P3D re: 'Art' and all those realisms

["Xal razutis" <razutis@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Dr. Schreiber and realists:

Thank you for your comments.

>All I was attempting to do
>was throw an umbrella over the image field, pointing out the major
>spokes, if you will

>     You added history/psychology to the mix

And for good reason.

(It's long but condensed)

Thank you for your remarks.

Whenever criticism invokes a 'broad stroke' it risks obscuring the numerous 
contradictions of theory/counter theory, of objective versus subjective, of 
history versus accident, and so forth.

For example: 'Realism'
In many camps there is a prejudice that stereo-3D should imitate 'reality' 
by re-composing a scene for our two eyes which (typically) would see the 
very same scene (and better!) unmediated by stereo photography.

There are also numerous prejudices against such a view. It is a long list.

In one culture we may discuss (with historical referents) the 'discovery of 
perspective' in the Renaissance and say this was 'progress' which led us to 
'reason' and the end of 'church doctrine'.  In another culture one would say 
'who cares' about the Renaissance since Religious art (and its timeless 
commandments) is all that matters.  And no 'human form' should ever be 
represented!  Just ask the orthodox Muslims about their views of Vatican 
art.

In philosophy,  such a term as 'Realism'  would produce numerous competing 
philosophical movements  and  ultimately implicate Marxist-Leninists and 
their political-social-economic definitions of  'Socialist Realism'.  The 
close-up was only reserved for 'heroes of the revolution' and all 
proletariat were show in winde-angle frames sitting atop their production 
machinery.  The rest was bourgeois 'individualism'.

But back to pure philosophy:

We might have to agree to an answer for  'what is reality'!  Just as a 
Kantian to sit in the same room with a Existentialist and see if any 
agreement could be made.

Here comes psychoanalysis:

In early 20th-century psychoanalysis, we had Freud's  'Theory of 
Scopophilia' (1917) upon which much of Contemporary Feminist Psychoanalytic 
Theory of the Media" is based.  Built atop his earlier 'Oedipus complex' and 
'castration anxiety', this was a theory of (adolsescent) urges of men 
(primarily) to look at 'women'.  The Feminist argument was that it was a 
'patriarchal perversity' to institutionalize the 'Female' bearer of the 
look, with all of her make-up, framing, lighting, body-type, in the service 
of his own adolescent obsessions with voyeurism ("Scopophilia").  And they 
used a lot of Hitchcock films to bolster their argument.  I know, I taught 
in such a department prior to leaving.

A lot of this theory, along with a psychoanalyst named Lacan has formed the 
'theoretical underpinnings' of much of 'post-modernist' art and analysis.  
Here we would find neo-Marxists (post- the Wall) 'in bed' with Freud, each 
justifying forms of censorship.

(Those interested in researching updates and further developments of 
Marxian-Freudian Psychoanalysis of Media should contact the site of the 
'Department of Cinema Rhetoric' at U.C. Berkeley, headed by my old colleague 
Dr. Kaja Silverman.   It's now entrenched in universities.)

But just ask a stereographer - artist of the female nude if that 'Freudian 
psychoanalysis' applied to anything he/she did, and I'm sure we'd hear 
laughter.   Is the 'realism' of a stereo-nude not celebrated in certain 
quarters and 'damned' in others?

On socialist-materialist determinism: just ask a soviet photo artist (I did) 
if  'Social Realism' was anything but oppressive.  (Their art flowered in 
spite of it.)

So 'Realism' is what?  To which culture, in which time?

The wonderful thing about being stereographers these days is that we can 
'invent' our own theories about what 3D is and will be.  Does anyone know 
the true book or Canon of 'what is good 3D'?
Could they tell us some of the characteristics?
Maybe it's time for a theory.  However fragmented.
It wouldn't contradict the fact that  for many of us stereographer-artists 
our work is our 'theory and practice' rolled into one.

Al Razutis

http://www.alchemists.com/visual_alchemy/3d_video.html
http://www.alchemists.com/visual_alchemy/holography.html
http://www.alchemists.com/uroboros/uroboros.html


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