text:
Televised Interview with Dr. Gerry O'Grady
* Interview with Woody and Steina Vasulka
Audio Visual Interview with Vann Beauvais
Three transcribed interviews by…
John Du Cane and Simon Field (1970),
Dr. Gerald O'Grady (1976),
Linda Cathcart (1976).
Other interview scripts not included yet…
Interview with Paul Sharits, Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, 1983
Interview with Gary Garrels, October 1982
Interviewed by Hollis Frampton for SUNY at Buffalo Media Study Tape Archives (part of "Oral History of the New American Cinema" series at SUNY) Spring, 1973
Interview of Film artists Gunvor Nelson for SUNY at Buffalo Media Study Tape Archives (December 1973)
Interview of film artist Tony Conrad for SUNY at Buffalo Media Study Tape Archives (February 1974)
Interviewed on video tape by James Blue, Director of Media Center, Rice University (Summer 1974)
Interviewed on "Magazine of the Arts," Channel One, West German television (Summer 1974)
Interviewed by P . Adams Sitney, "Art's Forum," Radio Station WNCN, New York (January 1975)
Interviewed as guest filmmaker in Ms . Annette Michaelson's graduate seminar on economics of independent filmmaking, New'York University " (May 14, 1975)
Interviewed on Renate Strauss's "Art Beat," Amherst Cablevision, Amherst, New York (April 1975)
Mental Funerals: an interview with Paul Sharits by John Du Cane and Simon Field (London, 1970)
John Du Cane: Could you talk about your beginnings in painting and how that led you to an interest in film?
Paul Sharits: Actually the work didn't originate from painting, in fact before I was interested in art at all, I was making films strictly for the pleasure of making them. I destroyed all those early works. When I was in high school I was pretty anti-social and had not begun to think seriously or critically. I felt that society didn't merit intellectual consideration and I was making films that were very much involved with my own adolescent sexual feelings. Like most of the early psychodramatic works of the 50s, they were about sexual neuroses. We made them in 8mm with my friend's parent's camera. When I began studying painting and sculpture I just kept making films, though I didn't want to study film. It was at the end of abstract expressionism when it was a sin to do figurative work. I felt that this is the kind of work I'll do in my films so I don't have to be evaluated on it. This is strictly my own conception, my own development, and it really didn't bother me that it was just a past time.
Eventually it become more engaging and I was very surprised that theories I had developed about a sort of 'haiku' narrative film structure were very similar, theoretically, to Eisenstein's montage. At first I was quite depressed, because I thought I'd figured out this thing that I never saw in regular movies, and then I found it in Eisenstein.
In graduate school at Indiana University I was making films, but not studying them. I didn't think there was any place where it would be valuable to study film. Henry Smith encouraged me in photography, and I quickly learned its technical aspects. He said why don't you go ahead and make films and I'll give you credits. He was always very helpful to me and allowed me to devote a lot of time to my work and even helped a little with financing. I found directing a bore as it was not the thing I wanted to do with film. I started fragmenting my narratives to such an extent that I felt that this was the subject matter. The way I was editing/thinking made the acting and drama increasingly extraneous. There was little sense of beginnings or ends, everything overlapped, and I suppose many of my ideas were informed by my studies in the visual arts. But all along I felt I wasn't going to apply theories and ideas from painting to film. You can't apply the principals of painting to a medium that's not painting. I was very much against abstract film and I remain uninterested in the traditional abstract film.
John Du Cane: When you say abstract film, which filmmakers are you really talking about?
Paul Sharits: I'm thinking about the early avant-garde European movement, for instance, the films that were influenced by Constructivism. It's not that I dislike them, I just don't think they're theoretically viable. Maya Deren also attempted to point this out. I think most people are somewhat aware of this. In any event my own work… I didn't want the work I was doing in painting to directly inform my work in film. I was going to keep my film work off to the side so that it was completely free of any teaching. Well, I was getting ideas from all kinds of things, but they were my own synthesis, not pre-formulated conceptions of what film should be. I think it would be very bad for a serious filmmaker to go to a school and learn technique with the idea that after he learns the technique he will then have the tools to create intelligent, technically adequate forms. This seems silly to me; one doesn't study sculpture by going through four years of woodworking. The attitudes those schools imbed subvert personal growth. Even if it's not openly done, simply the training in what is right and wrong prevents one from seeing certain things through one's own vision. Very few people survive this, even if their intentions are good. It's like acquiring a lot of knowledge that you just have to suppress… I feel.
John Du Cane: How did you come to make Razor Blades?
Simon Fields: Making Razor Blades was presumably a distinct step from what you had been doing before.
Paul Sharits: No, first there was Ray Gun Virus, which I don't believe has been shown here at all. That film, I think, is the most radical film, if not the most accomplished. It was a break for me because the only subject matter was the film grain and the structuring of colour in time. The soundtrack is the continuous sound of the actual sprockets of the film. This is where I became…
I suppose it is true that I made an abrupt cut, the look of the work radically changed. I was very apprehensive about this, but I felt like I was coming very close to having a breakdown, so I tried to see through my own preconceptions at that particular time and that led me to try to eliminate absolutely everything and start from the most basic elements. I think I overlooked many of the basic elements, and I did not have a very sophisticated conception of how to approach this, but I was very conscious that I was eliminating a great deal. At that time I wrote on the way Godard was using colour in some of his early work. This was the sort of thing I wanted to do using a very pure form. I was still thinking in dramatic terms, in the sense that I felt the basic system, the machinery, could be compelling drama. I feel that I 'm going through another big transition at this point in that I realize more and more that that is a conception I must break through. I must allow myself to negate this desire to make anything with dramatic qualities. So that I will be able to perceive from a new base again. This is why I no longer did any mandala-structured works after T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G. T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G is the end of my involvement with worrying about, or thinking about, films that should have some appeal to the cruder emotions. I want a cinema that is more distant from the whole theatric tradition. Even though film has been stripped down to changes in colour, the impulse remains to make something dramatic, it's still being influenced by theatre. I made Ray Gun Virus and then became interested in using things I'd discovered with colour and this brought about a synthesis with my interest in Tibetan mysticism and my own experiments with Yoga meditation and to some extent an interest in drug experiences to make a meditative kind of cinema. This is not the normative idea of something being dramatic, but I see it as drama now, I see it as a stage. T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G was a dramatic film. I could go on making more dramatic films, I've learned enough about how to structure it that way, but I simply don't want to. I think that it's a quality that has to be negated to get to other levels.
John Du Cane: You feel you were using dramatic imagery?
Paul Sharits: Besides the imagery, the rhythms are dramatic, though they might seem mathematical, even geometric. I know that I could evoke certain sorts of feelings without images, simply with the rhythm of the film. One could conceivably do a film that would leave people weeping via some variation on the black film form.
John Du Cane: It strikes me that something like T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G, besides being meditative, is also an exorcism.
Paul Sharits: Yes, yes. At that time I believed that film could be a lovely, magical object, a charmed experience. This is very personal, but I don't particularly wish to do that any longer. I may change my mind some day but now there's a big break.
With Ray Gun Virus I had imagined a form that had no end or beginning. I was thinking of a very long film with reels that could be played in any order. It wouldn't show progression or development. There would be no overall shape to the film. None at all. Any part would be as appropriate as any other part.
Of course that's not the same kind of drama that is involved in the mandala films. My intentions… you see there are so many things operating… we are talking about the idea of the mandala and the irony of structuring a film like that, that tries to put a centre in the film, which at once cancels the possibility of that film doing what a mandala does. Formally, to have a complete mandala in film, is to negate the possibility of an extended, meditative experience. Defining the overall shape negates the possibility of a true meditational experience; it's a fragment of the meditative experience.
John Du Cane: I think there seems to be a conflict in your desire to remove meaning from your films, at the same time that there is, let's not say an obsession, but a great concern with death, which is probably one of the reasons why your films remain dramatic.
Paul Sharits: I don't think many of us in Western culture are trained properly in seeing or responding to our eventual death. I've been struggling with this – to see life as a series of deaths and births. I think the body of work I've made struggles to present myself with certain questions on a formal level about death. I think it's interesting that I'm doing it with a dying medium, as I think cinema is, in the form that we're working in, technically obsolete, and will eventually be looked upon as quaint gizmos. But I love them, they have many interesting aspects that I'm just beginning to recognize. At first one thinks that a machine cannot be simply the delivery system for a process. The idea is that these machines have to serve us, they need to be used for something. To use them simply to amplify their own nature is not often thought interesting. Dadaists like Picabia made jokes about machines and the idea of machines. But I'm more interested in the Russian Constructivist reaction to the Industrial Age than the negative Dadaist reaction.
John Du Cane: I think one thing that you are obviously developing is a completely different sense of humour which ties in with your feeling for paradox. This humour might have been lacking a little in your earlier work, perhaps this absence didn't allow you to have such a balanced understanding of the oppositions you were working with in your films.
Paul Sharits: I have so many different moods. Sometimes I think about my things in a very serious manner. At other times I think it's so absurd I just laugh. Sometimes I laugh when I see T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G because I think it's very funny. But other times I feel a great horror. Sometimes I feel completely detached and just observe it.
John Du Cane: Could you talk about the oppositions you worked with in those films, in terms of the sound, colour and rhythms?
Paul Sharits: The whole aesthetic was an attempt to synthesize opposites. Or not so much a synthesis but a plausible co-existence of opposites. No, not even opposites, but whatever lies beyond the opposites of irony, paradox and conflict. I just try to do whatever I feel is necessary.
John Du Cane: So the theory develops in the making?
Paul Sharits: Sometimes everything seems theoretically very clear and other times it seems hopelessly complex and confused. I don't mind contradicting myself; I think I probably contradict myself quite frequently. This is directly relevant to the kind of things I've been working with in my film. My life is very confused; so part of my struggle with these films was to find ways that made these things coherent to me. Intercutting positive and negative footage is an obvious way of dealing with dualities, for instance, or having opposing vectors in the temporal shape of the film.
Simon Field: Was that the reason for using two screens in Razor Blades?
Paul Sharits: Yes, I wanted a dialogue that would begin in Razor Blades with a harmonious relation until gradually more non-relational syntax (and symbology) were introduced. It gradually introduces various levels of meaning in the structure and in the referential qualities, then returns to a more related dialogue. But the dialogue is altered because of the previous changes. I'm not sure whether people experience the film this way or not. My idea is that these images slash at each other.
Simon Field: And the same holds true for the stereo sound?
Paul Sharits: Yes, one track is exactly inverse to the other track.
John Du Cane: Could you talk about the importance of seeing movies as a procession of discrete events appearing 24 frames per second, comprised of single frames with pauses between each frame?
Paul Sharits: If you see a movie there is an illusion – it's not an illusion, it's a physiological event in your nervous system – that you're seeing a continuous light. But in fact the light is not on screen all the time. The soundtrack is different, because the sound is not interrupted by a shutter. The sound is continuous. So the sound can act in a way that the image cannot; the image cannot be on the screen continually. But the sound can be continual and mark out segments of time very exactingly, by emphasizing each frame, for instance.
Simon Field: One film we haven't talked about so far is Piece Mandala/End War.
Paul Sharits: Well, I said I would talk a little about the magical aspect. I've given the impression at times that meditation itself was a major formative and generating source for the mandala films, but another reason they have that form is the magical aspect. This is not magic as Crowley would define it, this is a more personal sense I have that we make things, and if they're devoid of normal usage then it's possible, if they're structured in certain ways, to have other effects. They have other usages that I can't define exactly, but would name "magic." I don't mean magic in the "magician" sense of conjuring up an illusion. I mean an object, or an experience, that is charmed. One traditionally charms objects by making them oneself, or at least acquiring the materials oneself. This is one prerequisite of magical objects. And although you may be using very classical principles, another thing that's important is your intention, which is an invisible quality. You really have to believe, and belief can't be measured except in the effectiveness of the experience.
I don't mean for my films to be magical to strangers. In many ways, I direct them to people that are close to me. I understand that Harry Smith at one time did not care to show his films to the public because he felt they were magical and were addressed to people he knew. I don't know if you can address this kind of magic to strangers. I don't know if film can do those kind of things to people that you don't know, care about or think of while you're making the thing; because part of the ritual of construction is intention. Piece Mandala/End War has a great deal to do with the relationship with my wife at that particular time. We are separated now, but at that time we had been separated for a short while and we got back together. Then the form crystallized for me: how could I make a film that would have a magical effect in our relationship? The film is dedicated to her.
There's an image in the film of me shooting myself, that is also un-happening. I don't what suicide is like, but there are other forms of suicide that I've practiced in my life that allow a rebirth. They're not pleasant, I think of them as a form of death. Giving up whole frames of reference. One evening in the country, in the company of several very close friends, my wife and I performed a ritual of throwing away the charmed objects of our marriage. This was an event that my wife programmed for me to understand her frame of reference, so we threw away our wedding rings. What we were trying to do was find new levels of coordinating our relationship and get more intense.
A film like T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G is trying to negate certain forms of negation in several people, including myself. This film is directed towards a couple of other people who, like myself, are self-destructive. I wanted to frame this for us to study and respond to. The dedication of the film has never been formally accepted, and I believe it has been informally rejected by my brother. I don't know if he's seen the film or not, that certainly isn't the level on which the acceptance or rejection would occur. But it was a film for him and for the people in it. The main image shows David Franks, a very close friend of mine, who I think is a very fine young poet, and his – how shall I say it, we have to be careful about this on tape – his lady at the time. She appears in the film scratching his face. It was a very intense occasion when we filmed this. Of course she didn't really scratch his face; we applied streaks of glitter to his face, but we had to do it in such an intense psychological manner that she fainted. I became very incensed and had to transcend my personal feelings to care for my friends and insist, absolutely insist, that she get back and hold this posture properly, and become almost trance-like while shooting. It was a very intense occasion, part of the process of charming and investing the object-film with these intentions and vibrations, and so forth. Although it's been condemned at times as being a sadistic work, I feel that the film essentially has to do with healing. It's anti-sadistic.
John Du Cane: Can you talk about the image of the operation and the people making love?
Paul Sharits: The image of sexual intercourse and the image of the eye operation do not have to be recognized as such. The only thing that's necessary is that they're briefly shown on the screen at certain moments to create an ideogram that tries to show an image of two creative forms of human contact. Both cases feature a probing or touching. In one case, a chrome instrument is put into the new lens of the eye. The sense of vision is constantly referred to, as well as the sense of creation. The poet and his tongue. The filmmaker and his eye. David's eyes are closed until the end. When his eyes open, the screen collapses. The lust image frames the eye, or is in relation to the eyes and the mouth in such a way that it focuses on those areas, and in both of those shots the mouth is closed and the eyes are open.
John Du Cane: In Razor Blades there's a similar kind of magic related to your mother's death. In N:O:T:H:I:N:Gyou do this with death itself via the falling chair.
Paul Sharits: Yes, the chair falls on its own, there's no cause. It's like a purified form, an uncaused negation. That film does not have any references to any particular function that I might impose on it. Whether it operates that way or not I'm not sure. With N:O:T:H:I:N:G I felt different, there was a struggle that was going on within me.T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G is also directed at myself. I spent several terrifying years in Baltimore, there's a great deal of crime and anxiety there. In New York City the energy is not as neurotic and purely anxious, it creates things. In Baltimore, at least in the world that I knew there, there was a non-generative anxiety. It did not generate any forms, except more anxiety, and I was reacting to these kinds of things.
Many images come in dreams; most of my films would be full of images if I would have made them upon first conception. What I've done is eliminate images. In N:O:T:H:I:N:G there is a process of three years of eliminating images conceptually before I began shooting the film. In the beginning, the film was densely populated with images. I edited and edited and got to a point where I felt I didn't need to eliminate any further. As you suggest, inRazor Blades, the sort of joke poem about suicide for my mother, who committed suicide… yes, that's like a mental funeral for me. My mother influenced me in many ways that I must still probe. I feel that she has spoken to me several times after death, and I've had the sense that she has asked me to give up this life. But I don't want to talk too much about that.
John Du Cane: I see a connection between the falling chair and dying and the light bulb. The same sort of magic is involved.
Paul Sharits: Well, one of the aims of magic is to negate the concrete body state. As Crowley says, what you must do is convince yourself, finally, that you've become light. You've just become light instead of a being. And death, of course, is the most obvious form of negating the body, at least for the spirit or consciousness. The falling chair is a very evident image of death. My son Christopher was three years old at the time, and he regarded it as a dying chair. He asked me about that. But then to test where his level of symbolic understanding was, I wanted to see if he thought that objects had spirits in them. How could a chair die if it was not imbued with an anthropomorphic sense of being? I asked him why he wouldn't give his pillow a drink of milk. He said because the pillow has no mouth, but what he meant was that the pillow didn't have a spirit.
Paul Sharits interview with Gerald O'Grady (1976) (Online Video)
From the series "Film-Makers," WNED, Buffalo.
http://rhizome.org/editorial/2861
Gerald O'Grady: The filmmaker is Paul Sharits, he was born in Denver. He was the founder of the film program at Antioch College, and he now teaches film at the Centre of Media Study at the State University at Buffalo. Wherever experimental work is shown around the world, whether it's at Montreaux in Switzerland, or at Knokke-le-Zoute in Belgium or the Whitney Museum in New York his films are shown. His films are in the collections of most major museums around the world. In the fall of 1976 the Albright-Knox Gallery here in Buffalo is going to accord you a complete retrospective of your work and some of your drawings and compositional columns that we're going to look at in the program. I think of all the contemporary filmmakers your work, your films, your movies, relate to other contemporary art movements.
Paul Sharits: Well I do feel very comfortable in the gallery/museum context. My background in college had been studies in visual design, painting, sculpture and art history, although I don't like to think of my work as coming out of painting, for instance, although it has a certain relation to abstract painting. If I might characterize the work I suppose it has more to do with contemporary art I think well for many years it has been constantly searching for valid subjects, testing the boundaries of what it is supposed to represent since the invention of recording instruments like cameras, cinematography and so forth, those functions were abandoned in a way by painters and sculptors. But I find myself that there's a crisis in the image, I cannot accept illusionism without criticizing it, somehow within. My subject has become actually more the physical qualities of film, the structuring process of making films.
Gerald: Ordinarily when we go to a movie, or a film we tend to look for a representational image of someone acting out something. There's generally an actor involved. And yet your work people often say: what's happening? Maybe we should look at one of your early works, N:O:T:H:I:N:G, and perhaps you can talk about what's going on. What is the subject here?
(N:O:T:H:I:N:G excerpt shows on a screen behind the two speakers)
Paul: OK. Yes. My work is concerned with perceptual responses, so in a sense the subject becomes the viewer of the work. This is a film wherein the frames are differentiated by solid colour at a rate of speed that causes certain kinds of optical phenomena. The idea of the work is a little difficult to articulate…
Gerald: Because we're just seeing a few minutes…
Paul: Yes, I should think that the idea of the film would be more available if we would see the entire film which is 36 minutes long but we can't so what I'd like to concentrate on in this particular film there are a few images that set up a conceptual context for the work. The subject here is the film frame itself, there are 24 of them going by each second, the, their existence becomes the subject. And of course I'm using their rhythms and patterns that vary throughout the film, in fact, gradually change from a slower rhythm to an increased rhythm, a very definite point in the centre of the film is emphasized, and then the whole structure reverses itself. The theme, there are several themes in the film that also do this on different levels, some of them representational, the light bulb imagery. There's an image of a chair falling over backwards, without any apparent reason.
Gerald: The subject is the frame itself, and elements such as colour, flicker and rhythm, in other words the subject of the film are the material qualities of the basic elements of celluloid and emulsion itself.
Paul: Yes, there are so many, in my way of thinking, there are so many subjects that it's rather hard in a condensed way to enumerate them all. But those are basic to that kind of work. There's, I think, perhaps we can make some of these ideas more clear if we present some slides. This is a series of strips from the film, arranged in a manner that allows us to see what was generating some of those optical effects and rhythms. This sketch here on the left, we see a little sketch of a Tibetan mandala, it's a symmetrical meditational device, I tried to, on the right, find a way to, of mapping that kind of… the mandala is a single image, a symmetrical image. I tried to find a way of modeling that into a time dimension.
Gerald: Which is at the top.
Paul: Yes. Here's another way of viewing it, from the left to the right, you can see there is a definite centre to the film, and a progression of colour that inverts, it goes to the centre and then inverts. That's an overall picture of the whole form of the film. The shape of the film becomes a subject, in a sense. These are some sketches to show a little bit about how I was diagramming some of the various movements, and rhythms and colour developments in the film. This shows general overall patterns of movement and frequencies of fade ins, fade outs, different kinds of colour formations. This is another way… I would actually visualize, as if it were a film strip, the relative distribution of colours and so forth. This is a few seconds, about 20 seconds actually, drawn in a way that would look something like a filmstrip that would result in following this kind of score, if we could call it that. In later work, scoring films that are actually shot on an animation stand, I can make a score and someone else can actually shoot the film knowing how to read the score, as if you would read a book. So that you're reading from the top left horizontally to the right and then down. Now if that were to generate a film and I were to take the strips of that film and hang them, this is reading horizontally, if I hang the resulting film vertically, I can see here that it will form certain kinds of patterns, that are obviously related to the way that paintings are…
Gerald: This drawing is done with coloured pencils on graph paper.
Paul: This is a study for what that score would look like if it were what I call a frozen film frame. This is a series of strips from another film that's related to the film N:O:T:H:I:N:G. This is the first colour film I worked on with this idea of the film frame. This is another little section of it. You can see some of the spatial forms that these temporal directions…
Gerald: What you've done there is to take the film…
Paul: These are actual film strips.
Gerald: … that goes through the projector as one strip, and then you've cut it into strips and put them into a grid side by side.
Paul: In a serial arrangement. This might make it a little bit more clear. This is the entire film, Ray Gun Virus, 14 minutes long, put into a serial arrangement of strips. It's sandwiched between plexiglass. This is another film that's symmetrically made, you can see in the centre there that there's a different sort of emphasis than out on the edges.
Gerald: This is a black and white photo of an installation.
Paul: Yes. These are pieces that have been exhibited in galleries and museums I continue to work on. In other words, when I'm planning a film I'm planning it for a temporal projection, of 12 minutes in the case of this filmT,O,U,C,H,I,N,G, and in the spatial format of the frozen film frame, the film sandwiched between plexiglass…
Gerald: It's interesting because in some of the sketches you're actually using the five line structure of music. You're actually using musical composition musics, and in others you're using graph paper, thinking of it spatially and in the same time in a temporal way.
Paul: Yes, I think that my background as a child playing classical music certainly informs the structuring of the work. It's not based on mathematics, it often has that look but it's a system that I've developed myself. From the frame to the frozen film frame pieces with the strips I had become more interested in literalizing the actual film strip. And I'd like to show a film now Inferential Current which is a nine minute long film, the subject is a film strip, two film strips superimposed.
Gerald: How was this made?
Inferential Current excerpt plays
Gerald: What is the sound structure on that film?
Paul: We're hearing the latter part of the film, it's in three parts. It's the word miscellaneous which has been taken apart into parts: misc, sel, lane, eous, and compounded in various ways. We're hearing the last two fragments.: lane, eous, overlapped, phasing in and out of relationship, somewhat in the way that the two superimposed filmstrips are moving at different rates. I'm interested in trying to handle the sound structurally in the same, or in a related manner to the visual aspect of the film. Rather than the sound being an over-narration, as in a travelogue, or synchronous.
Gerald: Was that shown on multiple screens?
Paul: That is a work that is related to another film called Soundstrip/Filmstrip, and perhaps we can take a look at some slides. This work is an installation in a museum and it's a four-screen piece. These are four projectors in the middle of the room, the image takes up the entire wall, eight feet high, thirty feet wide. The four images are turned sideways. The image is like the one in Inferential Current. It's of a filmstrip, and here as they're lined one after the other, at times they look as if they're one long filmstrip. The arrangement is a sort of metaphor of a filmstrip and the subject itself is a filmstrip with scratches, illusional scratches and sprocket holes… I was interested in here is the physical linearity of the film as a contrast to the flickering pulse of the frame oriented work, the earlier work,.
Gerald: You can see that these are the four screens as they're actually being projected on the wall.
Paul: Yes this is, the scale of this is thirty feet wide and eight feet high, and we're getting cut off on either end. The image there is images of film that were rephotographed on a system that I've built specifically for this purpose that will see the entire strip of film. In recent years this preoccupation with the strip of film as a linear, modulating flowing element has been interfaced with the earlier concern with the abrupt change from frame to frame into work which is a rephotographing of film frames which, if they were normally projected, would have a flickering effect. So I've kind of compounded I believe both systems. The fourth section of the twenty minute long film I'd like to show now, Color Sound Frames>, the sound actually is the sprocket holes which are in synch with the image,. Perhaps we can have that before we discuss it any further.
Color Sound Frames excerpt plays
Gerald: When you're conceiving of a film, in your mind, when you're thinking of the film going through a projector and being projected on a screen, as we see ordinary films, at the same time you're thinking of it as a frozen frame that you can cut up and sometimes show in space, but within plexiglass, and at the same time you are, in a way, thinking of it almost in terms of performance, in what you call "locational"pieces. I know you've talked about Frank Lloyd Wright and a democratic space where people can enter in. So you're actually thinking of it in at least three ways,.
Paul: Yes, I continue to make films for regular theatrical presentation. Films with beginnings and ends. On the other hand, I see that that space is a bit authoritarian in that ever yone is directed towards a particular image at a particular time. The locational work, the works I do in the gallery and in the museum context, don't really have a duration, and they don't really place the viewer of the work. The viewer places himself in relationship to the work and comes and goes at will.
Gerald: We even have a set of slides that will probably show some of the generation of the…
Paul: Yes, in this slide we'll see how this last film that we've seen, Color Sound Frames, is related to a gallery piece which we'll come to in a moment here. This here is some scores that are oscillating lines that intersect and create flicker footage. There are ten drawings here that create a five minute long film. This is just three of the drawings. So it goes from this drawing stage, and then we have the five minute long film we're seeing here in a frozen film frame of it, it's matted a little bit by the TV format, and I made a film of this and that would be Color Sound Frames. I also made another film that is an installation piece that was first done in the Bykert Gallery in New York and then it was shown in another show Projected Light work at the Walker Art Centre last year. This again is a format of putting the work into a particular space, the film is on loop projectors and it doesn't have any specific duration. These go in and out of sync, these images, the film, filmstrips, so that there is no concept here of beginning or end, there is just duration. It's a spatial experience, and you look at yourself within it.
Gerald: You can actually look at it for a month without repeating.
Paul: Yes, the amount of information. However on the other hand I would like to make them so that in the immediate moment of seeing them, there is an all at once quality to them that is much like the presence one might sense in a painting or a piece of sculptural wholeness to it. This shows some of the variations. This is a sketch to show the variations in the kinds of movements that can occur in this three-screen format that is similar to Color Sound Frames film. This film is actually called Synchronous Sound Tracks. This is a work I've been working on now that's silent, Oscillation, working with the principle of oscillation, a four screen work in an environment, a locational piece.
Now there's another kind of thing that I'd like to talk about a little, to work with the idea of developing the stages of a work as being the subject of the work. These are some scores, four scores, let me just go through them, that even, with some of the distortion, that perhaps we'll have with the video we can see that there's a relationship between these drawings in that they all have colour that's somewhat related. This generated four different films that were five minutes long, and I project them in variations of overlapping screens. Now these are flicker works, going back to the earlier like N,O,T,H,I,N,G. But for the first time I developed them for a locational situation.
Gerald: This is the piece you did in Artpark this summer?
Paul: Yes. This was continuously projected for a couple of weeks. Now I changed the relationship of the projectors so the screen overlap would be different. I found that the best format was finally this last one, right here.
Gerald: So as you were watching your own work at Artpark, you began to create a new set of sketches for another work, based on that almost.
Paul: Yes. First they started out as theoretic sketches. Let's have a look at a couple of those. This is one is to explain the… one of the basic ideas there is that the shutter blade in an out-of-phase, in-phase, relationship.
Gerald: The shutter blades of a projector.
Paul: Yes. The film is kind of about the shutter blades of a projector abstracted into a whole idea involving colour, movement, and rhythm and so on. This is another drawing. A rather schematic and didactic. I'd just like to show, rather quickly, a series of drawings that are not particularly didactic but rather a metaphor for the kinds of, what I thought would be the very creational possibilities of this approach. So we just go through this sequence of slides now.
Slide sequence plays.
Paul: This is from a series of about 50 drawings and I found it very interesting that in this case I was able to use the final film as a resource or subject for a series of drawings which I believe will perhaps inform me of some other direction to go in developing a film concept again. So the process of thinking about the work is not just from the beginning sketches to the film, it has now extended beyond the film back into the sketches and perhaps from those sketches then onto another film.
Gerald: In some ways, getting back to the question I raised earlier in the program, about what's happening, what's on the screen. In some ways what's on the screen, now, and more and more, in this fashion, seems to me the process of thought itself.
Paul: Yes, that's the way I think of the work and that's why I like it to be broken down into different stages so that the different part of the processes can reflect off of each other and crate sort of paradigmatic structure of how an idea can be seen and felt and responded to at different levels.
Gerald: The works show this, you show us a sketch, compositionally you project it, you show it in what we call locational arrangements, people can follow that trajectory, this interaction with yourself, your own perceptions and of course their perceptions,.
Paul: Yes, ideally all the work would be seen in a relatively proximate space as you see the film piece in one room you'd see these sketches, diagrams in another space and some of the frozen film frames also. So that would set up a kind of conceptual space, rather than one thing being hierarchically superior to another, it's more of a reflective process. My hope is that even in limiting myself to the kind of subject that I have decided is valid film subject matter, I have a richness to work with.
Gerald: I think we're out of time. Thanks very much for coming.
Paul: Thank you.
Host: Gerald O'Grady
Producer/Director: Dan Healy
Film-Makers is produced in co-operation with Media Study, Buffalo and is a video tape production of WNED Buffalo.
An Interview with Paul Sharits by Linda Cathcart (1976)
(Paul Sharits: Dream Displacement and Other Projects, exhibition catalogue, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York, 1976)
Linda Cathcart: Where does the title Dream Displacement come from?
Paul Sharits: From Freud's discussions of dreams. I fall into reading various things at various times. Then they move into the work or the work moves through them. It's often blurred as to which came first. For a while I was very interested in structuralist and phenomenological writings and linguistics, but more recently I'm rereading Freud. It seems that (the film installation) Dream Displacement is acting as a way of getting at some sort of forgotten dream image. I feel like I've displaced some significant data and I'm trying to locate it or at least recapture the mood through a particular combination of sound and image.
Linda: Can you talk more specifically about those emotions or experiences you are after in Dream Displacement?
Paul: I can't really say. I know it is composed of a couple of different emotions superimposed, and the sense of it, which I'm trying to get at, is one whole feeling but the only way I can express it is to pull it apart – a bit like classical montage – so that the collision of the sound and the image starts to suggest something whole. However, it is not going to ever be the emotion – it's not going to ever have that kind of actual and total wholeness.
One thing that is happening in Dream Displacement is a conflict between sound and image. They seem on the surface to be somewhat disrelated. It's almost as though the film frames within each screen image are going against each other which is more coherent than the sound which is that of glasses breaking and yet that image is more distant than the sound of glass breaking.
Linda: This work, which consists of four loop projectors and a quadraphonic sound system, is enclosed in a single room – the four loops are projected as a single image. Does this filmic expression relate to Freud's discussions of the compaction of experience in our dreams?
Paul: Yes, I want to create intensified places. In a single-screen film you can only build up to a point or develop themes or crisscross them and so forth whereas I'd like the space itself to have a feeling of being ritualized. If you go into a movie theatre everything else is gone – you just move off into that other space – you go right out the window. I want to keep within that real space. I want the space to be a place – a whole place.
Linda: Is that desire for wholeness at odds with the notion of displacement? For example, there is a lack of visual sources for the sounds in Dream Displacement.
Paul: In traditional film there is always the image as a visual source for the sound. In these "locational" works (Dream Displacement and Shutter Interface) it seems almost by accident that the sounds and images happen to be in the same space. I have the feeling that the relationships they have is part of a distant feeling or memory. The general psychiatric definition of displacement is the transference of an emotion to a socially inappropriate object. I do that quite a lot. I take an emotion and try to transpose it onto a set of illogical objects or experiences. Behind them is some emotion or some cross of an emotion and an image. I have to take hints or work intuitively because how could I approach that layer of my feeling or memory by doing something logical? If I do something logical it's never going to lead me there.
Linda: There is in Dream Displacement and Shutter Interface (as with your other locational or multi-screen pieces) an assertion of the physicality not only of your medium but of the images and sounds you use, as well.
Paul: I want the films to have a physical presence and there is also a kind of physical adjustment I want to get between the sound and the image. It's not any rational measure or anything – I've just got to figure out how to get it to be the right balance so that one is constantly threatening the other. One element threatens with violence, the other with beauty.
Linda: In Dream Displacement the sound works to emphasize the circularity of the film which is on loops. Having a speaker in each corner allows the sound to go around the room. Also the noise itself has a circular quality. Throwing the glasses by hand is almost a circular gesture one can hear – lifting, dropping, lifting, dropping.
Paul: I wanted a certain kind of rhythm. It was interesting shooting the tests for the film. I kept finding it was too fast; I had to keep slowing it down. The sound has to be slow too – the rhythm couldn't be staccato, it would destroy the whole mood I want to set up. I used a quadraphonic sound system so the spatial locations of the crashes shift from one speaker to the next without any apparent pattern.
Linda: It occurs to me that as one approaches the projection location, one is able to hear the sound before one can see the images.
Paul: I never really thought of it that way – I like it though – it stresses the importance of the sound. Rather than it being a backdrop or a postscript, the sound becomes the first holistic image of the piece. I want people to have to walk into the space and past the projectors (which are free-standing and exposed to view) to get to the visual image – by the time they do that the sound is going to be all-pervasive.
Linda: The sound/image relationship seems to be quite a bit different in Shutter Interface – do you agree?
Paul: I certainly do agree. For Shutter Interface I wanted a sound rhythm and a visual rhythm that would have something to do with high-amplitude alpha waves. I think that's why it's such a pleasant film. I did some biofeedback to listen to the sound of my alpha rhythm and I tried to approximate it in the piece. I wanted that sound to fit with the flicker and it does exactly. Every series of frames of colour – which are each from two to eight frames long – is separated by one black frame and the sound is in direct correspondence to those black frames. The black frames are like little punctuation points.
Linda: Shutter Interface seems to very straight forward because the sound/image relationships are less complex and subtle than those in Dream Displacement, which seems closer in feeling to perhaps, S: TREAM : S : S ECTION : S ECTION : S : S :S ECTIONED, where your realization of the levels of meaning involved is slower. Do you feel there are those differences?
Paul: Yes, I think that's true. I kind of drift back and forth between wanting to express what I know about my medium in a kind of grand form and, on the other hand, wanting to create a problem for myself which throws me into another mood. My work has been back and forth between these two polarities through the years: on the one hand I attempt to be declarative and, on the other hand, I'm generating questions which have no apparent ready-made answers. The films sometimes seem rather "pure' and sometimes they appear somewhat violent, psychologically and even physically; often these aspects get mixed up as in T,O,U,C,H.I,N,G where they kind of mesh. Also, I've always been interested in the differences between sound and visual image – I've usually rejected associative relations between sight and sound – for instance where sounds create images or where an image is obviously the source of its sound. That bores me.
Now the sound in Shutter Interface does have a very direct relationship to the visual aspect. The sound is only where there are black frames. There is this constant field of colour punctuated by these black frames that you can't really see – this is where I chose to put the sound and that creates a firm relationship. You can't directly observe this relationship but you feel it. It is so smooth an experience you don't ask why it works. You don't question it. But, if I'd chosen yellow frames and associated sound with them, the whole thing would have been too obvious. I think there is a little bit of a mystery as to why the piece works as it does.
Linda: is what we've been referring to as relationships (between colours and sounds) really some sort of perceptual dialogue?
Paul: I would say, in general, that a lot of the work deals with perceptual thresholds. It brings us to the limits of our perceptual abilities so that often one cannot tell whether or not what one is experiencing is in the work or in oneself. So I think there is a kind of a dialogue between the viewer and the work in the sense that there's a perception that's a kind of outcome of both of them interacting. A great deal of perceptual confusions and actual misperceptions can occur at such levels.
Linda: Maybe dialogue is the wrong word, maybe orchestrated is a better word.
Paul: Well, yes. Shutter Interface is a kind of a quartet. Physically the way the screen s overlap creates three overlapped areas that are actually physically involved in a pulsating dialectic. The four screen images are fluctuating, sometimes they're acting in unison, sometimes they're having a kind of argument – going off in different directions. So there's a kind of flux or drifting between continuity and various kinds of discontinuity. The whole idea of dialogue or, more generally speaking, dialectic, is operating.
Linda: Many of the things you do seem to test the qualities of time. These new installation pieces are a little bit reminiscent of your earlier flicker films where time is not of interest because they are continuous projections. The new works, because of their circularity, allow you to feel you can come into the projection space and stay there however long you want. You don't feel like you may have missed something by coming in in the middle. There seems to be a way of getting into the experience sideways and not having to worry about beginning, middle and ending.
Paul: I agree. There is a quality that is very typical of dramatic narrative film: it's a kind of temporal anxiety. You just want to sit through Gone with the Wind again and again and again. I've had that feeling many times watching a film I particularly enjoyed – a dramatic narrative film – that I didn't want it to end. I wish it would stay at a particular moment and just do variations of itself.
Linda: So that's what your films do!
Paul: Yeah. I prefer to have this sort of operatic situation where the scale and the volume of the space you're in becomes significant. It's more non-linear, non-temporal – not without time but not dependent on the flow of time.
Linda: Have you been influenced by mathematical or frequency theories of time?
Paul: I've been very concerned with relativistic ideas about time. Some of my work seems to be metric, repetitive, and even, but actually there's a lot of internal variation which is testing one's ability to realize that there is variation. Making these films I use a polytemporal scale so the time measure is always shifting slightly. It's like stretching part of a tape measure and contracting another part of it a little bit.
Linda: These temporal shifts are heightened by your use of unexpected elements. In N:O:T:H:I:N:G there is the sudden appearance of a light bulb.
Paul: That film also has unexpected sounds – like milk pouring into a glass and cows mooing at the end. There are a series of relationships but they are not linear. In N:O:T:H:I:N:G I was particularly interested in having the light bulbs occur between long colour flicker intervals. The images of the bulb are all metrically spaced but the colour intervals between them are so long that I don't believe anyone could have the feeling that in the next two seconds they're going to see an image again; they come as a surprise almost. You get to the point where you almost forget the whole development which is going on and then there is an image which reminds you again of the chain of logic (or illogic) which is very gradually being enunciated at the level of referentiality. They are markers – real metric markers – markers of time. But they are markers which you are experientially unable to relate to rhythmically.
Linda: Is that kind of abstract linearity (in Shutter Interface and Dream Displacement) somehow connected with horizontality for you?
Paul: I seem to be drawn to a horizontal way of doing things… It always seems painting that are mythic are horizontal. Very horizontal paintings seem to take a series of time layers and symbolically hold them all together on the same level. Verticality, to me, has an entirely different feeling, one which borders on being non-corporeally representational.
Linda: Maybe it's that surface you relate to rather than the shape?
Paul: Maybe. My recent work, Epileptic Seizure Comparison, moves towards being vertical, since one of the two image projections is above the other. The usual 16mm format is a 3' by 4' horizontal rectangle but when one screen image is projected above another – "stacked" as it were – the screen area becomes a 6' by 4' vertical rectangle. But even in this work, I use mirrored walls so the film flashes out laterally (along the sides of the reflective-metallic enclosure). I wanted the sides to function so you couldn't quite see the films' images reflected on them but you'd still be aware of the surface. Most of my films set up an experiential field wherein the film is not constantly imposing itself on you yet has enough consistency that you can "move through" yourself rather than just follow the development of the film. All the films have a little bit to do with meditation. These locational works becomes the ultimate field for that kind of contemplative reflection. It becomes like watching fireflies or water flowing over a dam – something that's moving. A fire or a candle flame – it's shifting – but it doesn't change its form dramatically.
© 2020 Paul Sharits. The Paul Sharits Estate. Content may only be used with the expressed permission from the Paul Sharits Estate. Created by Brandon Ramlet Designs


Merlins Blood goes up against a huge amount of Brake dust. Watch to see the results.
Amazing Finish on this Golf R using nothing but Car Spa Car Care products. in this short blog will be a run down of the procedures and products used.
Carchem Shampoo 1900:1 - Review done by member Yetizone What is it..? CarChem 1900:1 Car Shampoo - Tailor Made Version… A semi-bespoke high dilution ratio LSP safe shampoo for a reasonable price, upgraded to the TailorMade version with customer choice for scent and colour. A detailed description from the Car-Chem website.
Effective and paintwork friendly shampoo concentrate (300 litres of wash solution or 15 hand car washes). Effectively breaks the bond between the dirt and the paint surface for a perfect and effortless car wash. Prolongates the lifetime of your Swissvax wax finish and therefore is absolutely safe and strongly recommended for regular washing Swissvax Lavish Shampoo is an effective but paintwork and wax friendly shampoo concentrate which makes up to 300 litres of wash solution. It effectively breaks the bond between the dirt and the paint surface allowing you to effortlessly hand wash your vehicle.
Power Maxed Traffic Film Remover WHAT DOES IT BRING TO THE TABLE? Power Maxed Car Wash Shampoo & Wax Our Shampoo & Ultra Wax incorporates combined foam boosters and carnauba wax for professional deep surface cleaning. Once applied the product gets to work breaking down surface grime fast and effectively. Soiling is kept suspended in the liquid solution until washed away with clean water. Selected materials used in manufacture help expel excess water from the surface making drying time faster. Suitable for all makes and models of cars, bikes & caravans. Using more than the recommended solution (25mm), will cause streaking, to remedy this, simply hose off, and wash with our recommended dosage.


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Centris angustifrons är en biart som beskrevs av Roy R. Snelling 1966. Centris angustifrons ingår i släktet Centris och familjen långtungebin. Inga underarter finns listade.

Källor

Långtungebin
angustifrons

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Happy Mother's Day, Debbie Mathers
Eminem's latest video, "Headlights," is not just another Mama missive. It's a bold condemnation of our personalized, "if you like this you'll like that," world.
As I explain in my book about Eminem, The Real Slim Shady's world is one that overexposes the people in it to familiar ideas and makes them overconfident in their own ways of thinking about things.
Rap God Video Premieres
Eminem world-premiered the "Rap God" video at 9AM Pacific Time on November 27th on VEVO. The controversial MMLP2 track, co-produced by DVLP and Fithy, shows us exactly how the rap god updated his operating system. Equal parts 1970s poverty and racial tension, 1980's media like Max Headroom, old school video games and comic book heroes, 1990's transhuman Neo from "The Matrix," undergound cyphers and black outlaw gangsta rappers, 2000's MMLP1 spiritual and social criticism and 2010s wearable technology. What do you think of the update? Would you download?
"Rap God" Appears Again, 2.0 Style
Here's the sneak preview for the "Rap God" video, where the real Slim Shady looks a lot like the real Max Headroom, the 1980s artificial intelligence character known for his wit and stuttering, distorted, electronically sampled voice. Only Em's head and shoulders are seen against a "computer-generated" backdrop of a slowly rotating wire-frame cube interior. The distinguishing sounds are chaotic speech patterns—as Em's voice pitches up and down and occasionally gets stuck in a robotic-sounding loop. Like the original, the Rap God's personality is interpreted best as a satire of egotistical media personalities (a/k/a talking heads) and their insincere, unqualified opinions. I feel like something's about to happen! Don't you?
Eminem Talks MMLP2 with BBC's Zane Lowe
Eminem breaks down his latest album, MMLP2, with BBC's Zane Lowe, explaining how and why he's chosen to update his overall operating system rather than create a sequel. MMLP2 fills in the gaps between his static and distinct personas, represented by his trilogy of albums that blew up the charts between 1999 and 2002, revealing a dynamic integrated perspective that rehashes old topics and adapts to new realities. It's about "growing up and growing down." Watch and enjoy!!
Google Glass Prototype Cameo on "Revenge"
Google Glass just got an upgrade. And an even more advanced iteration – not this month's hardware update that allows Glass to work with shades and prescription frames and includes a mono earbud -- that's implanted into existing prescription glasses is already being featured in major prime-time television. The wearable tech appeared on "Resurgence," Season 3, Episode 7 of Revenge on ABC, in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it way.
How to Build Tomorrow: Connect Passing to Privacy and Property
What do passing and privacy have in common? An understanding of human identity as property worth protecting. I was reminded of this question and answer when Dr. Alice Marwick of Fordham University visited USC Annenberg and spoke about "networked privacy" and her new book, "Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age."
Em Performs "Rap God," Wins Artist of the Year @YouTube Music Awards
First SNL, now YouTube Music Awards. It's been a big weekend for the rap god, who was named Artist of the Year at the inaugural YouTube Music Awards (beating out stars including Rihanna, Justin Bieber and One Direction).
MMLP2 and Eminem on SNL
Eminem took to the Saturday Night Live stage for the sixth last night in support of The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (due to drop Tues., Nov. 5th). Late last week he released a promo skit for the appearance along with Scandal's Kerry Washington.
Eminem's "Rap God" Appears Earlier Than Expected
"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come... So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him." And so it was today when Eminem's latest single, "Rap God," appeared, miraculously, ahead of schedule! Check it out!!
Eminem Thrives In "Survival"
Less than 12 hours after its digital release, Eminem's latest video, "Survival," boasts over 196,000 likes. The video features Call of Duty: Ghosts gameplay augmenting a story of the rapper's social mobility.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


"The CEO & CHRO are extremely committed to further creating and driving and inclusive and diverse workforce."
One thing Rogers Communications can improve?
Would you recommend Rogers Communications to other women?


A physician friend of mine delivers this three-word phrase over and over to patients every week.
When talking with her, you can almost feel her pain and the emotional toll it takes. When she's "on-call covering the service" for a week at a time, she has to schedule a massage at the end of the week just to physically recharge herself.
And of course, that's nothing compared with the trauma newly diagnosed patients suffer. Getting a cancer diagnosis can devastate people. It changes their whole world.
Cancer kills nearly one in four Americans, making it the second-most common cause of death after heart disease. That's nearly half-a-million Americans dying from cancer each year.
Virtually everyone has at some point watched a spouse, family member, or a close friend struggle with the disease. And if you haven't yet, you will.
But navigating the ins and outs of treatment options can confuse anyone. That's why today I want to urge you to investigate clinical trials for yourself or a family member if you receive the cancer diagnosis.
When you look for the best place for treatment, make sure you're looking for places nearby that are conducting clinical trials. Many of the most impressive results in cancer research have come from these cutting-edge trials.
Some people avoid clinical trials, thinking they're expensive or dangerous. Others think clinical trials are only for people with advanced-stage cancer or whose bodies don't respond to standard treatments. Clinical trials actually test the effects of cancer treatments on patients.
Phase I – Researchers test the drug or treatment to determine dosage, safety, and side effects. This phase is done on healthy people, not those with disease.
Phase II – The drug or treatment is tested for effectiveness and continues to be reviewed for safety.
Phase III – The drug or treatment undergoes further testing for effectiveness and side effects and is compared with current drugs or treatments.
Phase IV – Researchers test the drug or treatment for long-term use after it has been licensed and marketed.
Clinical trials are a crucial part of developing new drugs and treatments.
Clinical trials provide benefits for participants as well. They give patients access to new drugs along with the best doctors and treatment centers. And – depending on the trials – patients may receive financial compensation.
Clinical trials do, of course, come with some risks that you should consider… The drugs could trigger unexpected side effects. Also, your health insurance may not cover the trial, or the drugs may not work for you. But more often than not, the drug costs are included in the trial, and your odds of better responses are better than current therapies.
But clinical trials are just one piece of the full treatment picture. If you want to find the best treatment centers based on type of cancer, check with the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
The NCI was founded in 1937 and makes up one part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NCI is responsible for conducting cutting-edge cancer research, providing funding for other research projects, and educating doctors and the public about cancer diagnosis and treatments.
The NCI has 69 "Designated Cancer Centers" in the U.S. These state-of-the-art centers are often leaders in advancements in cancer detection and treatment.
The NCI also has 54 highly specialized treatment and clinical-trial centers that focus on specific types of cancer – called Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPOREs) – spread across 20 states. It organizes the list by "organ" locations. For example, if you're looking for SPOREs for liver cancer, you'd look under "Gastrointestinal" in the organ-location list.
On Wednesday, November 15, I'll be discussing these topics and more on the latest breakthroughs in cancer research with my colleague, Dave Lashmet. Dave writes the Stansberry Venture Technology newsletter. He's got his finger on the pulse of the cancer-drug pipeline and which companies to watch. The live webinar is only open to folks who pre-register, so make sure to reserve your seat today.
A look at the top 10 leading causes of death.


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Why Everyone Has Been Talking About the New Air Pod Pro 2?
The news of the release of the latest Apple products for a smartphone may no longer be a surprise to most people, especially those who have been intentional about Apple products, following every news update and, for some reasons, seeking enough reasons to change their phone or not. Anyway, newsflash, the iPhone 14 came out on the release date as foretold by Apple, and then all earthlings readjusted to the birth of new technology in smartphones.
While the phone is being talked about at the moment, have you considered for a second the newly released Air Pod Pro and its unique features? I doubt it! Well, I will save you the assumptions and possibly help you with your conclusion through this interesting post.
Why is everyone talking about the new Air Pod Pro 2 by Apple?
Lovers of Apple Air Pods have understood the careful period of release of this beloved device, and just like on salary day, they eagerly sought to unveil the new Air Pod. While year after year, Apple has delivered exceptional devices, this year's release on September 7 says more than what you ever imagined. Here is why: The H2 Chip is new to the latest devices. Please note that this is away from other notable features that could come with the earing device.
What is the H2 chip in the Air Pod Pro 2?
The H2 chip in the device will generally enhance the sound performance compared to the H1 chip, and these improvements will be seen in the choice of noise cancellation, personalized spatial audio, improved acoustics, and the like.
The H2 Chip offers superior audio experience, higher operating performance, and high bandwidth connectivity. It is powered by a unique amplifier and a new low-distortion audio driver that offers improved detail and clarity over a broader frequency range.
How is the spatial audio experience in the Air Pod Pro 2?
With the H2 Chip embedded, users can choose to customize how they intend to enjoy their audio experience, as it could come to life as if the band was just right around the user.
How is the noise cancellation on the Air Pod Pro 2?
It's okay to ask these questions, especially when there is a price to pay for the device. However, I can assure you that they will be worth every penny.
Recently, a new function called adaptive transparency was implemented on the H2 to reduce the volume of disruptive environmental sounds, such as noisy construction. The H2 can process 48,000 times per second, allowing it to respond instantly to any loud noise in its environment.
The H2 processor will enable the delivery of advanced computational audio features like improved active noise reduction, which were previously impossible on a compact device like the Air Pods.
How long can the new Pod Pro 2 last when fully charged?
The new Air Pods Pro have an Active Noise Cancellation battery life of up to six hours after charging, which is nearly 1.5 hours longer than the original Air Pods. Four additional charges from the case bring the total listening time with ANC to about 30 hours.
This means you enjoy 30 hours of uninterrupted media playback and phone call interaction where necessary.
What other unique features does the Air Pod Pro 2 have compared to others?
In addition to a MagSafe charger, a Qi-approved charging mat, or the Lightning cord, the Air Pods Pro may be charged with an Apple Watch charger.
When I remember that the newly created charging case is sweat and water-resistant, it always makes me grin. Users who have an iPhone with U1 support can use guided directions to find their charging case. It is much simpler to find the charging case because it contains a built-in speaker that produces louder tones should you misplace the charging case at any time.
The new low-distortion audio driver and bespoke amplifier, which Apple has included in the H2 Chip, together create an "excellent acoustic experience." Richer bass and crisper sound across a wider frequency range are features of the Air Pods Pro.
When will the Air Pod Pro 2 be available in stores?
Although this was launched, among other items and services, on Wednesday, September 7th, this Pod could be pre-ordered in the US on September 9th and will be available on September 23rd in all Apple retail stores around you.
In conclusion, the Air Pod Pro 2 is a unique device for everyone, thanks to the H2 Chip embedded in the new device for a whole new experience. Noise cancellation, longer charging hours, spatial audio, and the like are just a few of the credible reasons to try the new listening device from Apple.
The Watchtower-Web Design Agency, Dubai.


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Kindness counts
Opinion: Columns
Tuesday, February 12th, 2019 3:38 PM
By Editorial
Man, can we use a little kindness right about now.
Forest Park is rising up, through its children, to recognize that simple kindness is what we need.
We are smack dab in the middle of the duly authorized Kindness Week in our village. You'll hopefully pay attention to the 10,000 District 91 student-generated stickers turning up this week on your Counter Coffee cup, on that pair you buy at Madison Street Shoes. You'll see someone wearing a "Be kind today" wristband. You'll see a picture on Build Forest Park or Forest Park Town Hall capturing a kind act. And, if we really get cooking, you'll experience firsthand an unexpected thank you, or other simple expression of neighborliness.
This is all the brainchild of Amy O'Connell, a D91 teacher. She saw the idea on Instagram in November. She brought it to her principal and a district official and just last month took it to the school board. Then students took it to Mayor Anthony Calderone.
And now, voila, it is Kindness Week. That's the sort of lovely momentum that can build in our small town. The parks and the library jumped on board, the Chamber of Commerce, too. This is just the kind of viral goodness we need to spread all across Forest Park.
We need destinations
We spend a fair amount of time staring at empty storefronts, worrying about potentially empty storefronts, pondering the fate of retail and considering if we have too many bars or an oversaturation of restaurants.
What's the alternative? We'd suggest it is a whole range of alternatives with the common theme of being an actual destination. We need, and every town needs, places where you actually have to turn up in person. This week we carry a piece about one such place that is carving a new role on Madison Street. Urban Pioneer Group, 7503 Madison, sort of defies definition. And we think that is part of the concept.
This appealing space can morph through a single day, hosting everything from popular bakery pop-ups in the morning to a birthday party in the afternoon and then an evening fundraiser. Each one has the benefit of bringing divergent crowds to our main street.
The future of Madison Street is not going to look like the past. Fostering innovation, celebrating what's different will be that future.
Minor repairs
Most of us would be scared stiff to turn an architect loose in our homes to tote up the deficiencies. To its credit, and because it is required, our District 91 public schools tasked its architects to look in every nook and cranny — think oven hoods and janitor's closets — looking for things that need help. A month ago across all the district's buildings, the firm came up with $300,000 in minor repairs that now need to be updated over five years.
This is a testament to the year-by-year investments in our schools that the district makes and that generous taxpayers fund.
John Tricoci Sr Facebook Verified
Jerry it is in the article. Also is state mandate for life safety work on schools. Nothing special about the district doing it.
Michelle Andres Fitz-Henry Facebook Verified
What a wonderful idea! I see this group of kids stopped by both the fire and police departments this week. Thank you Amy O'Connell. I don't have kids in school but have heard you are an exceptional teacher. We are lucky to have you. You have started something really great and it's spreading!
Jerry Webster Facebook Verified
Just where does it say they have to do this John?
The School District has to do this. What is the big Deal they are not doing anything special. If they lowered are taxes that would be news.Low enrollment and high taxes not a good look!!


We are a team of technology, finance and market sector experts.
Tony Seba is a world-renowned thought leader, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, educator and the author of the Amazon #1 best-selling book Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation: How Silicon Valley Will Make Oil, Nuclear, Natural Gas, Coal, Electric Utilities and Conventional Cars Obsolete by 2030. Tony's work focuses on the convergence of technologies, business models, and product innovations that disrupt the world's major industries. He was an early employee of disruptive companies including Cisco Systems and RSA Data Security. As a speaker he has delivered keynotes for major companies and at global events including Google, J.P. Morgan, CLSA Investors Forum, Intersolar, Davos, COP21 World Climate Summit and the Global Leaders Forum. Tony has taught thousands of entrepreneurs and corporate leaders at Stanford University Continuing Studies. Tony earned a Stanford MBA and a Computer Science and Engineering degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
James Arbib is a London-based investor in technology. He is the founder of Tellus Mater, an independent philanthropic foundation dedicated to exploring the impacts of disruptive technology, and its potential for solving some of the world's most challenging problems. In addition, Arbib oversees a London-based family office with a diversified portfolio, across all asset classes and a focus on the risks and opportunities of technology disruption. A graduate in History from Trinity College, Cambridge, Arbib has a Masters in Sustainability Leadership also from Cambridge. He is a qualified chartered accountant and worked as an investment analyst covering Utilities.
Uzair Niazi has over 20 years of high-tech industry experience leading product development teams across the globe. He served as Senior Director at Oracle Corporation where he led the development of several successful product lines, scaling each from zero to multi-million dollars in annual revenues, including Oracle's next generation of Fusion cloud-based applications. He was a co-founder and Board Member of a competitive intelligence start-up that uses Big Data, Machine Learning, and Predictive Analytics to deliver critical business insights for B2B companies. Uzair is an investor and advisor working with start-ups in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Uzair has a Bachelors degree in Physics with Electronics, a Masters in Digital Systems Design, and a MBA. He is passionate about innovation, and is the recipient of several software patents.


Howrah is a city that is situated in the Howrah district of the state of West Bengal. The city is an industrial center and it known as the sister city of Kolkata. Howrah is situated on the west bank of the Hoogly River. There are a few interesting places that you can visit in the city. You can also opt for a ferry ride on the river and take a day trip to the city of Kolkata.
Howrah is connected to Kolkata by four bridges namely Vivekananda, Vidyasagar, the most popular Howrah and Nivedita. A walk along any one of these bridges is amazing and the views one can catch of the river Ganga, the dhows and ships floating in it are breath taking.
The better aspect lies in the fact that each of these bridges are unique in their own ways. The Vidyasagar bridge or setu is a cable stayed bridge which offers grandeur and height whereas the Howrah Bridge with its complicated network design is a cantilever bridge.
Howrah is situated on the western bank of the Hooghly River in the state of West Bengal, India. Counted among the popular tourist destinations in the country, it is also considered as the twin city of Kolkata. People visit here to view various attractions like Anand Niketan Kirtishala, Howrah Bridge, Indian Botanical Garden and many others. You can also refer to the Howrah Travel Guide to get more information about the city.
Indian Botanical Gardens is home to The Great Banyan, one of the major attractions of the tourists who visit this garden. It is one of the oldest gardens of Kolkata region and was built in the year 1786. History of this district dates back to 500 years. The name Howrah was derived from a village named Harirah. Temples of the city attracts the attention of tourist because of their unique architecture.
Howrah Tourism - Get all information on Howrah tourist places and sightseeing tours. Our website helps you plan your next tour and gives you great ideas on what to do, where to eat, where to stay and when to go there. We give the best information from the web to give you precise, meaningful and useful travel guide for leading places to visit in India and from across the world. Our travel information on HOWRAH tourist places, tourist attractions, major sightseeing, the best time to visit, the top places to visit in Howrah, the must-see things to see and do, maps, restaurants, hotels, nearby tourist destinations, local public information and more. To start with check out information on how to reach Howrah.


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Flussschützer in BiH gewaltsam von Protest entfernt
30. August 2017 - 15:01
Die mutigen Bewohner von Kruščica in Bosnien und Herzegowina sind entschlossen ihren Fluss unter vollen Körpereinsatz gegen den Ausbau von Wasserkraft zu verteidigen: sie versuchen die Bauunternehmer bei der Beförderung ihrer Geräte zur geplanten Baustelle zu hindern. Gewaltsam entfernten Einheiten der Sonderpolizei am 24. August die friedvollen Demonstranten, die für ihr Recht auf Trinkwasser und einer gesunden Umwelt einstanden. Einige wurden dabei schwer verletzt (sehen Sie das Video HIER). Die zwei Kleinwasserkraftwerke am Fluss Kruščica sind in einem Gebiet geplant, für das ein Designierung als Landschaftsschutzgebietes in Vorbereitung ist. Die Wasserkraftwerke würde das Wasser ableiten und die Bewohner der Gemeinde Vitez sowie große Teile von Zenica ihres Trinkwassers berauben und so ein fundamentales Menschenrecht verletzen. Lesen Sie die folgenden Presseaussendungen des Centers of Environment:
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Kruščica, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Riot police forcibly remove residents defending river against hydropower
Banja Luka, 24.8.2017. This morning at the crack of dawn, riot police violently removed anti-hydropower protestors in the village of Kruščica near Vitez, Bosnia-Herzegovina, causing serious injury to several people (find video HERE). The protestors neither provoked nor resisted the police but were nevertheless forcibly removed in order to allow access over a bridge for construction equipment to pass. After the removal, several of the protestors were arrested and questioned. Several of them also sought medical help.
Kruščice residents have for the last month been peacefully protesting against Kruščica 1 small hydropower plant, whose construction is to take place in the planned Kruščica Nature Park. This is one of a series of residents' groups who have been resisting hydropower in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the last few years, for example in Kotor Varoš and Fojnica.
Viktor Bjelić stated on behalf of the Coalition to Protect Bosnia-Herzegovina's Rivers that "Today's incident shows that citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina are not protected by the authorities and that monstrous incidents such as this one can happen even to women and children. The residents of Kruščice are defending their right to a healthy environment and the right to water as basic human rights, while the investors and those defending the investor's interest have only a profit motive. Obviously private interest is considered more important than public interest, as this morning's incident shows, as well as the fact that the protestors were removed before five o'clock in the morning by special police units funded by the people of this country.
It was clear that the real aim of this action was to clear the way for construction and not to enable the flow of road traffic since the construction company and machines were immediately behind the police lines and were able to cross the bridge to the location where the hydropower plant is planned as soon as the people had been "removed". We condemn such actions against the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina, carried out to protect those who make and implement decisions harmful for people and the environment.
The Coalition to Protect Bosnia-Herzegovina's Rivers will call for help from colleagues across Bosnia-Herzegovina and the region to take legal action, as this is clearly a violation of the right to public assembly, freedom of expression, and the right to a dignified life. We will also highlight this as a case of repression of activists at the forthcoming Conference of the Parties to the Aarhus Convention in Budva ( Article 3, paragraph 8 of the Aarhus Convention states that every Each Party shall ensure that persons exercising their rights in conformity with the provisions of the Convention shall not be penalized, persecuted or harassed in any way for their involvement.). The Convention stipulates that authorities must protect their citizens against any kind of repression."
Viktor Bjelić, Center for Environment +387 (0)51/433-141
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Citizens of Kruščica protect their river
Banja Luka, 17.8.2017.The Coalition for Preservation of Rivers in Bosnia and Herzegovina is providing support to the Kruščica local community, who aren't giving up on their fight to protect their river from the construction of two small hydropower plants. On August 16th, representatives of the Coalition held a meeting with members of the local community board who are on call 24/7 trying to keep the developers from moving their equipment into the riverbed and beginning demolition.
Representatives of the Coalition for Preservation of Rivers in Bosnia and Herzegovina are supporting this bold action by the local community. These community members are pointing out that only they know how important this river is to them. Their lives in this place depend on this river. If it is destroyed by building power plants, some of their basic human rights (such as the right to fresh water) are compromised and given to a private company whose sole purpose is draining every drop for making electricity and profit.
"According to the 2005-2025 spatial plan of Vitez municipality, this area is planned for conservation as a protected landscape. Unfortunately, in 2015 this spatial plan suffered a lot of changes and additions. Specifically, two objects in the area of river Kruščica - small hydropower plants Kruščica 1 and Kruščica 2 - were added, even though licences have not been approved. It leads us to think that the changes to the spatial plan were made exclusively to allow for these hydropower plants. Was there a public hearing about these issues? We would have to ask the authorities about that. Once again it shows that with political resolutions and pressure power plant developments that are not compatible with nature protection could proceed.", says Viktor Bjelić from the Center for Environment.
"We were in the Željeznica river canyon in Fojnica for 325 days and nights, guarding and protecting the river against the same threat faced by our friends from Kruščica. We had significant public support and we could also always count on advice and support from the people from the Center for Environment with whom we formed the Coalition for Preservation of Rivers in Bosnia and Herzegovina. To citizens of Kruščica - we recommend not giving up and to stay united, and know that the Coalition will help them to reach their goal just like we did in Fojnica.", said Robert Oroz, president of Eco Gotuša, during the meeting.
"River Kruščica is a significant potential tourist draw to this area, and we think that the development of tourism would bring new jobs, unlike power plants which we know employ only one person or no one at all as they are completely automated. We want only tourism developments which won't lead to destruction of this clean and drinkable river.", said Haris Hurem, a citizen of Kruščica.
It is crucial to note that for almost a month now a couple hundred citizens in this area have been defending this river. They have informed the developers that they won't give up, they will fight with everything they've got to keep this river intact. The Kruščica River springs from a number of sources on a mountain of the same name. It flows through the municipality of Vitez and into the Lašva River. The importance of this mountain river is the fact that it provides the citizens of the Vitez municipality, and a large part of Zenica, with drinkable water. The planned power plants would jeopardize that, as they are located in the protected area of the Kruščica spring. This river provides favourable habitats and spawning grounds for river trout, a species which is very sensitive to changes in its environment. This could lead to it's extinction - which is a definite outcome if these power plants were to be built.


After winning accolades for directing 2015's Oscar-winning Room, Lenny Abrahamson returns to the scene with his first foray into horror. It's a huge 180 for a director mostly known for offbeat indie movies like Adam and Paul, Garage, and Frank, but The Little Stranger looks like it will be an eerie and exciting next film for Abrahamson.
The Little Stranger stars Domhnall Gleeson as a country doctor who investigates strange happenings at the crumbling remnants of a once-grand mansion where he had spent his childhood. And you can watch the first trailer now.
Based off the 2009 novel of the same name by Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger is a creepy and moody period piece that taps into the best tropes of Gothic horror: a decaying and isolated mansion, a mysterious family hiding horrifying secrets, and plenty of glorious mustaches.
Set in 1947, The Little Stranger follows Gleeson's Dr. Faraday, a humble country doctor who returns to the Hundreds Hall, where his mother worked as a housemaid. But he finds the once-splendid manor reduced to its crumbling foundations, and his patient — a burn victim played by Will Poulter — suffering from delusions that begin to take over the entire house. The trailer starts off subdued and a little dreary, but gradually reveals a truly chilling ghost story that could herald a new era for Abrahmson as a horror director.
The Little Stranger also stars Ruth Wilson, Charlotte Rampling, and Alison Pargeter.
The Little Stranger opens in theaters on August 31, 2018.


Visiting from another box? Come on in!
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Shareholder and Partnership disputes are particularly trying, as people face the end of sometimes long-term business and personal relationships. The expertise and guidance of a lawyer can make the difference between a successful outcome and an unhappy ending.
Hamilton Duncan has extensive experience handling complex shareholder and partnership disputes. We guide our clients through all stages of disputes, or potential disputes, from advising on corporate governance and strategic considerations, to taking matters to hearing or trial.
Our clients range from large private corporations to small partnerships. Our lawyers have represented companies, majority shareholders, and minority shareholders in oppression proceedings, derivative actions, wind-up proceedings, and other proceedings under the Business Corporations Act.


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Technology That Simulates Complex Molecular Interactions Could Lead to Better Treatments for Cancer & COVID-19
A team led by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities biomedical engineers has developed a universally accessible application that can simulate complex molecular interactions, which will allow researchers to design better treatments for diseases like cancer and COVID-19.
The paper builds upon a study the researchers published in 2019. Now, they've expanded the technology to simulate even more complex molecular interactions, made the application easy for non-experts to use, and applied their findings to shed light on how the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects the body.
The study is published in Nature Communications, and the app, called MVsim, is freely available to other researchers on GitHub.
The simulator predicts the strength, speed, and selectivity of multivalent interactions, which involve molecules that have multiple binding sites and can be used to develop medicines for diseases, particularly cancer and COVID-19.
"Multivalent interactions are really important in natural biological systems, and they are now starting to be creatively exploited for creating new therapeutic drugs that leverage their unique binding properties," said Casim Sarkar, senior author of the paper and a professor in the University of Minnesota Department of Biomedical Engineering.
"With multivalent drugs, you can, in principle, target cells very specifically in a way that's not possible with standard, monovalent drugs, but there are many variables to consider in their design and much of the work in the field to date has been done through experimental trial and error," Sarkar added. "Now, using MVsim, we're able to make good predictions that can be used to more rationally design such therapeutics."
Many cancer drugs not only bind to tumor cells but also to cells they aren't meant to target, which often creates unwanted side effects for the patient. By optimizing the specificity of multivalent interactions using MVsim, researchers can design drugs that more specifically target the cells in a tumor while minimizing binding to other cells in the body.
Another example is the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Scientists know that the virus is evolving to better infect our cells and evade our immune systems, but the molecular mechanisms behind how the virus does this is relatively unknown. Using their MVsim technology, the University of Minnesota researchers were able to explore this process more in depth, uncovering the rates at which individual binding domains within the virus's multivalent spike protein switch between a cell-infecting state and an immune-evading state.
"We essentially have a computational microscope that allows us to look under the hood and see what multivalent proteins such as the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein are doing at a molecular level," Sarkar explained. "This level of molecular detail is hard to capture with a physical experiment. One of the real powers of MVsim is that we can not only learn more about how these systems work but we can also use this tool to design new multivalent interactions for diseases like cancer and COVID-19."
The researchers have already identified potential ways to limit the infectivity of current and future SARS-CoV-2 variants, which they plan to test soon.