EXAM II / STUDENT: STANISŁAW LIGUZIŃSKI / TUTOR: SANDER BLOM
Short bio: Film critic and doctoral student at the Institute of Audiovisual Arts of Jagiellonian University, Stanisław Liguziński is also a graduate of Film Studies (5-Year MA) and Comparative Study of Civilizations (3-Year BA) programmes as well as a might-have-been graduate of MA course in Critical Theory. He is a co-founder of the ‘Maciste’ Film Discussion Club in Bochnia and recipient of the second prize in the Krzysztof Mętrak national competition for film critics (2009). Beside writing for film-oriented publications, magazines and websites, Liguziński teaches at the Jagiellonian University and participates in audiovisual education programmes – ‘New Horizons of Film Education’ and ‘Kinoszkoła (Cine-School)’.
[Roll your mouse over the rebus]
Roll you mouse
over the frames
Or to be completely frank with you, these are actually three cartoonish images rendered from the photos of me in Photoshop. Regardless of that, You may already assign a vague appearance to this voice. Hopefully, in a few moments, You'll get used to its cadence, vocabulary and idiosyncrasies, although no words will be spoken.
I assume that by now you not only 'heard' the voice that your mind decompressed from the paragraph above, but really listened to my voice. Written language is a tricky fella - visual but completely arbitrary and abstract - with letters denoting sounds, sounds refering to ideas and those being subjected to grammar. The difference between words and images is often reflected by a distinction between hearing and seeing or speaking and depicting. This comparison crumbles if one is too inquisitive, but if you could kindly look to your left and reflect for a second on why you chose to click on the embedded player (if you didn't, now is the right time), you'll see how differently from words, the "play" button redirects you to the anticipation of playback. A black triangle taken for a 90 degree spin becomes an icon. It's no longer relevant that it doesn't resemble anything you might naturally associate with hearing or music, since it sends you straight to a conventionally assigned idea.
Clear-cut fonts, like the one used in this text and icons are fairly easy examples of the seeing/hearing opposition, it doesn't mean, though, that you cannot read images, like you did with the rebus in the very beginning of that review
roll your mouse over the dot
Words can also be studied and contempleted for their esthetic value if you manage to direct reader's attention to it, like Apollinaire did in his calligrams:
roll over for english translation
Or simply, as in this example combined from the fonts used in the Polish press and posters between 1900 and 1920:
All the dots and arrows employed in the text so far in order to get you to that very line constitute yet another type of signs named after your forefinger - "index". When you stroll along the canal on a lovely night and suddenly state to you companion what an appealing place THIS is, you resort to index, framing particular moment and slice of reality as meaningful.
Now, how is that relevant to this review?
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