Paul Sharits (1943-1993)

although i am moving away from conceptions-structures-methods which were operable for me from PIECE MANDALA to T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G the new work is still related to the old in that Filmis "subject" and i am still preoccupied with non-illusionistic movement ("static motion"), that obvious aspect of cinema so related to the audio drone of the projector running (running nowhere) and to the visual drone of the spinning shutter.  now The Strip of film becomes centrally important...stripping, linearity, current, continous interuptiveness, stripping away emulsion in a way congruent with the overall shape of the film base, etc. in a sense, the scratch enclosing two of my scratch tests ( the background emulsion image is water currents lap dissolving in such a way as to cancel directionality, ie the illusion of directionality); one of the strips has wide scratches which produce too "romantic" variations of color and shape (unessential variation); the other strip has more precisely made, less variational and more conceptually clear scratches & will be the closer model for the final "stripping" process.  the scratches will not run through the many frames which are already "marked" by splice bars because i wish to have these splices act as interuptions of the film current, as rocks interupt ( & thus define) the current of water in a mountain stream ( i believe i will introduce sound frames, on the soundtrack [which is basically streams of words], which will emphasize these splice obstacles).

this letter, of course, asks for no reply but is mainly a means of wishing you a fine summer in italy in case i don't see you before you leave...it just occurs to me that perhaps you have already left the states so i'll address this with a "please forward".

joy,