User:Emily/proposal final draft

Proposal I

Fantasy-Objects

Introduction

A MacGuffin is said as a plot device in fiction films in the form of some goal, desired object, or other motivator that the protagonist pursues and moves the plot forward. Following my interest in MacGuffin, precisely the MacGuffin effect. According to Zizek, "the MacGuffin is the purest case of what Lacan calls objet petit a: a pure void which functions as the object - cause of desire. That would be then the precise definition of the real object: a cause which in itself does not exist - which is present only in a series of effects, but always in a distorted, displaced way. If the Real is the impossible, it is precisely this impossibility which is to be grasped through its effects." The effect of MacGuffin in fiction films maybe easier to grasp, on the contrary it may be harder to perceive in the representation of our daily commodities, events. In the work, I attempt to reveal less visible mechanism of control in our daily life through MacGuffin, playing between fiction and reality, and imply "the protagonist is an emblem of the human subject in an abstract representation." MacGuffins are “material metaphors” they have a “reality effect”.

Description of Project

Part I

In my research there will be a parallel collection of MacGuffin objects and our commodities mediated in mass media. The collection consists of moving-images, scripts(both in text and audio form), for further study on how the information are delivered and what patterns are embedded in. The research serves as an extended backup. In a way, two types of cultural media utilised similar strategy dramatize the desire, which is pure void in the thing/object. The research will end up with a webpage with moving-image, text and audio. More thoughts on present the research, check previous proposal. [List of MacGuffins]

Part II

An video installation will be made to show human subjects’ reaction to MacGuffins. Please refer to the [| sketch]

Audiences are invited to put their own objects (any objects that they have with themselves at that moment, namely keys, phones, glasses, purses, rings, pens) inside of the installation. There is a screen/computer in front, a camera is mounted on the back of the screen in order to take photos of the objects, which will be present in a sequence of moving images on the screen together with people’s reactions. The reaction moving images are (or mimic) from Hitchcock’s typical shots, namely, camera movement (vertigo shots), montage technique (some intense scenario), emotion shots. The backside will be a light box for capturing better images of the objects. The installation focus on their core feature, which is the void, so that they can only be present in a series of effects, here I simplify them as a sequence of typical shots. Besides, MacGuffins are said interchangeable in films. To capture this feature, and get spectators involve in the work, I want to dramatize the objects we possess in an ironic and playful way. It is a reflection of how our mundane objects be mediated in daily media. It also invites people to think what is presence and absence here.

Relation to Previous Works

In the last academic year, I have been working on manipulation of audiovisual content (mainly cinematic materials), examining how could it alter the way of seeing. My work started in a quite simple manner, in which films are utilised as input to produce books (link), videos (link), browser- based works(link), and interactive installations(link). Through these works, different accessibilities are provided and meanwhile doubts are bought forward on the ability of recognition - namely the ability to recognise time and space, fiction and fact. ! Starting from my interest in video editing, the practice and research brought me back to think about montage, but in a much broader and freer manner. I started to research the “cut-up” techniques through different times, from literature to cinema works and data manipulations. All these works are more or less leave a space for the “performativity” inherited from their original materials. ! Departing from the exploration of performativity, I considered about the control on the works like for example from Gysin, which I thought at first, were freedom. Interestingly, the control mechanism is to hardwire conceptual frame with technologies, which later on may translate to be (standard) code. The materials to feed perception become layered and less visible. It brings the question on what this control would affect on cognition, from both human level and machine level (or the architecture of technology).

Relation to larger context

The name "MacGuffin" appears to originate in 20th-century filmmaking, and was popularized by Alfred Hitchcock in the 1930s. He often quoted the following story to illustrate its nothingness: "Two gentlemen meet on a train, and the one is struck by the extraordinary package being carried by the other. He asks his companion, 'What is in that unusual package you are carrying there?' The other man replies, 'That is a MacGuffin.' 'What is a MacGuffin?' asks the first. The second says, 'A MacGuffin is a device used for killing leopards in the Scottish highlands.' Naturally the first man says, 'But there are no leopards in the Scottish highlands.' 'Well,' says the second, 'then that's not a MacGuffin, is it?’” In Zizek’s book The Sublime Object, he mentioned another version of the story, which is much more to the point: It is the same as the other, with the exception of the last answer: “Well, you see how efficient it is!” - “that’s MacGuffin, a pure nothing which is none the less efficient. Donald Spoto who is an American biographer and theologian, once pointed out that “There’s a blot to look for in Hitchcock’s film, but watch out for the MacGuffin. It will lead you to nowhere.” The MacGuffin in itself is a pure void, but it is the pure void that holds the “big Other”.  Zizek find this pretext, a Macguffin in the real world. The “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction” fit perfectly the status of MacGuffin. “As such, they(WMD) by definition cannot ever be found, and are therefore all the more dangerous... Now that none were found, we reached the last line of the story of MacGuffin: "'Well,' said President Bush in September 2003, 'then that's not a MacGuffin, is it?'"”

That sounds might be the most dramatized scenario in reality. The government controlled the discourse; we all are like the actors in that performance. The only difference is there were real war, people died. The pure void presents only in a serious of effects. “Not its symbolic interpretation but the experience of the fact that the fantasy-object, by its fascinating presence, is merely filling out a lack, a void in the Other. There is nothing 'behind' the fantasy; the fantasy is a construction whose function is to hide this void, this 'nothing' - that is, the lack in the Other.” Let’s put ourselves in a smokeless battlefield, the market-driven media. What serves our eyes, ears everyday, what are commonly shown on our daily media, and what are the patterns in them…

Reference

• The Prisoner's Dilemma
• Knowledge as a flow and a thing
• The Sublime Object of Ideology, p163
• http://www.lacan.com/iraq1.htm
• How to read Lacan, Zizek p133
• Hitchcock's 1962 interview with Francois Truffaut
• Hitchcock's June 8, 1972 appearance on the Dick Cavett Show
• Johan Grimonprez on Hitchcock and Television
• The Purloined Letter (the letter is hidden in the open)