocals and melodyrepresent verbal thought and language.

I drew on the mimetic language o the ictal phase,and the bidirectional (i.e., Bocas and Wernickes)dysphasia o the postictal. This provides hand

movements, and vocalization, expressed and heard,without meaning.


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LEVY FLIGHT v BROWNIAN MOTION

I represented the movement o the epileptic seizure with movements o the hand. Nat andI had worked rom the seizure maps, which in development I had smoothed out, averagingpoints. In so doing I had produced a lot o movement resembling fuid Brownian motion, andurther encouraged this while directing Nat. Brownian motion is a simple stochastic process.When a scientist visiting my studio came across a painting I had produced rom a seizure map

with no simplication applied, he identied the motion he saw as closely resembling Levyfight:

This method o simulation stems heavily rom the mathematics related to chaos theoryand is useul in stochastic measurement and simulations or random or pseudo-random

Developing & applying the dub model


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natural phenomena. Examples include earthquake data analysis, nancial mathematics,cryptography, signals analysis as well as many applications in astronomy, biology, andphysics.(Wikipedia 2010)

It remains or me to research Levy Flight urther, but I am attracted to the idea that seizuremovement should bear resemblance to the motion o a hungry shark stalking prey rather

than the Brownian motion o swirling gas molecules (Wikipedia 2010). I shall correct uturework to refect this; unortunately Lacuna was complete when this was brought to myattention.

The mathematical algorithms or generating Levy fight are simple, and I intend to build Pdpatches utilizing them during the next stage o this direction o the project. I am alreadyworking with some Pd patches that generate graphics rom some recent (April 2010)intracranial EEG data. I am enthusiastic to compare EEG driven graphics, Levy fight graphicsand seizure video and identiy visual parallels and contrasts.

STRUCTURE OF LACUNA

Lacuna is presented on two screens adjacent to each other (or two panels on a singlescreen.) All o the reerences so ar have been to the right hand screen, which was theintellectual part o the production. The let hand screen was produced in a more intuitiveway. However, both panels developed rather organically in the post production stage, withno pre planned structure.

Lacuna was made as a development o the earlier Pin Lane lm. I strove to identiy thestrengths o the earlier production process. Inevitably Lacuna developed its own very

distinct style. The linear narrative was reduced to a minimum. The let hand panel hadoriginally been a scene ollowing temporally the main body o the lm. The decision to

juxtapose it spatially changed the lm dramatically. Various dualistic readings are possible.Importantly, the lm was rendered more watchable in the absence o a linear narrative bythe presence o two parallel activities.

The let hand screen has a lowlevel o activity. It shows a gatedgarden. The working title o thisscreen was Timeless Garden.

Pink shoes and blossoms pickeach other out in the blurredrame. A gure dressed in whiteenters and leaves the gated areaat low speed, leaving a visualreverberation in her wake. Thereis a captivating quality to thescene. I want to say that this isthe Japanese quality o wabi-sabi,transitory beauty, but I am not

qualied to judge. The gure inwhite is transitory, with no xedpixels, while the garden appearsconstant. Precisely halwaythrough the lm the garden blinks


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or a moment, and runs again rom start to nish; this is a long loop. The lm is divided inspace and time. The raw ootage o this scene was o Nat walking in and out o a brightly litrose garden. The dreaminess was bestowed by sotware. In the same way, my walk along aamiliar street can turn into waking up in an unamiliar and threatening place i an aura or aseizure strikes.

I the let hand panel represents a thing, it may be slipping in an out o consciousness asthough it were a timeless garden.

OVERLAYING SEIZURE MAPS

The right hand panel lm includes a short introductory section beore it enters the periictalphase. The introductory phase treats the screen as an illusory window, through which wesee the protagonists ace. Then the motion o arms represents the slipping into seizure.Ater around a minute the arms are overlaid with white lines the slowly animated seizure

maps. These break the illusion o the window we are looking through, they are marks onthe surace o the window. This is intended as a comment on the eect o a seizure onperception. When I have a seizure I become aware o the nature o my perception more thanwhat I perceive.


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PRODUCTION

My initial plan had been to be cameraman and director working with Nat, I realised that Iwould need another person on the team because: I would be using a large and unamiliar camera I would be seeking to direct and lm at the same time

I hired Tony as cameraman and driver. He has experience as a stills cameraman and I assumedhe would adapt to video. We have worked together previously.

The ootage was shot over 2 days with an HD camera hired rom Picture This. The locationwas Ashton Court estate. I worked rom a list o desired shots. An immediate problem wasthat Nat and I had established working protocol, but on these days we worked outside thatprotocol with Tony on camera. He rapidly picked up the technical complexities o the cameraand time based work, but didnt rame shots the way I wanted. I nally shot around 10% othe ootage. At the editing stage around 75% o ootage included in the piece was what Ihad shot.

Lessons that I learned: I liked my own camera work I required a driver and a technician Communication was not clear enough

I I do hire a cameraman again I will Communicate my requirements very clearly Check every shot as we proceed Seek a more experienced person and check their previous work to see i they are

appropriate

I would preer to do my own camera work, while hiring a driver/technician. I will always needto hire a driver because I cannot drive with epilepsy. The person in this role would also beuseul to help carry equipment and act as a technician. I am considering whether it is possible


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to brie this person thoroughly enough or them to take on a directorial role. I am interestedto know how other artists allocate roles in teams and look orward to discussion groups etc..

EXTRA NOTE

Ater writing this I ed it back to Tony. He made the point that this had been our rst

time working together with moving image, and that as well as the solutions I propose heexpressed enthusiasm simply to work more in this way until we established better results. Hisenthusiasm is impressive.

POST PRODUCTION

A lot o the work on Lacuna is at the postproduction stage, by which I mean the editing, theapplication o eects and the merging o animated seizure maps with the video ootage.Due to my initial rustration with the ootage, the editing stage was prolonged. However, I

believe the struggle was productive.

I had to compare the output to developmental work which was much rawer in nature usinglower quality video combined with sel produced drumnbass soundtracks, this work wasstrong, but ocused on the traumatising aspect o epileptic seizures.

I stayed with my intention o extracting elements o seizures that are very moving in adierent way they have oten been described as quasi-spiritual or sublime experiences.They can certainly be creatively uelling. In the process o outputting 5 minutes 41 secondso edited material a great deal o other material was shelved, notes made or uture projectsand new skills learned.

SOUNDTRACK

I applied a number o dierent soundtracks to the visual work when it was near completion,and unsurprisingly the impact o the work varied greatly. I nally composed a musical pieceusing a combination o methods.

The background sound is choral, and this is computer generated using an application calledReason, with my composition. I was able to closely examine a preset sound in Reason, and

simpliy it to a sine wave with a ew lters applied. Further modication took place inAbleton Live, the mixing and equalising sotware.

I added distorted speech rom a recorded Basho haiku run through a Pd patch to representthe dysphasia that accompanies a seizure. The haiku was recorded during the experimentalstage o setting up the patch and recording system in my studio. I called in a ellow artistrom a neighbouring studio, and she read the words rom a book that was in my bag. Ihavent managed a better or more appropriate recording since.

An intermittent bleep sound generated rom EEG recordings during a seizure was also

added. This was EEG run through a simple patch, using velocity to generate requency. This isnot recognisable sa EEG related, but I like the minor connection.

All tracks were balanced using Ableton Live to make the sound suitable or small laptopspeakers or large sound system speakers.


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Pd is a Graphic User Interface that allows the processing of allforms of digital signal, it was originally a shareware variation onMAX/MSP designed by Puckette.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

I sent the Vimeo address o Lacuna to many people to try andget independent opinions. The percentage o replies was low,they included:

This is a beautiul and evocative piece o work - Zoe ShearmanA very interesting lm - Julie PenoldThis is the medium you must work in - Danny Start

The best work you have made about epilepsy yet - LornaGiezot

Friends give positive replies, so maybe I cant call these opinionsindependent, with the exception o Zoe Shearman who I haveonly met once, and is an esteemed voice on the Bristol art scene.

MARCALO

In recent years there have not been many art works ocussingon epilepsy. One exception was Rita Marcalo in December

2009. This Doctor o choreography stopped taking anti epilepsymedication some weeks beore a perormance involving sleepdeprivation and strobe lights, intending to induce a seizureon stage. She ailed. Her attempt received acclaim rom manyreviewers, including those in the Disability Arts movement, butwas badly received by many people with epilepsy. This may bebecause they have very regular seizures despite medication, anda ailed attempt to induce one did not seem laudable.

Baxendale (2009) regarded the piece as reinorcing negative

stereotypes, and the ailure toinduce a seizure as inorming on the unpredictability oepilepsy.

Sutherland (who has epilepsy) gave Marcalo a positive review(Sutherland 2009), declaring: She speaks or us all.Ater a mixed bag o comments, including many rom peoplewith epilepsy pointing out how their lives were scarred by thecondition, he was orced to partially withdraw the statement,writing:

I dont claim to speak or everyone aected by epilepsy, andnot (sic) Im sure would Ms Marcalo. (Sutherland 2009, italictext added by me)


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TRIBE

Another work relating to epilepsy was Dead Star Light by Kerry Tribe which showedat Bristol Arnolni rom July - September 2010. This was largely lm and video workinvestigating memory. Within this exhibition was H.M., an experimental lm installation.H.M. consisted o two adjoining screens, each showing the same lm, 20 seconds out ophase with each other. The content o the lm was ootage o an epileptic patient called

H.M, who had been the subject o a temporal lobectomy operation in 1953. This was therst year the operation was perormed, and in this case had resulted in permanent amnesiaor H.M., leaving him with a 20 second memory until he died in 2008.

I ound H.M. intellectually and emotionally engaging, not least because this patient had anearly version o the operation I am currently waiting or and because the ormat o the lmwas almost identical to Lacuna, which I had just completed when I saw H.M..

Even disregarding these very personal resonances, I elt that the ability o the lm mediumto engage the viewer was demonstrated. The lm largely consisted o interviews interspersed

with symbolic sections, and the 20 seconds oset was ascinating. It would be dicult toachieve this level o engagement with perormance or an audience accustomed to screen.

LACUNA

Lacuna could be said to contain elements o Marcalo and Tribe - it is choreography presentedon two screens. What is absent rom Lacuna is the realism that spills out o the other artistswork. An attempt to have a seizure on stage, or an interview with an ageing man who haslived most o his lie with crucial parts o his brain tissue removed, have a huge presence.The word shocking occurred repeatedly in reviews o Marcalos intention. Tribes work was

emotionally moving. In their presence, Lacuna may seem small and insignicant.

But Lacuna is presenting the subjective (non) experience o a seizure. Depending on thecontext in which a seizure occurs it can be small and insignicant. Or, in the words o ZoeShearman, it can be beautiul and evocative. I added a choral soundtrack to Lacunabecause a seizure can also be a sublime and quasi spiritual experience. It is thought that inhistory many religious visionaries may have had epileptic seizures and interpreted them asvisitations rom god.

Lacuna was intended to be shown via projectors on large screens. So ar it has only been

seen on monitors, so the impact has been reduced. While the personal seizure experiencemay be insignicant to others, the rst party is immersed in it. The intention is that thisshould also be the case or the viewer, the screen should be large enough to ll ones eldo vision. Parts o Lacuna are dark and hard to distinguish, which is appropriate or the

Film Installation: H.M. by Kerry Tribe. Arnolni, Bristol, 2010.


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shadowy perception and memory o seizures. There are moments where higher lightinglevels emerge rom the shadows, and others where slow motion accelerates to real time.I like the transparency o these moments, they dont try and smooth the edges o appliedeects.

The let/right screen division is unclear in its intention. Various meanings may be gratedonto it, including let/right hemisphere lateralization o ocal origin seizures, but this needs

to be claried in the content. Or concept/percept with verbal/mimetic correlates, but again,this needs accentuation.

Considering that the visual aspect o the lm is the product o two elements - seizuregenerated linear graphics, and choreographed body movement developed rom thesegraphics, the simplication or smoothing o the graphics was a mistake that leaves a fawthroughout. The lm would be improved by replacing the Brownian motion with Levy fight.However, that aside, the fuidity o the movement in the lm can be entrancing. The linearseizure maps dont interact particularly with the body movements, but that doesnt seem tobe a serious visual faw.

Altogether Lacuna works airly well. It would be stronger i its context were broadenedby lengthening the introduction and conclusion This is ironic since the piece was developedrom Pin Lane and one intention was to reduce unsatisactory ways in and out o theseizure scene.

CONCLUSION

This was the rst time I have worked with a hired camera, or a paid team. The developmentstage was successul, the shoot was problematic (but these problems are solvable) and the

post-production stage was also successul.

My stated primary aim was to explore the relation between epilepsy, consciousness andautomatic movement; I think this has been achieved. I am aware that their is potential toimprove the lm, especially by providing a clearer context or a seizure to occur in andintroducing extra elements to a seizure. Also the nature o movement in a seizure requiresmore careul treatment. These are achievable aims or a ollow on production.

Discussion o the lm with other people has raised other new issues to consider; parallelsbetween seizures, and ego loss induced by meditation, hypnotic dancing and other physical

behaviour. Parallels between expressive dysphasia and automatic movement, and glossolalia.Refection on epilepsy and shamanism in some cultures. This provides a lot o rich newmaterial.

Analysis o glossolallia (speaking in tongues) shows that it retains characteristics o thespeakers native language in terms o rhythmic patterns and range o consonants. It wouldbe interesting to construct a Pd patch that loads a set o sounds and patterns, and see i itcan generate speech patterns resembling glossolallia or dysphasia.

NOTE

Lacuna was shown at Shape in Camden rom Sept - Dec 2010.Exeter Phoenix have expressed an interest in showing it in their digital media section or aew days in 2011.


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REFERENCES

Barnett, D. 2008. Movement as Meaning in Experimental Film. Rodopi.

Baxendale, S. 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8413404.stm accessed 6th December

2010

Logan, R. K. 2010, Mind and Language Architecture, The Open Neuroimaging Journal, 2010,4, 81-92

Sutherland, A. 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2009/nov/20/epilepsy-live-art-rita-marcalo accessed 6th December 2010

Wikipedia 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9vy_fight accessed 3rd December 2010

SOFWARE USED

Adobe CS5 Premiere ProAterEectsPhotoshop ExtendedIllustrator

Pd-extendedReason

Ableton Live

VLCQuickTime Player 7
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8413404.stmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9vy_flighthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9vy_flighthttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8413404.stm


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