User:Loes van Dorp/Stan Brakhage, 'Dog Star Man'

Stan Brakhage

'Dog Star Man' (1962-1964)

Memories never come in one clean story, they are like a dream. This is how I look at the film 'Dog Star Man'. I was very glad when the film was over. My body was able to reach the earth again.

The film felt like dreaming with my eyes (half) open, not a feeling I want to hang in too long. It felt like a trip, puzzled by the images I saw and what to do with it. I saw it a second and a third time, but still makes me feel dizzy and sleepy.

My eyes and my brains doesn't seem to be able to process these images.

Brakhage is interested in Vision. Vision meaning: what you see. Just seeing. Seeing to him is not just looking at pictures.

"Most people can't see, children can. They have a much wider range of visual awareness. Their eyes haven't been tutored to death by man-made laws of perspective or compositional logic."

He is cutting his films to be true to the eyes, nervous system and to memory. He mixed the different visions we have.

Open eye vision, is what we are directly conscious of. But there is much going on that we ignore.

Peripheral vision, is what you don't pay close attention to during the day and will surfaces at night in your dreams and which is always unfocused.

Hypnologic vision, is what you see with your eyes closed. This is optic feedback; closed eye vision.

This is the most important in Brakhage his films.

Moving visual thinking, occurs deeper in the synapses of the brain. Not nameable streaming of shapes, a vast visual somg.

Dream vision.

Memory feedback , editing's of your remembrance. This all together is whatever effects the eyes, the brains and the nervous system.