From: gregg biermann (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Feb 08 2010 - 16:38:19 PST
Chuck,
Oooh that is a fun one and as a bonus the print at the co-op is in near
perfect condition! It looks like it has rarely, if ever, been watched.
My memory of it: the representational images are of a person/or people
having seizures and the sound is derived from the brainwave patterns of
the same. I've seen it projected as a single image (when Brian Frye and
Bradley Eros showed it at the Pink Pony in NYC about 7 or 8 years ago).
It seemed to last about 30 or 40 minutes when each of the reels was
projected one after the other. I thought that the "comparison" was
between the images of seizures and me (or the audience) having a seizure.
Gregg
Jonathan Walley wrote:
> Chuck,
>
> Not a lot has been written about ESC, as far as I know. It regularly
> gets mentioned, but not discussed in any detail. The best discussion I
> know of is in the special Paul Sharits issue of Film Culture (#65/66,
> 1978). See pages 123-24 of that issue; though short, it goes into a
> lot of detail about the mechanics of epilepsy and how the installation
> was designed with these in mind.
>
> Yvonne Spielmann discusses ESC for a few pages in an essay in this
> collection
> (http://www.amazon.com/Avant-Garde-Film-Critical-Studies-23/dp/9042023058/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265661380&sr=8-3
> <http://www.amazon.com/Avant-Garde-Film-Critical-Studies-23/dp/9042023058/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265661380&sr=8-3>).
>
> A quick scan of the web reveals a few mentions of the piece in blogs,
> but I can't speak to how detailed, accurate, or "good" they are (one
> blog refers to it as a "video installation"). Other than these
> references (and the short description of the piece on the Filmmakers'
> Coop online catalog), there isn't anything else I can think of.
>
> Federico Windhausen, at the California College of the Arts, has done a
> lot of work on Sharits, and has access to some pretty obscure
> resources. He may be able to shed further light on this subject. His
> contact info can be found online.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Jonathan
>
> Jonathan Walley
> Asst. Professor of Cinema
> Denison University
> email suppressed>
>
>
> On Feb 8, 2010, at 3:10 PM, Chuck Kleinhans wrote:
>
>> A colleague asked me:
>>
>>> I'm teaching my medicine seminar and I have a student interested in
>>> the intersection of experimental film and photosensitive epilepsy.
>>> He specifically asked me if I knew anything that has been written
>>> about Sharits' /Epileptic Seizure Comparison/ from the 1970s.
>>
>> Anybody out there know anything on the subject?
>>
>> Chuck Kleinhans
>>
>> __________________________________________________________________
>> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed
>> <mailto:email suppressed>>.
>>
>>
>
> __________________________________________________________________ For
> info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.