A Pentagram for Conjuring the Narrative- Ash C

Hollis Frampton begins by remembering how as a child he noticed Mount Fujiyama in the background of many if not all Japanese landscape photographs and figured it was due to a significant spiritual relevance to the country. He then realizes that Mount Fujiyama is visible from every point in Japan, making it a fixed point in Japan’s perception. The ancient Greek belief that a line drawn through a point can only exist once parallel to the line is not as simple as it sounds as it depends on the line extending infinitely on a flat plane. In Marcel Duchamp’s mind, the relationship between “the waterfall” and the illuminating gas” rests on how they are perceived in space and time. The waterfall exists through its constant motion despite the details or condition of the water itself. The flame exists through its consistent burn, no matter what is burning. Like people, according to Frampton, we all exist because of our burning nature and will eventually die out when there is nothing more to feed the flame. In film art tends to adhere to a set on conditions regarding the frame and the “photographic illusion”. A film’s frame acts as a boundary to what is seen and everything else. The “photographic illusion,” not representation, exists as a relationship between what is seen and “a ‘norm’ held in the imagination.” Narrative is a consistent record of what became of a broken string of pearls and Samuel Beckett explores the universal truth of inevitable death. Lifelong human suffering between birth and death is a pessimistic topic for story-telling purposes that I hate but is represented in several equations that can be simplified to ax+b=c. I can’t imagine why anyone would, but there it is.