GEOFFREY NILSON
  • Home
  • About
  • CV
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • pagefiftyone
  • Home
  • About
  • CV
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • pagefiftyone

Poetic Numerals & Probable Systems

9/11/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture

Released in 1956, Rythmetic by Evelyn Lambert & Norman McLaren is frequently misinterpreted as a one-dimensional educational film with a bit of humour to keep things entertaining. Numerals and mathematical shapes move in controlled, lyric gestures upon a crisp blue background. Spreading across the screen in geometric patterns, the numbers bump and chafe, spawn anew, and add and subtract themselves in the dance of arithmetic operations. Writing in 1976 for the Canadian Film Institute, Maynard Collins described the film thusly:
 
“Following the heels of a teaching assignment in India for UNESCO, this amusing non-verbal lecture on the subject of mathematics reveals…feelings about the inadequacies of communication between peoples of different cultures and languages. After toying with several ideas for making a truly international film, [McLaren & Lambert] settled on Arabic numerals as probably the most understood method of communication, far more so than any other alphabet.”
 
It may be comforting to a viewer grasping at meaning to place such autobiographical motives at the heart of the film, but a serious question arises: would two visionary animators put their talents toward an aim so plain, so didactic?
 
To attempt to answer the question, we must discard the impulse to place such importance on the life of the artist as source of inspiration, for there are many ways of reading this film. One possible avenue is found in the work of another often misinterpreted Canadian artist, the poet bpNichol.
 
To scholar Kit Dobson, “the best thing about reading bpNichol is the impossibility of reading bpNichol,” arguing that attempting to read his poems through the lens of personality and personal relationships has “limited how his work might be understood.”
 
When I first watched Rythmetic, I was instantly struck by the similarity to Nichol’s series of poems “probable systems” that uses cryptarithms (mathematical games with arithmetical operations where numbers are substituted for letters or other symbols) in an attempt to quantify the ephemeral. Take this example from 1974:
 
probable systems 4
this one’s for james joyce in his worst bummer
 
faith
= 6 + 1 + 9 + 20 + 8
= 44
= 8 + 15 + 16 + 5
= hope
 
We are shown the work of his process and gain access to what Paul Dutton has described as the satisfaction we get from watching someone else’s original thinking. Having proved faith equals hope (literally and not by metaphor), Nichol cleverly illustrates the expressiveness of mathematics for speaking directly to the human experience.
 
The same emotion is at the heart of Rythmetic. The shapes don’t always follow the rules: they jump, bounce, dart across the screen, and, only after significant effort, settle. At one point, a mutating zero explodes the arithmetic attempting to contain its energy. The symbols police the numerals while the numerals bristle against the strict control.
 
This is no artless arithmetic. This is the lyric struggle of a life: to define yourself against the rules of a society that you could not help being born into, sometimes with success and sometimes not. Like Nichol’s “probable systems,” Rythmetic “analyses and expresses the unfolding of its own creative process” and invites the viewer to participate in meaning.
 
Really, though, when has math (or life) ever been simple?
 
 
Works Cited:
 
J. A. Brown, T. Trowbridge and J. Szabó, "The poetic metrics of bpNichol," 2009 IEEE Toronto International Conference Science and Technology for Humanity (TIC-STH), Toronto, ON, 2009, pg. 933-938.

Dobson, Kit, "Openings: bpNichol's Ephemera," Open Letter 13, No.8, Ed. Lori Emerson, 2009, pg 9-18.

Nichol, bp, a book of variations: love-zygal-art facts, ed by Stephen Voyce, Coach House Books, Toronto, ON, 2013, pg 176.
 
Utako, Kurihara, “Norman McLaren’s Animated Film Rythmetic as Temporal Art,” Bigaku (Aesthetics), No. 15, The Japanese Society for Aesthetics, Tokyo, 2011, pg 116-124.
0 Comments

    Categories

    All
    35mm
    Above / Ground Press
    Ambient
    Animation
    Anvil Press
    Art
    Black & White
    Books
    BpNichol
    Brian Eno
    Brick Books
    Brock University
    Canada
    Chapbooks
    Coach House
    Criticism
    David Foster Wallace
    Electronics
    Essay
    Etching
    Evelyn Lambert
    Exhibition
    Film
    Form
    Fourteen Points
    Fraser River
    Germany
    GY!BE
    Himatic AF2
    History
    Holga
    HP5 400
    Idea
    Ilford
    John Cage
    Kevin Spenst
    Laurie Anderson
    Linocut
    Live
    Minolta
    Modular
    Mounties
    Mpc
    Music
    Navy
    New Westminster
    Non Fiction
    Norman Mclaren
    Painting
    Paris 1919
    Photography
    Pictures
    Poetry
    Printmaking
    Quote
    Reading
    Review
    Screenprinting
    Sculpture
    Small Press
    Song
    Sonnet
    Surrey
    Synthesizer
    Talonbooks
    Telecaster
    The Georgia Straight
    TISH
    Vancouver
    Video
    Vinyl
    Vispo
    Warp Records
    Woodrow Wilson
    Writing
    Ww1

    Archives

    May 2021
    February 2021
    October 2020
    April 2020
    September 2019
    November 2018
    February 2018
    September 2017
    March 2017
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    August 2013
    May 2013
    January 2013
    November 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.