By Haley Horvath

Calgary; April 2010

In an age where cinema has dwelled long enough to be regarded as normalcy, the medium faces the constant challenge of rejuvenation. “Spectres” on film no longer incite wonder, and so it remains to digital inclinations to amaze us. Modern technology can offer realistic images that never existed in the first place, yet the medium of traditional film has not lost its ability to dazzle, it merely no longer resides in optical illusion. Film can still offer us intrigue by way of a new perception of something that exists in reality. Gregory Godhard is a filmmaker who fully realized this when he made his 2009 piece, Collide-A-Scope. An intellectual montage of colourful glass formation interiors, Collide-A-Scope derives current relevance from its innovative explicit and symptomatic meanings, and rhythmic and graphic relations.

Film gives us a version of vision that the human eye is incapable of forming on its own. Natural processes that take months can be recorded and projected so as to endure for mere moments. A simple blink can be suspended for minutes- this is the new understanding and reverence that film can bestow upon the mundane. Stan Brakhage’s collage film Mothlight gave the world a new way of perceiving nature and decay by introducing the pairing of those materials with the notion of what constitutes as a filmstrip at its most raw level. Just as immobile organic materials are incapable of conveying the sensations viewing Mothlight does, one single photograph of glass formations, or a stationary series of them, is incapable of imparting the same concepts that Godhard’s frenetic film does. Mothlight and Collide-A-Scope both illuminate an unorthodox vision for ordinary materials.

What solely based on visual quality can be regarded as extraordinary yet innocuous sequences of paperweight interiors, is made sinister by Godhard’s explanation. Apparently, what we witness is smuggled footage from the Hadron Collider in Cern, Switzerland, of a covert operation to discern the theoretical Higgs-Boson Particle- to “[...] find the so-called “God Particle”[“] (CSIF 2010, 18). According to the director, this is evidence of secret government experimentation- remnants of an elite toying with the fate of the world. The potential for absolute power burdened by that of complete self-annihilation is a potent subject. Even regarded as an imaginative construct, it is chilling to entertain the notion of how close to nothingness the planet may have been for every moment the collider was in commission. To interpret the footage as Godhard presents it, we are witness to a great and terrible beauty. The physical properties of the real subject matter induce further anxiety regarding its imagined nature; glass is fragile, even more so if imperfections such as air bubbles subside in it. The consequence of mishandling glass is its shattering, and the consequences of the similar fragmentation of atoms and particles is both a drain and release of a tremendous amount of energy. This construct is what has led to man’s most devastating creations.

Even without the weighty pretext of Collide-A-Scope, other stylistic techniques convey a depth far beyond the actual subject matter of glass imperfections. Graphic relations and lighting evoke a more grandiose concept- the universe unfolding, myriads of galaxies, and stars forming and dying. To regard it as exclusively the smallest of things- images of a particle that no person has ever been able to prove the existence of- is not possible. Symptomatic meaning leaches into the audience’s consciousness. In less than a century the realm of outer space has been cracked open for humanity, and the information harvested has infiltrated our collective consciousness. Without ever having been in outer space one can say the absence of sound evokes the vacuum that is outer space. The lush, unearthly colours recall the otherworldliness of artist’s colouration selections for transmissions from the Hubble telescope. The first shot we witness is light dawning on an encased golden orb with granular threading streaming off of it; this is a tiny thing and yet it recalls the sun and its rolling solar flares; the center of our solar system that sustains all life. During the slightly slower “lulls” the transitions of fade-ins and fade-outs are achieved by the increase or diminution of the key light source. Suspended bubbles catch glints of light resembling distant stars- hinting at a constant unfolding of infinite compartments. As light dissipates from the frame, the final variations in the shot are the white glint of light reflections on bubbles among total darkness. White pinpricks in a sea of black evoke the stars as visible from earth. Rare examples of where the glass structure is slightly rotated before the camera resemble the sluggish turning of the Earth.  Galaxy and nebula formations are conjured in the swirled streams of small bubbles and pigmentations.  Frozen and fixed, the structures are a snapshot of the last second the glass was molten- action sealed forever, like the exposed film frame.

In addition to graphic relations, Godhard delves in another dimension of film editing by exploring rhythmic relations. As in the case of Brakhage’s Mothlight, it would be a disservice to describe Godhard’s film as simply a series of images of similar subject matter. Mothlight was edited to “[...] form a three-part musical structure.” (Elder 1998 389), despite its absence of sound. The musical connotation derives from the distinct tempos Brakhage applies to the rate of objects projected. Collide-A-Scope also has multiple discernable tempo shifts- rapid with distinctive joins, faster with rapid cuts with no clear joins, original pace with few zooms, accelerated again, and finally dramatic tracking inwards at original pace. The sensation of plunging forward was heightened in the final half-minute of the film with the addition of repeated racking focus towards the center of each glass subject before rapidly cutting to another and treating it the same. The falling sensation experienced can be likened to the series of developments that would rapidly succeed the establishment of the existence of the elusive Higgs-Boson Particle. Once such knowledge is ascertained, humanity will face an accelerated submersion into the potential for positive and/or destructive innovations. The rapid onslaught of even Collide-A-Scope’s slowest shots make individual recollection of each one impossible. Those racing three minutes of duration are incredibly difficult to document on an exacting level, the frustration the audience endures can be interpreted to mirror man’s futility at ever fully harnessing and comprehending the “God particle”.

Through Godhard’s editing, salient rhythmic and graphic relations illustrate the harrowing possibilities science confronts us with. The title of the work taken alone hearkens a child’s optical illusion of immense, perfect geometric patterns deriving from reflections of miniscule, coloured fragments, but having the director’s context points to a more momentous origin; a vision from the inside the Hadron Collider. The blackness before the rapid onslaught of colour and light raise the concept of disturbing a slumbering behemoth. Collide-A-Scope is short film that offers extensive grounds for analysis. Despite its brief duration of three minutes and archaic form (by today’s standards) of 16 mm film, Collide-a-Scope possesses a contemporary relevance. Through an explicit vision of a previously undocumented particle and visual associations of the worlds that exist beyond our own, Godhard manages to span both the most miniscule and the infinitesimal without deviating from a visual subject that is neither. It would be naive to say the work will lose its ability to offer any concepts of value after the Hadron Collider succeeds in its aspirations.  Godhard’s filmic contradictions also pose the contradictions that face humankind as science advances. The notion of hurtling towards knowledge of the universe’s most minute mechanics while at the same time baiting the absolute absence of light is a central conundrum. Stark, comically two-dimensional titles punctuated with cliché star forms and seconds of total blackness before and after a sledgehammer of colours and shapes highlight the question of divine of knowledge being worth the potential for knowing complete destruction. If the only point of illumination is at understanding, Godhard asks whether it is preferable to remain in one form of darkness so as to not chance facing another kind. Wondrous visuals and editing patterns ensure Collide-A-Scope will continue to testify to the possibility of union between of science and art.


BIBLIOGRAPHY
1.    CSIF, “The 18th Annual 100 Dollar Film Festival March 4-6 2010” (program guide distributed at The 18th Annual 100 Dollar Film Festival, Calgary, Alberta, March 4-6, 2010), 18
2.    R. Bruce Elder, The Films of Stan Brakhage in the American Tradition of Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Charles Olson (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1998), 389
3.    P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 174