The problem of scale (Birth of electronic space #10)

Within this configuration I’m forced to admit I think we have reached a limit, a threshold of cinematic space, for which I can’t recognize a continuation in the present form it takes outside the canonical screen dispositive. The major reason for this concerns the serious problem of scale. How can cinema limit itself to the human scale, when so much of what’s important in contemporary life is happening in dimensions — not only physical dimensions, but let’s concentrate on those — that human form cannot accompany? And how to cinematically account for those dimensions? As they produced a profound reflection on electronic and, afterwards, digital space, one wonders if by their own means the Vasulkas weren’t forcefully trying to focus precisely on this problem of scale; i.e., the congruence of macro and micro scale that humans were not accustomed to deal with and that an expanded cinema would eventually force humans to confront.

The most didactic of films — Ray & Charles Eames’ POWERS OF TEN (1977) —, as its very precedent COSMIC ZOOM (1968) by Eva Szasz (mentioned by de Loppinot) showed precisely this problem, even if in a decreasing continuity from the galaxies to the imaginable tiniest element known by then. The Vasulkas were not preoccupied with this continuity, since they had positioned their work already in another scale, discontinuous with the human. [to be continued]