Paul Sharits (1943-1993)

 The style of the 40 minute long film I am proposing—which would be titled, DECLARATIVE MODE—is a continuation of several recurring modes on work of the last ten years; it would be a higher refinement and synthesis of these modes, an energetic amplification of films’ perceptual potentialities to support and emphasize the grand scale of sentiment and declarative spirit of Jefferson’s remarkable text. I would attempt to have the film’s sound and image relations correspond aesthetically to this text’s form, its ranges of semantic and syntactical structures, its passage of fluid, jubilant idealism to its staccato moments of outrage toward and condemnation of King George’s “repeated injuries and usurpations.”

Among the many colors which would compose the film, a leit-motif of fades of red and blue from white would recur. The colors would be shot from a specially controlled color video monitor so as to heighten their brilliance to the maximum degree. The sound track, derived entirely from a spoken text of the Declaration of Independence, would begin by suggesting a sort of primal potentiality, from which meaning would gradually and rhythmically evolve. A computer would be used first to articulate variations and juxtapositions of phonemes from the text; then, gradually morphemes would emerge; and finally, the coherency of the unmodified text would be enunciated. In counterpoint to the movement of the soundtrack, the visual structure would gradually move from a measured poise towards an ecstatic level of color-light pulsation (ending in micro-oscillations around 5 cycles per second, which is at once the most primary fade-wave cycle possible in sound speed 16 mm film and is also a rhythm associated with certain neuron pulses during expansive, inspirational stated of consciousness).

If produced, DECLARATIVE MODE would be an aesthetic reaffirmation of America’s most basic principles, in a time of the Nation’s shattered trust, insecurity, cynicism, and aimlessness. I am anxious to begin the project soon, believing that its social relevance would be increased by its being premiered in 1976.

PAUL SHARITS