ART4619C - Assignment #2

With abstract formal systems in film, images are usually arranged to compare and/or contrast color, shape, rhythm, and size. According to the article on abstract formal systems, as viewers, when we are confronting a film that exhibits abstract forms, we do not look for casually linked events that make up a narrative, nor do we look for propositional claims that may add up to an argument, which cannot necessarily be said for associational formal systems. Also with abstract formal systems, the motifs used in a film will not necessarily fit into substantive categories. For example, the face of a clock may be put next to an image of a wheel for the simple reason that they are both similar in shape, rather than the fact that they exhibit a mechanical nature. Abstract films are also often organized in what we may call “theme and variations.” The term, while it typically applies to music (And is defined as a melody or other type of motif is introduced and then followed with a series of different versions of the same melody that often have extreme differences in key and rhythm so that the original melody is hard to recognize), can work in a very similar fashion when abstract films are involved. For instance, the beginning of the film may show us in a fairly simple way the kinds of relationships the film will use as its basic material and then in other segments, it will go on to present similar types of relationships but with changes, great or small. Images and possibly sounds are arranged in a way to takes them out of their original context, they are abstracted and the meaning we garner from the film is likely to be more subjective as the filmmaker is not likely set out to create for example, a political art piece. In contrast, associational formal systems use the meshing and visual contrasting of images together to create something that has very possible political and/or moral outlook on life, thereby imposing a set of ideas onto the viewer for the duration of the film.