Paul Sharits (1943-1993)

Film’s frame structure necessitates a shutter mechanism, so that as each frame replaces another in the projector gate there are no blurs of the images in each frame. The frame and binary cinematic illusions in from video linear-scan illusionism. At sound speed 24 frame of film are projected each second; however, each frame is not seen for a full ½ 4 of a second. This is because the shutter blade, which rotates once for each frame projected, interrupts the frame’s image 3 times, amounting to a blockage of light of 1/48 of a second. So, the screen is illuminated ¼ 8 of a second and is darkened ¼ 8 of a second for each frame projected. Due to perceiver’s retinal inertia, the absences of light are not seen at 24 frames a second. “Pink/Shutter Interface” is based upon this periodic absence and presence of light; the “subject” of the piece is the shutter black and its functions. To indicate the existence of the shutter and its hidden darkness’s, a single frame of blade imagery has been located between each 2-10 frame color set (this black frame also functions to facilitate a particular color mixture saturation level constancy in the pieces’ overlapped [interfaced] areas on the screen and makes possible the apparent “movements” across te whole image). The black frames indicate, in the sense of “pointing to’” the shutter’s existence but the duration differential between the shutters (metric) darkness and the (asymmetrically located) black  frames’ darkness’s ,makes each frame an arbitrary symbolic  signifier rather than a natural or metonymic signifier. While the blade frames form the basis of the functioning of the work, they, like the shutter darkness’s, are not discretely visible (yet, they do begin to suggest themselves, being twice as long as the shutters darkness). To emaciate them more fully, a soundtrack of 1000 cyck per second tones synchronously accompanies each black frame. The “beep ton signals” become the signifiers of the black frames. The louder these sounds are played, the more “brilliant” and “aggressive” (i.e. discrete) the colors will appear.

In “Pink/Shutter Interface” the absence of light is not “darkness-in-general” but a particularly special duration symbolizing the infrastructural functioning of the projector shutter blade and the pattern of these absences forms a code which metaphorically amplifies the frame system of cinematic representation. The most perceived level of signification –the sound –points to the deeper/hidden levels of syndication.